Two prayers from Where Is the Body...(poems)

(1)   In Place of Stone

Be it Thy light,

Lord, I falter in

when day, the long fright,

safely’s been.

When the leaves’ long fall

that I was here to see

is over, may they all

gather over me,

in Thy light shown

single as sun,

their many and mine done

over in one,

needer and known ungone,

together in dawn.

(2)   After This Manner

‘So be it’ – my only real prayer,

soundless and shapeless as what anguishes,

spoken only when the empty air

is all that’s left of all the languages –

not ‘Thy will be done’ but ‘will be done’ –

spoken not to man, woman, child,

only the many that’s the only one,

only fire, pyre on pyre piled.

Little in form as what consumes my form,

weak in words as I am weak in all,

nevertheless it raises one warm

breath to help a heaven not to fall –

mine or thine, or in whose ever hearing

there comes, even in smoke, this little clearing.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

Poems from the River Way (from Where Is the Body...)

(7)

The river joined us in its overtones,

woven in what we heard but could not hold,

sharing it only as the river stones

darkening let it further. We are told

in light that sings above remembrances,

gleaming over what white salt hands

opened to reach after. Land sense is

lost but the overgiven understands.

Only the over stays. It is a hearing

more than any form, song of assent

ever, ever again new nearing

of yes, yes as we were, and as we went –

home in the only lived and only known,

the light, warmer than winter-whited bone.

(9)

Hard to believe the deepening toward sunset

is deeper light. But here we met: a room

windowed in and to ourselves: here, yet

open on a river. And through all gloom

of ending day a ripple, glimmer came

of where we were, what that water was:

seen in leaving’s darker-sounding name,

deeper its flowing on was in, to us.

Waves rise but it is to us they fall,

falling into view that all is love.

We are the seeing where we are at all,

seeing that all love’s believing of:

love that is believe, as I believe

river is ever, light we’ll never leave.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

Three prayers from Where Is the Body...(poems)

(1)   Sown

Lord, could I help it that I nearly saw

the colors of the wind? nearly heard

a singing deep in stone? Was it Thy law

I must so closely fail? And Thy word,

which breaks itself into the thousand names,

came broken in my heart. A thousand shivers

to carry were my love; no two were sames;

two raindrops were to me two gleaming rivers.

I loved them all: and so I came divided,

knowing the leaves in green but also brown.

No light fell but it was double-sided,

smithered over the steep roofs of the town

in sharpnesses as of a broken mirror,

showing me break with need to see it nearer.

(2)   Huntsman

Searching the day as ever for Thy word,

I know, Lord, that I shall not find Thy face.

For from a child, I have ever heard

Thou art in ‘truth,’ in ‘spirit’ – not in place.

Yet being made by Thee to need in Thee,

knowing Thy face is far, I seek Thy faces

of harmony – art Thou not harmony? –

where the ash tree’s thin but highest-branching places

are live against the sky – giving to dearth,

to emptiness or heaven where Thou must be

(needing the weak but stabbing shapes of earth

to prod Thee into forms that I can see?)

their little green, yet fuller of life as yet

than the Face I never saw and don’t forget.

(3)   Yoke

Lord, why was a pair of eyes my given?

Given a more than one but less than all? –

I, made for to see, light-driven,

able to see the rise and yet the fall

of sun, but not its staying into more –

circle or aught unnumbered, out of the weather

in ever, where each either with its or

round in a rose’s heart will ring together?

To the single-eyed, a shrub’s but a pennant – gay

flag of the light of a day – but it was more

in me: I saw that blossom brought away

in darkness: and I saw its seed before

it ever opened her in agony

for beauty and for more: for love of me.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

Here Seens (Poems from Where Is the Body...)

(1)   Dog on the Stoop

I know he is dying because he calls to me:

animal I never knew. Stranger to this

street myself, to hear him falls to me:

dweller in dark, home in stillnesses.

Nights he also tried, cried to the air

to come across the roofs and bring him kin,

find him a facing body hid somewhere

in the shut hovels, housings of din.

But where do we meet except light is in it?

Where except in morning, where the form

calls to another that has also been it,

also stood with breath steaming warm-

widening out, welcomer out, more

heard crying open, crying door?

(2)   Forecast

Falling from heaven haltingly, so slow

it seems staying, dwelling as if for good,

creation happens. Like unarmored snow

withering through a sooted neighborhood

it lingers, dirtying where it is at all...

but clinging, seen in its moment of surrender

to marriage into mud, giving its fall,

that is its light, to dark the never-ender.

Not that its flakes are pretty where they touch

and die, and give their little light to dying.

But each is seed, scattered out of much

so quickly into nothing but its trying,

its tying into nothing, where it’s met

by nothing that can hold it, nearly, yet.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

from Anthropos 2 (poems)

(1)   Anthropos

Body is made, not born. It is a sort

of relay race: a thousand handshakes fade,

the one hand survives. Across it, thwart

lines remain, remind of the unmade.

