03-31-2022, 03:38 AM
Approaching Prayer
A moment tries to come in
Through the windows, when one must go
Beyond what there is in the room,
But it must come straight down.
Lord, it is time,
And I must get up and start
To circle through my father’s empty house
Looking for things to put on
Or to strip myself of
So that I can fall to my knees
And produce a word I can’t say
Until all my reason is slain.
Here is the gray sweater
My father wore in the cold,
The snapped threads growing all over it
Like his gray body hair.
The spurs of his gamecocks glimmer
Also, in my light, dry hand.
And here is the head of a boar
I once helped to kill with two arrows:
Two things of my father’s
Wild, Bible-reading life
And my own best and stillest moment
In a hog’s head waiting for glory.
All these I set up in the attic,
The boar’s head, gaffs, and the sweater
On a chair, and gaze in the dark
Up into the boar’s painted gullet.
Nothing. Perhaps I should feel more foolish,
Even, than this.
I put on the ravelled nerves
And gray hairs of my tall father
In the dry grave growing like fleece
Strap his bird spurs to my heels
And kneel down under the skylight.
I put on the hollow hog’s head
Gazing straight up
With star points in the glass eyes
That would blind anything that looked in
And cause it to utter words.
The night sky fills with a light
Of hunting: with leaves
And sweat and the panting of dogs
Where one tries hard to draw breath,
A single breath, and hold it.
I draw the breath of life
For the dead hog:
I catch it from the still air,
Hold it in the boar’s rigid mouth,
And see
A young aging man with a bow
And a green arrow pulled to his cheek
Standing deep in a mountain creek bed,
Stiller than trees or stones,
Waiting and staring
Beasts, angels
I am nearly that motionless now
There is a frantic leaping at my sides
Of dogs coming out of the water
The moon and the stars do not move
I bare my teeth, and my mouth
Opens, a foot long, popping with tushes
A word goes through my closed lips
I gore a dog, he falls, falls back
Still snapping, turns away and dies
While swimming. I feel each hair on my back
Stand up through the eye of a needle
Where the hair was
On my head stands up
As if it were there
The man is still; he is stiller: still
Yes.
Something comes out of him
Like a shaft of sunlight or starlight.
I go forward toward him
(Beasts, angels)
With light standing through me,
Covered with dogs, but the water
Tilts to the sound of the bowstring
The planets attune all their orbits
The sound from his fingers,
Like a plucked word, quickly pierces
Me again, the trees try to dance
Clumsily out of the wood
I have said something else
And underneath, underwater,
In the creek bed are dancing
The sleepy pebbles
The universe is creaking like boards
Thumping with heartbeats
And bonebeats
And every image of death
In my head turns red with blood.
The man of blood does not move
My father is pale on my body
The dogs of blood
Hang to my ears,
The shadowy bones of the limbs
The sun lays on the water
Mass darkly together
Moonlight, moonlight
The sun mounts my hackles
And I fall; I roll
In the water;
My tongue spills blood
Bound for the ocean;
It moves away, and I see
The trees strain and part, see him
Look upward
Inside the hair helmet
I look upward out of the total
Stillness of killing with arrows.
I have seen the hog see me kill him
And I was as still as I hoped.
I am that still now, and now.
My father’s sweater
Swarms over me in the dark.
I see nothing, but for a second
Something goes through me
Like an accident, a negligent glance,
Like the explosion of a star
Six billion light years off
Whose light gives out
Just as it goes straight through me.
The boar’s blood is sailing through rivers
Bearing the living image
Of my most murderous stillness.
It picks up speed
And my heart pounds.
The chicken-blood rust at my heels
Freshens, as though near a death wound
Or flight. I nearly lift
From the floor, from my father’s grave
Crawling over my chest,
And then get up
In the way I usually do.
I take off the head of the hog
And the gaffs and the panting sweater
And go down the dusty stairs
And never come back.
I don’t know quite what has happened
Or that anything has,
Hoping only that
The irrelevancies one thinks of
When trying to pray
Are the prayer,
And that I have got by my own
Means to the hovering place
Where I can say with any
Other than the desert fathers —
Those who saw angels come,
Their body glow shining on bushes
And sheep’s wool and animal eyes,
To answer what questions men asked
In Heaven’s tongue,
Using images of earth
Almightily:
PROPHECIES, FIRE IN THE SINFUL TOWERS,
WASTE AND FRUITION IN THE LAND,
CORN, LOCUSTS AND ASHES,
THE LION’s SKULL PULSING WITH HONEY,
THE BLOOD OF THE FIRST-BORN,
A GIRL MADE PREGNANT WITH A GLANCE
LIKE AN EXPLODING STAR
AND A CHILD BORN OF UTTER LIGHT —
Where I can say only, and truly,
That my stillness was violent enough,
That my brain had blood enough,
That my right hand was steady enough,
That the warmth of my father’s wool grave
Imparted love enough
And the keen heels of feathery slaughter
Provided lift enough,
That reason was dead enough
For something important to be:
That, if not heard,
It may have been somehow said.
