TYPHON AND CENTAUR
for Justin
In the back room by the wood stove, the bark
of hickory and oak sizzled, popped--still ice-laced
in April in these blue veiny mountains--
my fingers collapsing as I began to tie
the swatches onto a line of organic string
use an old shirt or some worn out piece of clothes
he said, my friend, teacher,
something with you in it
I'd spent the previous night cutting them,
an inch or so square, the flannel shirt,
not mine but my father's
which I wore after he died
think of someone you know, devote each piece,
a prayer maybe, invest with good energy
each square, drawn by the corners into sacs,
bulged with pure Indian tobacco
I thought of all the people, alive and dead, in no order or rank,
transformed the swatches into emblems
for power to ward off demons that might beset me
in a wilderness
still howling
by the fire that evening, Cathy floating somewhere upstairs,
our baby not yet born, I fashioned the long string, my circle of protection--
mandala, though I didn't know it yet
to thwart enemies and evil
I who did not believe, just humoring a friend
though I needed whatever I could get, holy water or icon,
to, yes, drive off demons, or one demon, Pan
whom the ancients spotted behind a rock or wall
as they froze in cold sweats,
a god who seized and harrowed
without mercy
or warning, abruptly as hail
and I remembered my own death
not long before, immobilized on a sheetless, filthy mattress
in some student apartment with ruptured water pipes
lying inert as bilge seeped into the room
the mattress seemed to float atop it
like a grotesque version of the ship
that carried Wynken, Blyken and Nod to the stars
and then I died
like my father
an instantaneous, momentary rupture
ancient sword ripping apart the light
though soft as a sigh
curtain of ice
explosion of black roses
but rising to stumble out the door
revenant survivor who staggers
from the charred fuselage of himself
sinking like feathers into the lawn chair on the balcony
to watch fireflies at dusk, and nibble cold strawberries
touch the flesh of my lover, my wife
in almost holy dumbfoundment
extraordinary pleasures mine again, I, Lazarus
I, Lao Tzu returning to history
on a broken mule alert to each new breath
with serene reverence
thus one of the pouches I sanctified to myself,
old zombie flung out with that stained mattress,
and another to my self, newborn, astral
that April, by a fire, in uroboric shadows,
scintillant flakes of snow evaporating before they touched earth,
I chanted the names of the quick and the dead
and those dozens became all of us
as the trance lulled me
like feathers
as Pan grinned lecherously
from the flames,
reptile god, Typhon, assaulting the soul
Psyche, butterfly wings drooping
leaden
yet ripped like tissue
and on I chanted, the names, until they lost meaning,
eased into the syrup of pure incantation, mantra, rosary, litany
until I became no one
shadow of a memory
and a greater fire engulfed the room, consuming the other, the flames
of Pan, powder ash, the God of Horror swept away like dust
I thanked the spirits
the spirits who had arrived for this new purpose, new life
my father whose shirt I wore and had ripped to pieces
the spirits of the living arriving for this purpose
my daughter
eight hundred miles away
stolen, prey of black-suited jackals
and Medea with saw-toothed jaws
rising like ice from her crypt
spirits who had gathered in that back room,
the enormous energy of the spirits
who came to me, caressed me, breathed upon me, routed the Demon,
dazzled my broken
wondrous eyes
like old leaves protecting a sprig
bursting from the ground in spring
and I rubbed the swatches like holy beads,
breathed in measure, thanked the spirits,
I, non-believer, thanking the spirits, still inert to the core, grieving my lost child,
rising from the dead not like a phoenix but a man
clinging to the old beast
mane brushing
across my face
like the wind.