A spider links the moments of its going

by stretching out its spit across the sky,

early and later threaded, all one doing,

never a break between, never an I.

Not so son of woman. All my reach

began from one and lasted till another,

another falling hand, another breach

while heart observed: an armless helpless mother.

Whom shall I give this hand, its thousand flaws,

never a one but longing its way across?

(2)   Exile

Now let my body’s all be used. But how,

who regather red that would not follow,

bleed sap back and into bough,

gasp breath home to heaving hollow?

Shall I tear my hand from its own shadow?

bid lost knees and elbows disengage

from dust that flocked to welcome them, and go

along with me one man, one dance, one rage?

No, wound is me. What could not keep

this pace or stature is my other way.

Let breath be wide and holy bone be deep,

lost together, one in the wait of day.

My body scatters into living whole,

each foot bleeding from a side, a sole.

(3)   Stand

Shall I go to the hills for an answer, find in

pines stunted on some late slope

my new law? Those west ones are thin.

They have height only, none of my hope.

I call them the old names. My grandfather carved

hearts on their faces, cut bark free

and found a knot under. See how the light-starved

longer better ones bend, live on oddly.

Groping wise, their rust branches crawl

where rising is not good, point to a ground

even the rain runs from, let cones fall

seeding in snails’ spittle, starlings’ sound,

knowing in darked query alone’s told

sun’s answer, habitable hold.

--Lloyd Haft (from Anthropos, Querido 1996)

Live Bird Verses 2 (poems from Where Is the Body...)

(1)   Mixed Flocks

Is there then no light? – how at the last

their flight all is down. Proud crow,

leper starling, all stoop so,

hungry only, after the long fast

seeing was. Flying brought them past

mansions – seen fields of snow,

ermine mirrors, hiding a below

where ripe foul bright rot massed.

Under the boughs that cut off heaven here

they scrounge now for scatter, cold groats,

anything never sun came near –

deep for those dark-hulled blood-boats,

the bodies they must tow, to feed upon

far from the light their eyes have overgone.

(2) White Bird Landing

Weighing the bough, setting his very blood

upon it as his jewel in the pan,

scratching burl and unblossoming bud

to see if they will have him, if he can

be lowered here among them and be still

sitting among their low withering witness,

whether his eyes will neighbor them, wing will

touch them in their down and hard and itness

or whether his body, having light to bear

in forms that are too wide for here to clasp,

will find its better weight again in air,

over the barks that break beneath his grasp.

Dearest of burdens, seers of both sides,

his eyes will go where not the blood abides.

(3)   Too Big Bird

They kept him in a shed; he was too big

and over for the seen sparrow field,

too tall-ly aquiver to kick twig,

scratch sand, waddle the sun-sealed

bounded acre as it dried around.

Wings of his, fitting a night-flier,

hung as a weapon weighing him to ground:

his heaven was harder, not higher.

He beat grass, smote stalk under,

slapped slat till pale fell away

and the one that needed wonder was the wonder,

stumbling out of stubble into day,

gaped by the here-keepers till their eyes

lost him into the darkness of his rise.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

Dead Bird Verses 2 (poems from Where Is the Body...)

(1)   Heavy Hawk

That he has been in light binds him

home to the circle, ever aloft and going

wherever a dawn’s faint ray finds him,

held to his height, orbiting his knowing

as so many rivers under his straining quills,

so many fading shells lying broken

over the valley that his shadow fills,

every break one breath’s token.

How could he fall, and leave the glint behind

that singed his feathers into spreading wider,

waiting harder, lone enough to find

home in what finally lifts the truth-rider

out of the wind and into farther birth,

tracing a coming ring around the earth?

(2)   Dead Thrush 2

Now every morning, since the time I found

a thrush dead by dawn, day-broken,

lying beside my window man-bound,

downed before his warm word was spoken –

now every day at dawn I look to see

if I can find another – if there come

a brother breathing out and down for me,

saying it nearly: friend, so close and dumb.

Is it an end they come to me to find?

Or is my eye an opening, a ring

through to a heaven, giving out of wind

and into quiet’s wider beginning?

I’d rather see them dead than not at all:

brothers that tried, tried to more than fall.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

Live Bird Verses 1 (poems from Where Is the Body...)

(1)   No Bird Known

End of day. Across the hundred yards

I still can see, there is a single bird

appearing. Overliver of the herd,

sole survivor of those louds and hards

that own the earth, now scrying heavenwards?

Or is it – wing and dusk so closer blurred

at last they have no name, there is no word

for him among the darkened men and marreds –

a dove, his white no longer to be told

from crow-clothing, here now no better

than grain-grabber, canny late baptizer

come and among our done and beaten fold

not for to help but know – greediest getter,

through seer, no mere riser?

