Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PASSAGES, by THOMAS MCGRATH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PASSAGES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: They come in in tiny boats
Last Line: We must not look back
Subject(s): Fathers & Sons; Stones; Granite; Rocks


They come in in tiny boats . . .
come out of nowhere.
And the boats are of heavy stone:
basalt . . .
slate . . .
dark
And clumsy -- like old watering troughs furry with moss
(And the horses that drank of that water are long long dead).

Down there --
Where the boats come in down the long roads through the limestone --
I searched for you everywhere, wading through the heavy light,
Scaly, where it seeps down through the slate . . .
loaded with darkness
Like the leaffall from stone trees in a heavy autumn of stone.

The leaves of those slate trees falling in that tired and heavy light
Are clouding my eyes now . . .
as I remember.
Down there
Where the soul boats drift: down: slow: in the dark
Mineralized water of the underworld rivers I called your name . . .

Topaz, jasper, sardonyx, carnelian, turquoise, aquamarine --
The hours of stone.
Granite, limestone, sandstone, marble --
The seasons.
Through that fatal weather, oh Friend and Stranger --
You: reading the crystal of this page! -- it was you I sought!

* * *

Down there
I searched for others: to set them free: in the backwoods of granite,
In the underground of obsidian, among the anomalous layers
And blind intrusions (basalt dikes cutting conformable strata
Where the class struggle faltered) there I sought the Hero . . .
Travertine of hidden springs . . .
terminal granite
and the black
Of the primal preterite: I passed through them like secret water --
Like a mineral wind through those stony heavens whose rain falls
As beads of turquoise, and thunder is a distant sigh of rock . . .

Nothing.
This rumor of class war from the upper world of the streets
Where my comrades fought in the winter of money -- that only.
The Hero:
You: Reader: whose fate was to free the Bound Woman for the vernal
Rising and revolution on the promised springtime earth --
nowhere.

. . . Slum, souk, casbah, ghetto, the transform faults
Of industrial parks -- I worked these stony limits.
On the killing wall,
Scored by the firing squads, I chalked our rebel terms.
I drank the mephitic waters and made my bed in the dark.

* * *

It was then -- in my need and blind search, in the nightrock, faltering,
As I slowly changed into stone my legs my tongue stony
Despair hardening my heavy heart -- I came, then,
Into the dead center of that kingdom of death.

Down there,
It was then -- in the blue light fixed in the stone chair frozen,
The chains of a diamond apathy threading the maze of my veins,
Lagered in the mineral corrals of ensorcelling sleep, my eyes
Locked to the bland face of the Queen of the Dead --
it was then

Then that you came, little Comrade, down the long highways of limestone!
Guiding your ship of light where the dark boats of the dead
Drop down like stone leaves: you came! Through the surf and storm
Of convulsing rock you home to my need: little Son, my Sun!

* * *

Basalt, granite, gabbro, metaphoric marble, contemporary ore --
Era and epoch up to the stony present, the rigid Past
Flows and reshuffles, torn by insurgent winds,
Shocked and reshaped as History changes its sullen face.

And the future groans and turns in its sleep and the past shifts as the New
Is born:
Star of blood, with your flag of the underground moon --
That sickle of liberating light -- you strike my chains and lead
Me from that throne of death and up the untravelled stairs

Toward the shine of the sun and other stars!
Though one leg be stone
Forever I lag and limp behind you as long as blood
Shall beat in my veins and love shall move as it moves me now,
Chipping the flint of this page to blaze our passage home
Toward the world in the tide of Easter . . .
rising
Into our life as I hear the cries that are resurrecting
There . . .
So, we return. We are free in the rhymeless season.
You have struck my foot free from the stone.
Take my hand.
We must not look back.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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