CANTO 15 The red-winged blackbird

 

The red-winged blackbird spirals unevenly

out of the ashen sky, past the bleached roof of the shed,

its head twisting and turning, it must land.

I stand by the mower, one foot on the oak tongue.

I watch the raven settling, see the gaunt beak

and the staring eyes, the blood-stained feathers.

The bird is large, stands with its breast torn open.

It’ll faint, it’s too starved to eat.

It looks wanly for a morsel on the ground worn bare.

"I fold my wings under you, they become your legs

that have carried you so far, your bed of pain."

I will this trap. Nothing will happen here, just sitting.

The pain spreads to my lower back.

Nor all your meditation manuals cross out a neuron of it.

My cupped hands ladle a soup of distractions

from this worried noodle. Om mani urgent things

I should be doing and just let me scratch this screaming nostril

padme hum the signals from the scrotum should be scrutinized

what is of the lotus is of the universe padme ho hum

is of me the left leg falling asleep already

where the pain climbs a notch up the spine the wanting to fuck

this is the breathing in; and the breathing out,

that little death going out among the trees.

There’s a pulley in my brain.

I breathe in hauling up from my gut

buckets of bile, bilge, and obligations.

Cook over a low mantra flame

O mommy paddywack hum and then breathing out

a hot splume flume of acid fume. Higher yet on top of all this

industrial activity there is a darkened auditorium.

I’m up there on the stage illuminated by brain-lights,

strutting my wonderfulness from all angles, loud applause

until with a deafening shout "PHAT! SVAHA!"

a cane jerks me into the wings and the lights go down.

Instead of a screen there’s a vast arching

darkness— Goddammit! my head’s clamped

I can’t see what’s behind but it doesn’t matter

because up in front as I adjust to the darkness

huge swatches of violet light like mist coalesce into a shimmering sphere

that condenses into a bright palpitating cloud

in the center of the room or auditorium I now realize

is my forehead my whole body stretching like an industrial park

right down to the excruciating pain in my ankles.

The ball of light keeps shrinking, as if rushing away,

but another forms out of violet, pink, and orange mists

and it too heads right out the center of my forehead into nowhere

and all the time the breathing in, the breathing out.

I hear gasps from the audience. People speak up, saying

"Merely retinal after-image." "My God it’s the Third Eye!"

"Try it blind-folded!" but the spheres keep forming

as if they’re shooting down a tube

or as if we’re rushing

away from them, or as if it’s a continual re-enactment of the Big Bang!

Someone shouts, "It’s particle physics! It’s the brain’s

DIRECT PERCEPTION OF SUB-ATOMIC MOVEMENT!!!"

Then an urbane voice behind me calmly says, "It’s just your

faddish imagination, a right-brain hallucination," someone I can’t see

of course with my head fixed like this. Someone else says,

"2x2 is 4, 4x4 is 16, 16x16 is, uh, 256..." and a final shout:

"HOW CAN YOU DENY WHAT’S RIGHT IN BACK OF YOUR EYES!"

which open. I haven’t taken in a fraction of the canopy of sounds—

woods washing in the wind, jays screaming my smallness,

great herons croaking in distant river wetlands.

What’s the darkness behind my clamped head?

What’s the dream of the blackbird?