For Wittgenstein

Days are like grass the wind moves over:
first the wind & then the silence—
what cannot be said we must pass over
in silence, or play some music over
in our heads. Silently, a wind goes over
(we know from the motion of the grass).
Days are like grass  the wind goes over:
first the wind & then the silence.

--

Air and Angels

It is a langorous evening in Eden. 
        Light fades
from the quilted river and the first 
        persons' sense
of self fades like that ancient light.
        How well they know 
their minds are empty!  That's the price
        God exacts 
for walking with him in the evening.
        The air cools
and a fine dew appears on the leaves. 
        The closer 
He comes--strolling fluently among 
        the million trees
of the garden--the less they know: His
        is a voice that 
turns out in the end to be utterly 
        intolerable.
It is a langorous evening in Eden. Yes.
        The flickering
celestial swords come later, writing
        their refusals
in the air of the garden by main force.
        Those angels' job
was to carve heaven from the firmament:
        the first Rational 
Act in the world, slicing the innocent
        ecosystem pulsing 
through the garden where nothing ever
        happened into parts, 
called knowledge. That was the price 
        of being God's 
sad, wild, disobedient children. Sin 
        was strange 
and new, a first act of imagination.
        So there is a lyric 
silence everywhere, like God, or his first
        absence. Or that 
perfect fold of late sunlight coruscating
        the surface
of the Tigris. The tongue is a devil. 
        Name the animals, 
God said, and after that there was science
        everywhere, 
and faith's niggling curlicues. Now 
        I begin 
to understand my father, an engineer
        who designed
golden screws tightened inside the lathed 
        ceramic nosecones 
latched atop ballistic missels in the 1950s. 
        Everything 
looked the same to him, and he believed 
        in a God who 
wanted him, each Saturday of my early
        adolescence, to humble 
himself by volunteering to janitor Grace 
        Brethren Church.
At evening he'd come get me from the pool
        of our apartment block,
where I'd have slid my hand inside
        a girlfriend's suit,
our slippage broken by the troubled surface
        and mottled light
of the blue chlorinated water (stirred
        by healing angels?)
where we treaded water. Adam and Eve 
        would have been so happy
until that moment of anguish in which they 
        learned to work.
We worked like hell in God's house, 
        polishing linoleum
in the Sanctuary (which looked for all
        the world
like an expanded version of our split-
        level living room).
The old Romans were astonished--having
        pushed their way,
swords flashing, past the priests, 
        to find the Holy 
of Holies dead empty. Grace depends, then,
        on sin's richness.
I'd take along my radio--Ali had stopped
        Liston--and listen
through cement static to rock stations 
        applying solvents
to the fixtures in the house of God.
        Certain Christians 
show devotion by dancing with rattlesnakes
        deep in the pines,
their piety proving itself by risking 
        a wild metaphor 
rooted deep in Eden. We did not believe
        in anything
as wild as metaphor--the only language
        we trusted
was the inerrant KJV translation printed
        on onionskin that 
rustled each Sunday like summer leaves
        in a light wind.
Mostly engineers and programmers with brittle
        spirits in need
of beautiful sentences, our church accepted 
        only the glossolalia
of ionized particles whining through space,
        insisting this
was God's voice whispering in the garden.
        Interested, 
I watched the trees of high summer waver
        through the sanctuary's
frosted windows. Presented the choice
        between science 
and faith, I chose faith in physical science.
        Saturday before,
I'd discoverd objective evidence of the
        World's Body--cleaning 
the toilet in the Ladies Room I found 
        a blond pubic hair, 
making me forever an Empiricist. Grace
        finds multiple
expression here in the world--my father's 
        fervent baritone--
now I can say it--rising above the mumble 
        of the congregation,
and/or the inadequate sign language my hands
        might make shaped 
by breasts, my fingers curled into an alphabet 
        that names something 
sacred, or make themselves otherwise useful
        in this world.

(from Static, published by Owl Creek Press (1996)  c. Joseph Duemer 1996)

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