sarah masen
sad news
by shirley on Sat Sep 25 11:10:57 +0000 2004 in Agrapha
michael donaghy died last week. i love his poems.
The Tuning
If anyone asks you how I died, say this:
The angel of death came in the form of a moth
And landed on the lute I was repairing.
I closed up shop
And left the village on the quietest night of summer,
The summer of my thirtieth year,
And went with her up through the thorn forest.
Tell them I heard yarrow stalks snapping beneath my feet
And heard a dog bark far off, far off.
That’s all I saw or heard,
Apart from the angel at ankle level leading me,
Until we got above the treeline and I turned
To look for the last time on the lights of home.
That’s when she started singing.
It’s written that the voice of the god of Israel
Was the voice of many waters.
But this was the sound of trees growing,
The noise of a pond thrown into a stone.
When I turned from the lights below to watch her sing,
I found the angel changed from moth to woman,
Singing inhuman intervals through her human throat,
The notes at impossible angles justified.
If you understand, friend, explain to them
So they pray for me. How could I go back?
How could I bear to hear the heart’s old triads—
Clatter of hooves, the closed gate clanging,
A match scratched toward a pipe—
How could I bear to hear my children cry?
I found a rock that had the kind of heft
We weigh the world against
And brought it down fast against my forehead
Again, again, until blood drenched my chest
And I was safe and real forever.
Michael Donaghy
(1954-2004)
Context
This post was the only one in its thread.
