March 14, 2017Orpheus AloneMark Strand

It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk

On the shores of the darkest known river,

Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks

And rows of ruined huts half-buried in the muck;

Then to the great court with its marble yard

Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there

In the sunken silence of the place and speak

Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss,

And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes,

Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread,

The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything

Down to her thighs and calves, letting the words come,

As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream,

Against the water’s will, where all the condemned

And pointless labor, stunned by his voice’s cadence,

Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, disheveled

Furies, for the first rime, would weep, and the soot-filled

Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride,

To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light.

As everyone knows, this was the first great poem,

Which was followed by days of sitting around

In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes

Closed, trying to will her return, but finding

Only himself, again and again, trapped

In the chill of his loss, and, finally,

Without a word, taking off to wander the hills

Outside of town, where he stayed until he had shaken

The image of love and put in its place the world

As he wished it would be, urging its shape and measure

Into speech of such newness that the world was swayed,

And trees suddenly appeared in the bare place

Where he spoke and lifted their limbs and swept

The tender grass with the gowns of their shade,

And stones, weightless for once, came and set themselves there,

And small animals lay in the miraculous fields of grain

And aisles of corn, and slept. The voice of light

Had come forth from the body of fire, and each thing

Rose from its depths and shone as it never had.

And that was the second great poem,

Which no one recalls anymore. The third and greatest

Came into the world as the world, out of the unsayable,

Invisible source of all longing to be; it came

As things come that will perish, to be seen or heard

A while, like the coating of frost or the movement

Of wind, and then no more; it came in the middle of sleep

Like a door to the infinite, and, circled by flame,

Came again at the moment of waking, and, sometimes,

Remote and small, it came as a vision with trees

By a weaving stream, brushing the bank

With their violet shade, with somebody’s limbs

Scattered among the matted, mildewed leaves nearby,

With his severed head rolling under the waves,

Breaking the shifting columns of light into a swirl

Of slivers and flecks; it came in a language

Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,

Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,

So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope

Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.