Charming
     . . . not to invent the world that will be there in the future but
     to bring into being the mind that will be there in the future. 
                                                                       -Howard Nemerov  
 
It’s odd how we never think of the prince,
as if he weren’t thinking for (I don’t say
of) us.  It was brave to hack through all those
briars—poisoned, weren’t they?—pursuing a
rumor of some enchanted, antiquated
place, the fantasy of centenarian
brains.  Had nothing happened in the world?
And what of all those festooned skeletons
he saw crucified by the game he played?
No doubt some family retainer crammed
him with fine stories of high destiny;
and so, in red-blooded innocence, he went.
A truly complex journey, one supposes,
attended by perils, sustained by hopes
and faith.  Yet hopes can be pricked by thorns,
faiths wither in the torchless nights.  No joke
to face annihilation in your prime.
 
But on he came with a mind of the present,
to the place of the past, to make his home
in the future.
                      Who’d wonder if Gordian
perplexity had stayed his hand as he
brushed aside the webs and arrases, to wit:
“If my future is this past, this past is
my future; the present sits upon me
like those death-dealing knots of thorns.  And these?
their present is a century of dust;
a defunct future shines in these blank eyes:
that scullion still strains to wipe the grease;
flames are frozen in the sconces.”  Our prince
could have been lost among such unlooked-for
metaphysical briars.
                               But that
one kiss—lucky coincidence—might turn
into a magic sword, joining even as
it sliced, confirms only the nature of
the tale, or the sheer sanity of action.
                       
Perhaps we cut our symbols to supposed
need, like suits of clothes whose fashion changes
with the contingent breeze.  And maybe
this story’s not about a kiss at all.
 
 


 
The Children Inside the Mountain
 
 
We marched behind him like the fine brigade
of infantry we were, proudly measuring
our tiny steps to the music that yanked
us out of time and town and mothers’ arms,
matchless to the sentient ear, sovereign
over our bodies.  We barely noticed when
we passed ponds on which, two months before,
we had cracked the whip with reckless glee;
we never saw the place where Black Creek joins
with River Weser, the rocks where mothers
washed while we slid and splashed.  The schoolhouse
we saw—perhaps because we were free of it. 
With sidelong glances all we knew we molted. 
As a frail lady might silence some great
oaf with a millimeter’s movement of
her brow, so unabashed we forgot our lives
because of the awful, splendid, sensuous
nudity of a skewering flute. 
                                           The rats
full as big as our abandoned puppies
were, after all, our brothers, prey to the
same charm of melody, omnivorous
like us, like us in nameless ranks, docile. 
We recall them, how they nosed in our beds,
yellow eyes bright in the night, the yellow teeth
we saw tearing at us in our nightmares. 
Gentle Mother, Dearest Father, do something! 
Please, help us out of love or fear; look at
these bites on our legs, we cannot sleep for
terror! 
           They loved and feared yet greedily
counted out their white silver.  They were the
children: every human is a child. 
 
Then the mountain opened up on hinges,
like the portes of Bruges’ castle when troops
of mounted knights are being received to
chivalrous festival. Who could have known
our communal grave would be this alp which
had, avuncular, presided over
all our bourgeois days? 
                                   Expectant of
syrups, of rock-candy, of chocolate;
avid for tarts and lemonade; promises
succulent in our mouths; all the forbidden
sweet things, down to father’s beer and mother’s bed— 
with these our hearts brimmed as we defiled
into this place more fit for newts than us. 
 
Now, on the inside, we all are old,
older than even our parents, who have
become children indeed.  Not that every
promise was not kept, not that we didn’t
feast and gorge and quaff away our years
to reach this unvenerable estate. 
As the rats might have fed on the catfish
in River Weser until even their
unappeasable hunger was drowned,
so we ate, their forgotten siblings: 
ancient, but without experience;
withdrawn, but merely from our days;
escaped, but only to this prison of
fading taste; grown into bloated
bodies, forgetful elders whose childhoods
alone were infested with reality.