STRAND, Mark


The Garden

for Robert Penn Warren

It shines in the garden,

in the white foliage of the chestnut tree,

in the brim of my father’s hat

as he walks on the gravel.

In the garden suspended in time

my mother sits in a redwood chair:

light fills the sky,

the folds of her dress,

the roses tangled beside her.

And when my father bends

to whisper in her ear,

when they rise to leave

and the swallows dart

and the moon and stars

have drifted off together, it shines.

Even as you lean over this page,

late and alone, it shines: even now

in the moment before it disappears.


Mirror

A white room and a party going on

and I was standing with some friends

under a large gilt-framed mirror

that tilted slightly forward

over the fireplace.

We were drinking whiskey

and some of us, feeling no pain,

were trying to decide

what precise shade of yellow

the setting sun turned our drinks.

I closed my eyes briefly,

then looked up into the mirror:

a woman in a green dress leaned

against the far wall.

She seemed distracted,

the fingers of one hand

fidgeted with her necklace,

and she was staring into the mirror,

not at me, but past me, into a space

that might be filled by someone

yet to arrive, who at that moment

could be starting the journey

which would lead eventually to her.

Then, suddenly, my friends

said it was time to move on.

This was years ago,

and though I have forgotten

where we went and who we all were,

I still recall that moment of looking up

and seeing the woman stare past me

into a place I could only imagine,

and each time it is with a pang,

as if just then I were stepping

from the depths of the mirror

into that white room, breathless and eager,

only to discover too late

that she is not there.

The Remains

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.

I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.

At night I turn back the clocks;

I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.

I say my own name. I say goodbye.

The words follow each other downwind.

I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones

into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?

Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.


The Late Hour

A man walks towards town,

a slack breeze smelling of earth

and the raw green of trees blows at his back.

He drags the weight of his passion as if nothing were over,

as if the woman, now curled in bed beside her lover,

still cared for him.

She is awake and stares at scars of light

trapped in panes of glass.

He stands under her window, calling her name;

he calls all night and it makes no difference.

It will happen again, he will come back wherever she is.

Again he will stand outside and imagine

her eyes opening in the dark

and see her rise to the window and peer down.

Again she will lie awake beside her lover

and hear the voice from somewhere in the dark.

Again the late hour, the moon and stars,

the wounds of night that heal without sound,

again the luminous wind of morning that comes before the sun.

And, finally, without warning or desire,

The lonely and feckless end.


The Prediction

That night the moon drifted over the pond,

turning the water to milk, and under

the boughs of the trees, the blue trees,

a young woman walked, and for an instant

the future came to her:

rain falling on her husband’s grave, rain falling

on the lawns of her children, her own mouth

filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house,

a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it,

a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death,

thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising

and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.


The End

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.


The Coming Of Light -

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

Black Maps

Not the attendance of stones,

nor the applauding wind,

shall let you know

you have arrived,

not the sea that celebrates

only departures,

nor the mountains,

nor the dying cities.

Nothing will tell you

where you are.

Each moment is a place

you’ve never been.

You can walk

believing you cast

a light around you.

But how will you know?

The present is always dark.

Its maps are black,

rising from nothing,

describing,

in their slow ascent

into themselves,

their own voyage,

its emptiness,

the bleak, temperate

necessity of its completion.

As they rise into being

they are like breath.

And if they are studied at all

it is only to find,

too late, what you thought

were concerns of yours

do not exist.

Your house is not marked

on any of them,

nor are your friends,

waiting for you to appear,

nor are your enemies,

listing your faults.

Only you are there,

saying hello

to what you will be,

and the black grass

is holding up the black stars.