All Saints Elegies
by David Hart
Home > No. 12 > Poetry

"Loving is good too, for love is hard"
                                                      — Rilke

1

I thought, if I arrange the musical instruments
in order in the field
the angels will come and play them,

and the angels did come and they
kicked the instruments and trod them
into the ground,

and they threw the instruments
into the bog, and they snapped the instruments
in pieces as if they were branches for a fire,

and the fire almost woke me,
almost brought me back
to begin again.


2

They are called servants.
They are called to be servants.
They are called and they attend.

On another table some sheets partly written on
and discarded, here and there words, phrases,
here a whole line but written in such haste, —

A painting here of hills in twilight stormlight,
a few notes in the words and an ironic cheer,
brief, distant, fading, loud again, brief, fading.

The translation must try to catch servants,
how they have the name,
how they are enlisted in the calling.

There was, I think, a great traveller known here,
beyond what we think of as here, beyond here, yes, and further.
"I want to go up that river". Remember?

It's where she was born, she spoke that language,
she was patient, but cried out in spite of herself in her map
the name traveller, the word itself, traveller,

and then other names: seaboard, edge,
and here it says, 'I have raised a poem like a glass
in empty chorus

on the other side of the street', and here
if I can make it out, 'behind the roses'.
Can you see the steps? The arguments?

Would this woman coming along now remember?
Or this one coming now? Would this one?


3

I thought, the white sheets were clear evidence
of the angels' presence, that they were here
offering themselves, to be lit and carry me.
All I had seen were the white sheets laid out
to be used for my own, which was everyone's,
purpose, for me to sledge on, missing the trees,
missing the ruts and the bumps, flying almost,
then the drag uphill, up hill again to begin again.

And they seemed to give me of themselves more
than I knew, more than I had earned, more than
it was possible to know, the white sheets wrapped
around me, unto the last, into the perfect light,
and to enclose more of myself than I knew I knew
for the offering. From that great distance the marks
might have been words, I mistook them for words.

Rescue then seemed possible, the sheets would be
stretchers into recovery, in the white sheets
I would be carried and would carry myself, look,
along these corridors, through these swing doors,
into the light of perception, into the fleeing light.

Spread your wings, my loves, spread them wider
so that there is nothing but wings, nothing but,
nothing but, nothing but wings for as far as the,
for as far as the body can see, can see, can make.

This is an excerpt. To read the rest, please continue your travels in the Republic by purchasing No. 12, Fall 2003.

David Hart's bio is forthcoming.