Is this really the failure
of silence,
or eternity, where these two
suffer entrance
into the picture
plane,
a man and a woman
so hollowed
by grief they cover
their eyes
in order not to see
the inexhaustible grammar
before them--labor, judgement,
saints and peddlers--
the daylight hopelessly even
upon them
and our eyes. But this too
is a garden
I'd say, with its architecture
of grief,
its dark and light
in the folds
of clothing, and oranges,
for sale
among the shadows
of oranges. All round
them,
on the way down
toward us,
woods thicken. And perhaps
it is a flaw
on the wall of this church, or age,
or merely the restlessness
of the brilliant
young painter
the large blue bird
seen flying too low
just where the trees
clot. I
want to say to them
who have crossed
into this terrifying
usefulness--symbols,
balancing shapes in
a composition,
mother and father,
hired hands--
I wont to say to them,
Take your faces
out of your hands
look at that bird.
the gift of
the paint--
I've seen it often
here
in my life,
sharp-Shinned Hawk,
tearing into the woods
for which it's
too bit, abandoning
the open
prairie in which
it is free and easily
eloquent. Watch
where it will not
veer but follows
the stain
of woods,
a long blue arc
breaking itself
through the wet
black ribs
of those trees,
seeking a narrower
place. Always
I find the feathers
afterward. . . .
Perhaps you know
why it turns in
this way
and will not stop?
In the foreground
almost life-size
the saints hawk their wares,
and the women
and merchants. They too
are travelling
a space too small
to fit in,
calling out names
or prices
or proof of faith.
Whatever they are,
it beats
up through the woods
of their bodies,
almost a light, up
through their fingertips,
their eyes.
There isn't a price
(that floats up
through their miraculous
bodies
and lingers above them
in the gold air)
that won't live forever.
Jorie Graham
