Two poems by C. DALE YOUNG
Eclipse
Admit it. You return to the past because you
have gained some kind of knowledge to interpret it:
the titanium device with its four pins meticulously
buried in your skull, the sunlight from the window
reflecting off its edges to cast fractured lines of light
across your chest and across the hospital bed,
the rays of light appearing to beam from this metal ring
around your head (like a goddamned angel), or
the way when your nurse flicks it with his plastic pen
it vibrates in a key you cannot yet name. Call it
the key of metal, of titanium, of shiny misfortune.
Admit it, the present is awfully dull and will remain so
until many years later when it comes miraculously
into focus, when you understand the meaning of
the word regret. So it is you go back, armed now
with the word halo, the word rife with what
you have learned about the depiction of angels
in Renaissance painting, the ring or rings of light painted
by the old masters so as to hover lightly around the head.
And how can you not see with this knowledge, knowing
as you do now about the terrible wings you keep
and continue to keep secret? Some would argue
we keep secrets because we cannot help ourselves.
But what if secrets are kept simply because we have yet
to make sense of what really happened?
The moon in latest afternoon, just days ago, hid
a segment of the setting sun, and there before us a mandorla
without even the faintest sketch of a god or angel beneath it.
Admit it, I am not alone: things beg for significance.
Would that we always had the time to come back to them later…
20 The Paris-American
Admit it. You return to the past because you
have gained some kind of knowledge to interpret it:
the titanium device with its four pins meticulously
buried in your skull, the sunlight from the window
reflecting off its edges to cast fractured lines of light
across your chest and across the hospital bed,
the rays of light appearing to beam from this metal ring
around your head (like a goddamned angel), or
the way when your nurse flicks it with his plastic pen
it vibrates in a key you cannot yet name. Call it
the key of metal, of titanium, of shiny misfortune.
Admit it, the present is awfully dull and will remain so
until many years later when it comes miraculously
into focus, when you understand the meaning of
the word regret. So it is you go back, armed now
with the word halo, the word rife with what
you have learned about the depiction of angels
in Renaissance painting, the ring or rings of light painted
by the old masters so as to hover lightly around the head.
And how can you not see with this knowledge, knowing
as you do now about the terrible wings you keep
and continue to keep secret? Some would argue
we keep secrets because we cannot help ourselves.
But what if secrets are kept simply because we have yet
to make sense of what really happened?
The moon in latest afternoon, just days ago, hid
a segment of the setting sun, and there before us a mandorla
without even the faintest sketch of a god or angel beneath it.
Admit it, I am not alone: things beg for significance.
Would that we always had the time to come back to them later…
20 The Paris-American
The Master Plan
But memory is the greatest lie of all. No,
correction: the greatest set of lies. Even the boy
who remembers his mother reading to him is
participating in lies. So it is that to recollect
God pinning me to the hospital bed,
His hands cruel against my chest, His beard
dangling only mere inches away from my lips,
the inability to move, the weight of Him
crushing me against the bed as He whispers
Who are you to question the Divine? is nothing more
than memory, a lie. The nerves in my neck and back
on fire, the prickly heat rippling through me like fire?
A lie. It was nothing more than the nerves misfiring.
The metal ring, the titanium ring around my head,
the halo was sadly, most definitely, not a lie.
One misfortune begets another. And all stories
of origin are lies that beget more lies. Three cracks
in the bone of the axis begets the halo. The halo
begets the state of stillness, or is that begat?
The stillness allows the wings to erupt uncontrollably
from my back. I like to think that this was the sequence
of events, injury-halo-stillness, that birthed the monster.
But that, too, is a lie. The wings had made themselves
known years earlier, had erupted to full span and withered
away many times before. Who am I to question the Divine?
Who am I to return to the scene armed with words
and bookish learning? I sit here now with the wings
about to rupture the tissues between my shoulder blades.
I want answers, meaning I want lies. I want lies.
I muck around in memory and find only lies.
21 The Paris-American
But memory is the greatest lie of all. No,
correction: the greatest set of lies. Even the boy
who remembers his mother reading to him is
participating in lies. So it is that to recollect
God pinning me to the hospital bed,
His hands cruel against my chest, His beard
dangling only mere inches away from my lips,
the inability to move, the weight of Him
crushing me against the bed as He whispers
Who are you to question the Divine? is nothing more
than memory, a lie. The nerves in my neck and back
on fire, the prickly heat rippling through me like fire?
A lie. It was nothing more than the nerves misfiring.
The metal ring, the titanium ring around my head,
the halo was sadly, most definitely, not a lie.
One misfortune begets another. And all stories
of origin are lies that beget more lies. Three cracks
in the bone of the axis begets the halo. The halo
begets the state of stillness, or is that begat?
The stillness allows the wings to erupt uncontrollably
from my back. I like to think that this was the sequence
of events, injury-halo-stillness, that birthed the monster.
But that, too, is a lie. The wings had made themselves
known years earlier, had erupted to full span and withered
away many times before. Who am I to question the Divine?
Who am I to return to the scene armed with words
and bookish learning? I sit here now with the wings
about to rupture the tissues between my shoulder blades.
I want answers, meaning I want lies. I want lies.
I muck around in memory and find only lies.
21 The Paris-American
C. Dale Young is the author of three collections of poetry. His most recent is Torn (Four Way Books 2011). He practices medicine full-time and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He is one of the 2012 Poetry Fellows of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives in San Francisco.