James Dickey
A moment tries to come in
Through the windows, when one must go
Beyond what there is in the room,
But it must come straight down.
Lord, it is time,
And I must get up and start
To circle through my father’s empty house
Looking for things to put on
Or to strip myself of
So that I can fall to my knees
And produce a word I can’t say
Until all my reason is slain.
Here is the gray sweater
My father wore in the cold,
The snapped threads growing all over it
Like his gray body hair.
The spurs of his gamecocks glimmer
Also, in my light, dry hand.
And here is the head of a boar
I once helped to kill with two arrows:
Two things of my father’s
Wild, Bible-reading life
And my own best and stillest moment
In a hog’s head waiting for glory.
All these I set up in the attic,
The boar’s head, gaffs, and the sweater
On a chair, and gaze in the dark
Up into the boar’s painted gullet.
Nothing. Perhaps I should feel more foolish,
Even, than this.
I put on the ravelled nerves
And gray hairs of my tall father
In the dry grave growing like fleece
Strap his bird spurs to my heels
And kneel down under the skylight.
I put on the hollow hog’s head
Gazing straight up
With star points in the glass eyes
That would blind anything that looked in
And cause it to utter words.
The night sky fills with a light
Of hunting: with leaves
And sweat and the panting of dogs
Where one tries hard to draw breath,
A single breath, and hold it.
I draw the breath of life
For the dead hog:
I catch it from the still air,
Hold it in the boar’s rigid mouth,
And see
A young aging man with a bow
And a green arrow pulled to his cheek
Standing deep in a mountain creek bed,
Stiller than trees or stones,
Waiting and staring
Beasts, angels
I am nearly that motionless now
There is a frantic leaping at my sides
Of dogs coming out of the water
The moon and the stars do not move
I bare my teeth, and my mouth
Opens, a foot long, popping with tushes
A word goes through my closed lips
I gore a dog, he falls, falls back
Still snapping, turns away and dies
While swimming. I feel each hair on my back
Stand up through the eye of a needle
Where the hair was
On my head stands up
As if it were there
The man is still; he is stiller: still
Yes.
Something comes out of him
Like a shaft of sunlight or starlight.
I go forward toward him
(Beasts, angels)
With light standing through me,
Covered with dogs, but the water
Tilts to the sound of the bowstring
The planets attune all their orbits
The sound from his fingers,
Like a plucked word, quickly pierces
Me again, the trees try to dance
Clumsily out of the wood
I have said something else
And underneath, underwater,
In the creek bed are dancing
The sleepy pebbles
The universe is creaking like boards
Thumping with heartbeats
And bonebeats
And every image of death
In my head turns red with blood.
The man of blood does not move
My father is pale on my body
The dogs of blood
Hang to my ears,
The shadowy bones of the limbs
The sun lays on the water
Mass darkly together
Moonlight, moonlight
The sun mounts my hackles
And I fall; I roll
In the water;
My tongue spills blood
Bound for the ocean;
It moves away, and I see
The trees strain and part, see him
Look upward
Inside the hair helmet
I look upward out of the total
Stillness of killing with arrows.
I have seen the hog see me kill him
And I was as still as I hoped.
I am that still now, and now.
My father’s sweater
Swarms over me in the dark.
I see nothing, but for a second
Something goes through me
Like an accident, a negligent glance,
Like the explosion of a star
Six billion light years off
Whose light gives out
Just as it goes straight through me.
The boar’s blood is sailing through rivers
Bearing the living image
Of my most murderous stillness.
It picks up speed
And my heart pounds.
The chicken-blood rust at my heels
Freshens, as though near a death wound
Or flight. I nearly lift
From the floor, from my father’s grave
Crawling over my chest,
And then get up
In the way I usually do.
I take off the head of the hog
And the gaffs and the panting sweater
And go down the dusty stairs
And never come back.
I don’t know quite what has happened
Or that anything has,
Hoping only that
The irrelevancies one thinks of
When trying to pray
Are the prayer,
And that I have got by my own
Means to the hovering place
Where I can say with any
Other than the desert fathers —
Those who saw angels come,
Their body glow shining on bushes
And sheep’s wool and animal eyes,
To answer what questions men asked
In Heaven’s tongue,
Using images of earth
Almightily:
PROPHECIES, FIRE IN THE SINFUL TOWERS,
WASTE AND FRUITION IN THE LAND,
CORN, LOCUSTS AND ASHES,
THE LION’s SKULL PULSING WITH HONEY,
THE BLOOD OF THE FIRST-BORN,
A GIRL MADE PREGNANT WITH A GLANCE
LIKE AN EXPLODING STAR
AND A CHILD BORN OF UTTER LIGHT —
Where I can say only, and truly,
That my stillness was violent enough,
That my brain had blood enough,
That my right hand was steady enough,
That the warmth of my father’s wool grave
Imparted love enough
And the keen heels of feathery slaughter
Provided lift enough,
That reason was dead enough
For something important to be:
That, if not heard,
It may have been somehow said.
James Dickey