Nathaniel Mackey

[from Nathaniel Mackey's Splay Anthem, New Directions, 2006]

Eye on the Scarecrow

    — “mu” twentieth part —

      The way we lay
  we mimed a body
    of water. It was
this or that way
                         with
        the dead and we
      were them. No
                              one
    worried which . . .
      Millet beer made
our legs go weak,
                             loosed
  our tongues. “The dead,”
                                           we
          said, “are drowning
      of thirst,” gruff
        summons we muttered
    out loud in our
                             sleep . . .
      It was a journey we
  were on, drawn-out
    scrawl we made a road
of, long huthered hajj
                                   we
        were on. Raw strip
      of cloth we now rode,
          wishful, letterless
                                       book
            the ride we thumbed . . .
        Harp-headed ghost whose
          head we plucked incessantly.
    Bartered star.        Tethered
                                                run . . .
      It was a ride we knew we’d
    wish to return to. Every-
        thing was everything.
  nothing no less. No less
                                         newly
      arrived or ancestral, of
        late having to do with
    the name of parts . . .
      Rolling hills rolled
  up like a rug, raw sprawl
                                          of a
        book within a book
      without a name known as
          Namless, not to be
  arrived at again . . .
                                  It was
    the Book of No Avail we
were in did we dare name
  it, momentary kings and
                                          queens,
    fleet kingdon. Land fell
  away on all sides.

                               Past
Lag we caught ourselves,
    run weft at last
  adequate, shadowless,
                                      lit,
      left up Atet Street,
    legs tight, hill after
          hill after hill.
        Had it been a book Book
  of Opening the Book it
      would have been called,
                                             kept
under lock and key . . .
                                      Hyperbolic
      arrest. Ra was on the
                                        box.
    It was after the end of
  the world . . . To lie on
      our backs looking
    into the dark was all
        there was worth
                                  doing.
  each the aroused eye
one another sought,
    swore he or she
                           saw,
    we lay where love’s
  pharaonic torso lay
      deepest, wide-eyed
                                     all
night without sleep . . .
                                      “String
    our heads with straw,” we
  said, half-skulls tied with
      catgut, strummed . . .
                                         Scratched
    our strummed heads, memory
made us itch. Walked out
  weightless, air what eye
                                         was
      left . . .

                Someone said Rome,
    someone said destroy it.
Atlantis, a third shouted
                                       out . . .
      Low ride among ruins
  notwithstanding we flew.
    Swam, it often seemed,
underwater, oddly immersed,
                                               bodies
          long since bid goodbye,
                                                 we
    lay in wait, remote muses
        kept us afloat. Something
  called pursuit had us by
      the nose. Wafted ether
                                           blown
low, tilted floor, splintered
        feet. Throated bone . . .
    Rickety boat we rode . . .
                                             As
      though what we wanted
  was to be everywhere at
                                          once,
an altered life lived on an
                                         ideal
        coast we’d lay washed up
          on, instancy and elsewhere
                                                      endlessly
      entwined