In Those Four Corners

Simon Perchik

---

               *
In those four corners formed
by the wailing and the dead
--we are turned to each other

to the grief in a stone
unable to tell one hand from another
--I stroke your name to reshape

the gray light boxing in
--all four seasons calling out forever
for decay :your name now face to face

with the weeds that know only Fall
only those nights that still mourn
at right angles to the world

and all that's left from the sun
is this headstone, everywhere
and the long way home.


               *
My tongue hard, trampled red
from sleeplessness
--what more can I say?

The sky I rub over your eyes
and over your hand the rain all night
as footprints somehow are smoothed
--not a sign anything was said
and the air brushed clear again.

Whatever I say is covered with flowers
with this sky fed constantly
so it will never leave
--not just breakfast, or noon
or Spring but endless, eats and eats
from these plates you dead
hold out :each gravestone

on edge or when some birthday card
or a ticket home or my arm
around your breath returning
from sunlight and candles.

What do I say to you
when the sky hardly remembers
its darkness higher and higher
that the sun come home

and when you squint
helping me look for the exact spot
where impatient clouds still leap
from the sun and even the Earth
coming back to its still warm arms.


               *
Some fishtank motor :rain
pumping this rainbow and around the world
seas overflow --my heart

the same spiral each sky
learns to climb --all morning
sways, plunges, taking root

--only one flower will open
--years from now, alone, reading outloud
--each Sunday more funny-pages

and under the warming colors
only one looks up --rain is there
and the brightest red in the sky.


               *
Even this tree :a stranglehold
once used for calling you and now
means the night --this low branch
still ruffling feathers
can't recover its faint cry
its warm breeze that shelters you

now that every stone is sealed
is pressed to my lips
as if some trumpet or fountain
or filled with ecstasy
ready this time --even the sun

broken in two and now
your light darkens half the sky
glows over my arms and the moon
that can't look away :this digging

has to stop! the tree can't hold on
--not all its shadow will survive
--these leaves will shatter, the sun
in bits onto the ground and the neighbors
say they can't sleep
are tired hearing about when I find you
and it's already almost morning.


               *
Even on the bottom sand
no one's there to stop my fall
--the sun must know why
its needed rest will be its last

already pulling back
shaking its head no, sideways
then no, all the while downward

--must hear my heart
whose constant sparks :each wave
leads the other back, by night
two more tides
falling through the world

--must know why its light stays warm
leaning against a great wall: the sea
almost ashore, a boat suddenly
tied to the dock, the man
tracing on a name, the woman
and sandbars no one's noticed before.


               *
This heat still underfoot
reminds you how the sun
would come to your grave's edge

with flowers, with a sky
whose season now is lost
and the listening

that goes on forever.
You can tell from the silence
I'm standing close, my footmarks

stopped --for a while we are both dead.
Who but you would think about daylight
how colors tire so easily here

biding their time, listening
to one foot beside the other
never letting go and the warmth.


               *
Don't act surprised.
After the funeral I entered your house
from the roof, even the sink
was turned on its side, the faucets
still leak --who, let alone you

is buried on a wall
--your wedding photograph framed
old, homesick and you
wait facing the door
the constant opening and closing.

Believe it! Your coffin
has more glass than wood.
What did I think you would see?
How close the rooms are?

That they still huddle? The cold too
has taken shelter, longing
to stand upright, to leave with you
young again, and on your strong shoulders
hammers and boards and the tuxedo
just perfect! any minute now
returns with your bride
with the feast and on its knees
spilling over the dead.

Believe everything. This face cloth
as if the clear glass means something new
and your cheeks bathed by water
that never stops asking --this rag
and from my hands enough light
to warm the black-red flower
hardened on your lapel.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. Readers interested in learning more about him are invited to read Magic, Illusion and Other Realities at www.geocities.com/simonthepoet which site lists a complete bibliography.