(2)   Bird Trying to Land

See how the place he tries to set his claw

and stand is never the ripe fruit-clotted

sodden under bough, but in the flaw,

barren branch and open, nothing-knotted,

twisted to the weight of nothing seen,

bent as if supporting from below

the heaviness of heaven, where the green

leaf, here for the falling, will not go.

His wings, bent as a branch but of no tree,

bearing the eyes that will be his only seed,

arch above him, brows of the widening see

that calls him back in its ever greatening need.

O, but the branch of after! How it stays

quivering, waiting, waking both the ways!

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)

Dead Bird Verses 1 (poems from Where Is the Body...)

(1)   Run-Over Dove

Even in death the bird’s blood’s red –

dry, true, less than ever much,

but gleaming over cobble, outspread,

up. Mapping forever one touch

of wind and wheel it seals head flat,

sticking to stone with single eye above,

holding to heart one stony splat

as ever a falcon held the hawker’s glove.

Flatted wings still wave white,

fray at the edge away from earth, fight

up. Eye stays a circle, posed

right for the warmer longer light of even,

poised split in its ever center, even

in death dark, even in death not closed.

(2) Dead Thrush 1

Strange my own opening killed the bird:

window I had made. No curtain, screen:

I was asleep. I never even heard

the head slug on the soundless unseen.

I woke to see him lying on the porch,

motionless and yet a center still,

heavy at the head end as a torch

all the winds had risen round to kill.

His body flattened as the earth is flat,

clinging to form although the fire was out.

If only the bringer of rest had been a cat,

part of the living, not the human bout –

the killer was no cat. It was my eye,

needing a glass to dream of flying by.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?,  1998)

from Anthropos 1 (poems)

(1)   Yield

Our bodies bearing ever in this cold

are gatherers, assembling amen

from yes a hundred, no ten thousandfold,

slowly learning to be wide again,

take on wind the sleet-bringer’s burden,

raft the falling white that weathers hands

in vessels earthy and so little earthen

they break growing to hold. As each disbands

it leaves its freight to float upon the water,

a ring ever expanding in the ply

of hip and hail, river and bone matter,

resembling the reflection of an eye

above, that might in greater light have been

upon it, seeing what here it could not win.

(2)   By the Campfire

Was it my weakness that I did discern

where smoke half witnessed in the body curled

and pointed? Daily did my body burn

to find room for that weakness in this world!

Is want weak? Should smoulder be forgot?

Is marrow carried into sunset years

less load by night, the wolf’s eye not

keenest then on the very fire he fears?

Bright the body burned, while the fang,

following in and after me, cried

white to the open wind, hungering sang.

This the flesh avails: to abide

the long slow seen here strive.

Weeds withered alive; I wait alive.

(3)   Hoard

Where does old light go?

When waves to west at sunset, gladdening

to rise at last unhindered, break into

the road of sight there is a reddening

or goldening upon them as they fall.

Is it their own, an ember each must give

at going, or does sun’s red seedball

ending widen, scatter that they should live?

Mirroring over each other, seen not got,

fire and water marry but not long.

Where does their gold remain – or does it not?

Are gulls seeking after seeking wrong?

Light is the treasure, sight itself the thing.

See the wave. See the fading wing.

(4)   He Leadeth Me

There is a knower, but he bears my name.

He is not other to the pores or eyes

that measured out or in all path I came,

not beyond the clovers as they rise

to bear me up along all meadow’s edge.

What urges in my shoes is not debris

but sharer, comer down and into knowledge

that is the walk I’m helping him to see.

Light is no foreign thing. Whatever sees

goes in the colors that my iris shows,

tents here in eyelid canopies,

faint with me but far in what it knows.

Heat in my heels spreads. He’ll not escape

that bramble blaze. His light will take my shape.

--Lloyd Haft (from Anthropos, Querido 1996)

Crossings (from Anthropos)

I didn’t want to hit God on the head; just

skip a few stones over the water, show

a little boy the way you let it go, trust

water and wind to carry it over. But below,

under my weak and falling throw, there was

a gull, wings mantled in odd unbroken slate,

looking down for fishes not across to us.

It hit him. He turned bodily over, kept great

wings going, big brain dangling, caught

breath and fell into the widest lowest round

circle ever fisher flew. On he fought,

landward, nearing the ring’s end our standing ground.

He would have hit my head. I aimed a second stone

but he was up and over, right again, alone.

--Lloyd Haft (from Anthropos, Querido 1996)

Oak (poem from Where Is the Body...)

Not one top but a dozen the oak has,

gnarled each, knotted every one.

Split many ways, dust-frecked as

all crown they clench sensing sun.

Shoving their mangle any way it will

they gouge wind, auger sky wide,

find each a flaying out to fill,

end each to a fuller, loner side.

Not head is single, but the heart

maybe; and thrust is one in hidden,

not in the worked grown broken part.

Dozen the wounds that open out unbidden

but every wound’s a window on within,

showing the heart in what the broken bole has been.

--Lloyd Haft (from Where Is the Body That Will Hold?, 1998)