of arms and hands

Of Arms and Hands

1

The work with hands in the garden seemed light and
easy to bear. The task at hand was important
and he felt that the work of the caretaker was
reasonable and necessary. The catalogue of labors
was read daily and to each was given in intimate detail
the ordering of tasks. But the sound that left the
lips of the god was difficult to interpret, so new
to the child, so thin and compressed,
like the sharp and jagged line of a bat
escaping from the mouth of a cave.

And the boy who wanted so hard to understand
the task he was to do, could only watch the
carefully retreating steps of the god.

2
The arms and hands again appeared, disrupting
the work in the garden. Arms, as if raised in song,
hands that beckon, and then wait, reaching out
from a strange and unknown life.

The boy looks expectantly to the figure now arriving
at his side. The god, breaking the clotted soil from
his fingers, interprets the meaning of moving hands,
and the boy's eyes follow the words as they are written:

     "Be rich for the treasure of worlds."

3
Passing through a shaft, you see at the last
moment two counter-rotating scissors of steel. Fissures
of ice, splitting bone, jade, and feldspar. Unclean sounds
pressing against his ear in the darkness. Tastes he could
not shut out, sliding down his tongue. Frozen arteries
of salt and green copper.

Erect no memory to shoe, dress, and wine, nor to the
faces of departure. Deeply they are forgot with a
revolutionary's zeal. The god of arrivals, now
in your company, has already heard, and canceled,
every human request.

And yet somehow, still having the innocence of a boy,
it was a pleasure and a grace to round his tongue
and silently sound the names of worlds.

4
The work lasted until the hour of dusk, when
he was carried to the evening meal and to the cot
prepared for him within the cover of the garden
wall. Then a yearning came over him, like the
sleep of a summer's day.

On the horizon, the porcelain silhouette of the god
stood in the darkening fields. "The day's work is
already moving through the soil," he said from a distance,
never looking back.

But the sounds of the words were as nothing
to the sleeping boy
who has seen in his sleep
the gesture of arms and hands.

5
During the watch that was kept in the night
everything that was in the god's mind came true.
There was a hour in which no detail was
omitted from the prescribed tasks. The list has
come down to us. The ground was turned and made ready
for the morning's planting; souls from the garden,
washed and placed on stiles to dry.

And during an hour legions slept and locust sang
a waterlogged pair of boots was taken up,
untangled and newly crossed, by hands
of strength and infinite patience.

6
"Neither above or below," the god answered as gently
as was within his power, not revealing a new,
or original, or important truth, nor showing any sign
of understanding the question the boy asked.

He watched in silence, contemplating the silver-washed
figure, the powerful charm of the death's-head pin.
Somehow from the grave it entered this world with him,
all that he now possessed, a relic of a soldier's coat
and an ancient race.

7 Others had been here. Or were here now, but not seen.
Boys, men, mothers of men, only the gatekeepers know
Their marks remain, scratched crudely in wood,
attempts at location. Names and parts of names. But
distant from them now, already another's. And there
was one, unable to reclaim his name, who gave his story,
the words already obscured by another's.

     these words were the man
     lived in a city, split by a river
     crossed by bridges, parliaments, clock
     and ship museums


And the boy smiled at once with knowing.
8
From the living, the dead, or from one who no longer
limits his theme. A secret message. His eye
fell upon the fragment of a poem. The first part
was lost forever. But what remained, so simple and
unexplained, only made the interpretation more difficult.

     align your soul   it may be trust
     how many times you may never know

The work with hands in the garden seemed light
and easy to bear.