from “Plague Nights”

NIGHT 467

This map shows
the vultures
in the clouds.
This other map
does not show
the vultures
in the clouds.

Different maps,
same clouds,
same vultures.
We are
driving north
with our
folded eyeparts.

The doctors
are waiting.
They know
your name but
not my name.
They, too,
have studied
architecture.

We are drawn
to scale.
We are making
an argument
about scale.
We are doing
this with our
elbows,
lips, & noses.

The doctors
await, expectant.
They have
stories they are
waiting to
tell, about us,
to other doctors.

This is the past
but not very,
like memories
in clothes
before
you wash them.

Some German
music in
the cafeteria.
Not a waltz,
maybe you think
it’s insipid.
(Check map.)

Now watch:
Hegel vanishes.

NIGHT 653

The doctor says
I am not to be frightened
of the diagnosis.
I am not frightened
of the diagnosis, doctor.
I believe in messengers.
Gravity
is a separation
in the bonds of things.
We become aware
of truth & value,
those crippled dahlias.
Affirmation of a common
day, what can that
mean. I work at night
when the bread
is bare. I
have not been abandoned.
Or else I was
the abandoner
& then the abandonment.
This is possible.
Doctor, the self is annular.
We can look through it
as you do
through your hooked
scope. The dialectic,
as an algorithm, pertains
only to the material.
All else
is singing, negation,
possibility, small sums
withheld.
The glory of this, a limit.
That I was a man.
That sparrows.
That discourse. That
Clement of Alexandria.
Yes, even him.
Such dreadful distances.

NIGHT 476

Where a sign descended.
Steep dry wash
cracked open with thorns.
You knock.
(This isn’t a house.)
The desert opens, wary.
I am thinking
of hiring myself out
as an illness, you hear
yourself telling the desert.
The desert nods.
It has heard this before.
You appreciate
the low humidity
at this altitude, but not
the diminished oxygen.
Between you
& the summit appear
two deep ditches,
or trenches. You think
you are meant
to bathe in them,
but now they are dry.
Will you lower yourself
into them.
You’re calm.
Flesh lines your mind
like a pelt,
which you brush.
Winter reigns here
& yet you are sweating.

NIGHT 64

Joseph Cornell
dreamed
of a small rabbit
he held in his hand
until it became
his hand,
while he watched.

A veil matches
the light
cast by great voices.

Walk up to it.
Stroke its textures.

You will never
guess
where the thorn
beats time, rotating
on its plinth
of braided grasses.

NIGHT 66

I will mark your body,
the physician said.

& proceeded to do so.

Beg for it,
suggests intelligence.

NIGHT 69

The proper instrument
for weighing souls
is, of course, flame.

NIGHT 73

Odor of wheelchairs
in an opera
sung by mergansers.

Wheel the Grimms
right in.

Now, Master,
you were saying —?

NIGHT 95

Frightened larks cover
their faces. Their faces.
Did you know
that larks have faces.

NIGHT 127

Tattoos in any language,
feral.

The
stench of our gladness.

NIGHT 243

Lilies, persuade me
you are eyes
set within prophecy.

I stroke
your withered hand.

NIGHT 609

Milk-washed garden
of separation,
the music glances
your way.
Meals on the house.

Prove prove prove it.

You are
not a forest anymore.

ξ

G.C. Waldrep’s most recent collection is feast gently (Tupelo 2018). The Earliest Witnesses is forthcoming from Tupelo and Carcanet in 2021. He lives in Lewisburg, PA., where he teaches at Bucknell University and edits the journal West Branch.