Rising

Rising

Early I learned to

hunch myself

close by the door:

I’d wipe my

mouth and wend

unnoticed back to the barn

to be with the warm beasts,

dumb among body sounds

of the simple ones.

                        “Caedmon”

                        Denise Levertov

raw rock hot caustic dust:

if there were never ever light

anymore brought to this tomb

room it would never need it

the rough undone rags and a ways

away:

                        my face

                        cloth coiled flat.

                        she’d say later

                        that it looked

                        like a left behind

                        as if skin, peeled

                        backwards.  she knew

                        my new vein of living

                        blue must include

going into and through

a desert through

an old grove through

my old blood on stones through

all the way through

sewers where Judas threw

himself at me and until

he was empty he grabbed me

and wrapped the air

of me and wound me

bound me babbling

his undoable charm

                        and went off almost

                        alone

                        with his new rope

through this though J-

rewsalem God stowing

my old carapace

until with a new sun

rising, rising,

rising alongside

the barren fig tree

the bulging wine tree

the bereft crucifix tree

until, high on a hill

                        still in

                        the dark

                        I took

                        what blood

                        what hair

                        what bone

                        what flax

                        I could and

                        thread by thread

became again

a

man