I.
The son-poem begins /
By these pastoral lines :
‘ I follow my oxen over Coellarnod dale ;
the last sun dallies at the line of ridge /
is dilated across sky , as exhales a single
breath more than held by lungs .
I turn North to follow the lung Aurora ;
I turn the beasts , blank , without eyes ,
North , toward the flaring Aurora , ’
This is a poem to son ,
which , of all the givens ,
all the givens to me ,
I have learned / and sang it ;
I sang it first
below a mobile , below no light ,
under the
father’s palm
was my forehead sweating
inside .
This is a poem to son
remembered by my only son .
This is remembered by a son ,
me ,
[ my father , in a different , perhaps
transfiguring , light ] ,
whose brow angles on the same line
as his ,
over the tree-line , curving
to a starry point ‘
Before this song was ever / sung ,
The son exhaled the breath of this
Lip to eyelid hypnagogic kiss .
‘ So very young then
but not
dogging my giant’s steps
in a circle—
alone , gone ,
now ,
( dogged by a brother
with a mitt and a ball )
on a wooden dock by rodents half-rotted,
at Crystal Lake,
of Newton,
in Massachusetts,
in winter,
in December,
in snow,
I peed until the utmost emptying
of everything
into the water,
daughter-pee,
scattered,
the world renewed by this crossing ,
a Sun Dance ,
a Wet / ’
My whole body, in this Wet ,
is concretely described /
in this,
yellow,
the line,
at my own angle
towards sky extending,
gradually becomes obscure,
first in the circling trees
and then at an
uncertain point—
my own poem , in this ,
in ecstasy
and in history
( the inside self finding itself out ) .
II.
This poem of sons said to me once ,
as I sang it
to him / who :
‘ . . . The light inside the eye is from
inside the I
emitting
/ And :
Are these specific dispensed units condensed
forms of the structure of my complete self
father ?
[ . . . and they say children are /
and I say I am
a glade
This poem is now ,
in age / the ‘ wondering-not-evil son
wonders
from what is not-me th[e]y retain ,
but what have th[[y accrued from me
passing through ,
knowing those portions better than I ‘
below lid ,
where knowing eye , closed ,
inherits a scene of signs , such as :
By the front-door ,
How on the hook my jacket hangs
and is
uneasy with
itself .
I ask the poem , today , What son
is father ease
e l ?
and what with his langue ?
Who is not / slower ?
they [ , the oxen ] sang ,
[ [ a phonetic yet knowable poem ,
of all the kids
‘ rambling down the valley grass
to a river between two steeps ,
to oxen uttering their murky milk
into the sable stream . . .
and my father listens there
and I bother to listen to him
tell me how he listened to his father . . .
giving only [dog ] ear but to the oxen who speak ,
to the milk which speaks / is understood ,
and to the stream . ‘
III.
This is the poem becoming , now ;
This is the Wet /
What son is father’s easel not /
What son is not his father’s bell ,
clinking inside the breast /
is not the grass
dampened
and blank ,
out of the brook
occurring /
Where is th[[y mother ,
mine ,
son /
Where is thy ,
Thine ,
‘ And what greater calamity
[be]falls a notion than the loss of worship ,
the loss of a river
and sure on that tongue , agile
in the crease of the valley ,
like a dog lapping the river Jordan
to let me out
from under / it ;
who ,
bearing the clay jars and trumpets ,
on the cloud-trumpets blaring ,
breaking the clay jars in the palm
of my own hand ,
will let me out from under / it ,
will lap the water as they did ,
will glide through the glades ‘
IV.
This son-poem , all dogged
out and slim ,
revealed ,
dogging
God /
I ,
slim ,
Now / out in the mountains somewhere ,
below no ridge ,
blind ,
tagging oxen
with this intemperate steel ,
with this song /
as hot as his
temples
by kerchief in fever
da[bbe]d ; he [ prays at the altar
by the river
for father
to Exfoliate / me for to Irradiate :