the women in their long satin dresses, with their
fans and shuddering hair. Much feasting goes on.
Days later, the discovery is made. Orders are sent back
across the sea to be confirmed by the Queen.
Orders are confirmed. The populace is brought out
into a series of aesthetically ideal city squares
and forced at gunpoint to change directly
into gold. They object at first, then the King
changes himself into a large gold vase. His sons
become a pair of gold grates (for a confessional). Their
children become lockets. The royal servants
take the form of forks and spoons. This is general
throughout the population, and the objects
become a sort of faux-history, where each object
fails in its attempt to mimic the life lived.
Historians today wonder if this was intentional.
Bestiary 5
These pregnant methods, cheerful
and fat, leaning from filthy casements
in the side of June may yield
ink-eyed marionettes so lovely
that their gestures,
pointedly describing strings,
mean little even to the adept.
Mary. Isa. Joan. Celeste.
Roaming the grounds
of this quartered preserve.
Mary lays a lacquered hand
upon your cheek. Joan’s plain head
inclines — she is speaking
but the voice is from above.
Isa crouches in the near future;
she will scream at a painted boar
that bursts from a stand of trees.
Celeste is absent. Or is Joan
speaking of her when she says,
“I knew a matchstick once
that burned like the hands of a clock.”
From the scenery then, a wooden creaking
as of someone’s descent. Applause.
Applause. And in the front row
a man’s heart bursts in his chest.
EAST RIDING
ONE
The forest was much larger than anyone had previously thought.
So large that one couldn’t find one’s way back.
Luckily there were many lovely clearings and crisp glorious mornings.
It was therefore possible to live.
Also there were rose bushes everywhere, each larger than the one before
(and how we loved to discover the roses, naming them after ourselves).
And biplanes would pass overhead.
TWO
In the period before I entered the forest, I thought
that there was the world, one small corner of which
was the forest. Now it has become clear to me—
there is the forest, and the world is but
one small corner of it, exceedingly small, humble even.
For I have seen them meet in the street, and I can tell you
it is the world that makes the deeper bow, the world
that goes away, hat in hand, making furtive glances back
to see if the forest has turned also to look. Which never happens.
And furthermore, one can’t find one’s way back.
Luckily there are many lovely clearings and crisp glori ous mornings.
THREE
On one such morning I went out looking
for the clearest of seven streams. Seven there were,
running through the forest, and all of them clear.
Which was the clearest?
I put my hand in the first stream.
My hand turned the color of the night sky, which is mottled.
This distressed me, so I put my hand in my pocket.
On to the next stream.
I put my other hand in the second stream.
It soon began to move of its own accord.
This distressed me further. With a stern act of will
I put it too in my pocket.
On again.
At the third stream, a man was standing.
Both of his hands were stuck in his pockets also.
“What do you suppose we do next?” he asked.
FOUR
The forest is different than was supposed.
It is darker in the trees, lighter between them.
Passing between them is its own skill,
separate from the skill of being in clearings.
This is how it goes: you wander for years
in the world, then you find the edge of the forest.
You enter, and wander for days in the forest.
You try to find your way back.
Instead you find a clearing. Also you find out
whether or not you can live alone in the forest.
Many can’t. Others come after, and bury them.
Hungry little roses grow then from the ground.
FIVE
We of the forest wonder often about the biplanes.
From where do they take off?
Where do they land?
It should be easy to answer this question,
as there are so many of us asking it and spending time
wondering and musing.
The trouble is, only one person ever saw the biplanes.
He mentioned it in passing. Afterwards,
he refused to speak of it. Otherwise, he was silent.
If you happen to see a biplane, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?
one of my friends asked me.
Of course I would, I say. But I’m not sure of it.
I’m not sure I wouldn’t follow the plane alone to the land- ing field