Charles Wright–”Heaven’s Eel”

HEAVEN’S EEL

A slight wrinkle on the pond.

Small wind.

A small wind and the rumpled clouds’ reflection.

Ho hum . . . What’s needed is something under the pond’s skin,

Something we can’t see that controls all the things that we do see.

Something long and slithery,

something we can’t begin to comprehend,

A future we’re all engendered for, sharp teeth, Lord, such sharp teeth.

Heaven’s eel.

Heaven’s eel, long and slick,

Full moon gone, with nothing in its place.

A doe is nibbling away at the long stalks of the natural world

Across the creek.

It’s good to be here.

It’s good to be where the world’s quiescent, and reminiscent.

No wind blows from the far sky.

Beware of prosperity, friend, and seek affection.

The eel’s world is not your world,

but will be soon enough.

–Charles Wright

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SOURCES:

Text– New Yorker (10 October 2009)

Image–based on Ripples by polaroid667 (licensed Creative Commons 2.0)

Charles Wright: from “Homage to Paul Cézanne”

The dead are a cadmium blue.
We spread them with palette knives in broad blocks and planes.

We layer them stroke by stroke
In steps and ascending mass, in verticals raised from the earth.

We choose, and layer them in,
Blue, and a blue, and a breath,

Circle and smudge, cross-beak and buttonhook,
We layer them in. We squint hard and terrace them line by line.

And so we are come between, and cry out,
And stare up at the sky and its cloudy panes,

And finger the cypress twists.
The dead understand all this, and keep in touch,

Rustle of hand to hand in the lemon trees,
Flags, and the great sifts of anger

To powder and nothingness.
The dead are a cadmium blue, and they understand.

—Charles Wright

Photo credit: Fog-laser by Gregory Maxwell