A Poet Reflects

Love is more talked about than surrendered to.

—Charles Wright, from “Disjecta Membra” in Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997)

Everything that the pencil says is erasable,
Unlike our voices, whose words are black and permanent,
Smudging our lives like coal dust,
                                                  unlike our memories,
Etched like a skyline against the mind,
Unlike our irretrievable deeds …
The pencil spills everything, and then takes everything back.

—Charles Wright, from “October II” in Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997)

It’s the shape beneath the shape that summons us, the juice
That spreads the rose, the multifoliate spark
                                                                    that drops the leaf
And darkens our entranceways,
The rush that transfigures the maple tree,
                                         the rush that transubstantiates our lives.
October, the season’s signature and garnishee,
October, the exponential negative, the plus.

—Charles Wright, closing lines to “October II” in Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997)

The poem uncurls me, corrects me and croons my tune,
Its outfit sharp as the pressed horizon.
                                                          Excessive and honed,
It grins like a blade,
It hums like a fuse,
                            body of ash, body of fire,
A music my ear would be heir to.
I glimpse it now and then through the black branches of winter trees.
I hear it burn in the still places.

—Charles Wright, section 3 of “Disjecta Membra” in Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997) 

If God hurt the way we hurt,
                                          he, too, would be heart-sore
Disconsolate, unappeasable.

—Charles Wright, from “Poem Half in the Manner of Li Ho,” in Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997)

There is forgetfulness in me which makes me descend
Into a great ignorance,
And makes me to walk in mud, though what I remember remains.

Some of the things I have forgotten:
Who the Illuminator is, and what he illuminates;
Who will have pity on what needs have pity on it.

What I remember redeems me,
                                                strips me and brings me to rest,
An end to what has begun,
A beginning to what is about to be ended.

—Charles Wright, from section III of “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” in Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997)

June is a migraine above the eyes,
Strict auras and yellow blots,
                                           green screen and tunnel vision,
Slow ripples of otherworldliness,

Humidity’s painfall drop by drop.

—Charles Wright, opening lines to section “III” of “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” from Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997)

What we once liked, we no longer like.
What we used to delight in settles like fine ash on our tongues.
What we once embraced embraces us.

Things have destinies, of course,
On-lines and downloads mysterious as the language of clouds.
My life has become like that.

Half uninterpretable, half new geography,
Landscapes stilled and adumbrated, memory unratcheting,
It’s voice-over not my own.

—Charles Wright, opening lines to “Envoi” of “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” from Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997)