This is my Third and Last Address to You

III.Strangers are an endangered species

In Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherstcocktails are served the scholarsgather in celebrationtheir pious or clinical legendsfestoon the walls like imitationsof period patterns

(…and, as I feared, my “life” was made a “victim”)The remnants pawed the relicsthe cult assembled in the bedroomand you whose teeth were set on edge by churchesresist your shrineescapeare foundnowhereunless in words(your own)All we are strangers—dear—The world is notacquainted with us, because we are not acquaintedwith her. And Pilgrims!—Do you hesitate? andSoldiers oft—some of us victors, but those I donot see tonight owing to the smoke.—We are hungry,and thirsty, sometimes—We are barefoot—and cold—This place is large enough for both of usthe river-fog will do for privacythis is my third and last address to you

with the hands of a daughter I would cover youfrom all intrusion even my ownsaying rest to your ghost

with the hands of a sister I would leave your handsopen or closed as they prefer to lieand ask no more of who or why or wherefore

with the hands of a mother I would close the dooron the rooms you’ve left behindand silently pick up my fallen work

IV.The river-fog will do for privacyon the low road a breathhere, there, a cloudiness floating on the black top

sunflower heads turned black and bowedthe seas of corn a stubblethe old routes flowing north, if not to freedom

no human figure now in sight(with whom do you believe your lot is cast?)only the functional figure of the scarecrow

the cut corn, ground to shreds, heaped in a shapelike an Indian burial mounda haunted-looking, ordinary thing

The work of winter starts fermenting in my headhow with the hands of a lover or a midwifeto hold back till the time is right

force nothing, be unforcedaccept no giant miracles of growthby counterfeit light

trust roots, allow the days to shrinkgive credence to these slender meanswait without sadness and with grave impatience

here in the north where winter has a meaningwhere the heaped colors suddenly go ashenwhere nothing is promised

learn what an underground journeyhas been, might have to be; speak in a winter codelet fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry them.

V.Orion plunges like a drunken hunterover the Mohawk Trail a parallelogramslashed with two cuts of steel

A night so clear that every constellationstands out from an undifferentiated cloudof stars, a kind of aura

All the figures up there look violent to meas a pogrom on Christmas Eve in some old countryI want our own earth not the satellites, our

world as it is if not as it might bethen as it is: male dominion,gangrape,lynching,pogromthe Mohawk wraiths in their tracts of leafless birch

watching: will we do better?The tests I need to pass are prescribed by the spiritsof place who understand travel but not amnesia

The world as it is: not as her users boastdamaged beyond reclamation by their usingOurselves as we are in these painful motions

of staying cognizant: some part of us alwaysout beyond ourselvesknowing knowing knowing

Are we all in training for something we don’t name?to exact reparation for thingsdone long ago to us and to those who did not

survive what was done to them whom we ought to honorwith grief with fury with actionOn a pure night on a night when pollution

seems absurdity when the undamaged planet seems to turnlike a bowl of crystal in black etherthey are the piece of us that lies out thereknowing knowing knowing