Hôtel de dieu

Coming tonight by more ways than I know,

but darker far and fewer than I dare

the ones I fear, the wastes of air and fire,

winter, the night, the snows of Christendom,

Iam entrusted this address by beggars

sifting the ruins, worn by winds and tears

down to their dust of lime and rag of tissue,

asking only that light drop to their palms

fragrant and hot, stupendous, dazzling clean.

I need only a berth, some little warmth,

gables against the pouring of the night

under which I can take my bones to me,

shards of my breath, my fragmentary eyes,

and cling the arc of midnight to myself

welcoming back the boy turned by the voyage

the seven-sea-weathered heartsalt of a sailor

gambled his bones against the sun and lost,

came from the game of Passage picked of breath,

stripped to the stench of drowning in his beard

and two sea-agate eyes like foundered stars

under the grief of ocean disappeared.

Winter, the nights, the frosts of Christendom:

we come by barbarous climes and territories,

not the least treacherous the darkling meadows

gravely attended by those double angels

seen at the ball's end in the great night mirrors

each with the face and posture of one's self

contorted by the old wars with delusion

to which too long our vanity commits them

under a name and madness much one's own;

each with my smoke of breath and ash of dying

staining his nostrils, cluttering his beard,

forgotten what the purpose was, the struggle,

enough to have the genius of their ardor

coming down with them pure and unrelenting,

passion surviving, never asked its object,

always a dream of yellow at their throats

seeping out as the morning of the world,

their hands affixed the image of a seal

minted of light that, lately filched or begged,

dazzled a last salvation from their necks.

There was a night coast lit by strolling players

white in what filmy garments they could salvage,

candles for hope and litanies for dramas

charged with belief, enacted too like life

not to be works of high imagination

singular in their irony and anguish,

marked by a gift for twists and cuts of fate

dizzying in the ways of sheer instruction

(coming tonight by more ways than I know,

but darker far and fiercer than I dare

the few I fear, too sheer of air and fire);

dramas whose heroes never shall come home,

however dark and arduous the voyage,

simply because no sea shall lap such harbor

nor any map eke out Impossible

clean from a sextant this side of disaster,

madness of salt not entered in the log

nor shipwreck, gulfs, the griefs of Christendom.

'Whatever sailed their heads, whatever forces

raged on the dark above them, locked, embattled,

nothing deterred them from their hope and pageant

slowly enacted naked on the beaches

under the dooms and weathers summoned on them,

even the bitter angels with my faces

pitting their darks to sink those litanies

and douse the frosty breathing of those candles.

Might I have gone with them, performed the dramas

torn from the breath and life rather than written,

lived on a coast and walked its crucial beaches

learning myself, my voices, all that troupe,

the voyage back, vocation, staying power,

singing my lines, committed to the others,

dim in a night of time and coastal passage

weaving a human complex merely breathing,

being there, having come and laid before them

the seven-sea-foundered shipwreck of a sailor

should they have use of flotsam for their theatre.

Beleaguered, drenched, forsaken, they were gifted,

each in himself and deepest for the other,

five of them, cold and driven, on some coast

taking the parts of fury, angel, evil,

singing the lines of each and of the other

into the wind and ocean, low to tapers,

going back centuries for myths and fables

lyric with holding, peopled by resisters,

swept with a verse and action deeply threatened,

mortal of ends and mortal of beginnings,

pageants against the falling of the night.

Coming tonight against their sweet advice,

opposite to their love, their blandishments,

contrary to the verse, the laws of drama,

darker by far and deepest in my care

the wastes I know, the ways of air and fire,

there have been burning cities on the crossing,

women at last surrendering their sailors,

dried to the faithless heartsalt of bleak wenches

too old to wait and hope or man the beaches;

children already crowding at the walls

eager to range the stations of the godless,

fallen on nothing, blackened to their spittle;

canvas, the reefs, the brine of Christendom,

and, farthest, those bleache1 sailors shriveled beggars

combing the bottom's squalor where the sea-lost

list a dry berth, a port, a crust of light,

deepest among their fathomed lusts and hungers.

Soaked in their drama, icy with their verse,

Iam too well entrusted this address,

conspiracies of angels, players, sailors

(even myself contributing), uncovered,

anguish the last of all my vagrant faces,

irony now the singing to the end

whatever tortured verse remains to sing:

this was the first estate decreed condemned,

discovered neither manor nor hotel,

razed by the worms whose plot was infestation

fierce in the night despite the staying power

kindled against them luminous and secret:

too many maimed and splintered at the windows

peering for messengers with restorations

smuggled by letter, cures sewn in their garments;

too many wakeful dreamers in the wings

unable to sleep awaiting word of morning

bound to be sent, they dreamt, from night's far reaches,

watchful for signs like birds resuming flight,

shifts of the planets, jasmine on the air,

rumors of fox and grape, a full tide running;

all of them scorched, reeking of condemnations

down to the fragile beauty of their madness.

The beggars have begun again their rounds,

Grief for the living, Fury for the dead,

knowing the donors poorer than themselves,

each of us stripped of gifts to be delivered

unto their snowy palms and ghostly keeping.

I shall go out with them and ask for light,

not to be granted it, but to be asking,

Breath for a manhood, Passion for a life,

loophole, escape, a chink, begging the night

minute relentings, singular salvations.

And walk the frightful wastes fated and dumb,

like them not really knowing where to ask,

seeking out to the end sorrow's blind sources,

everywhere demons wheeling overhead,

or something for the night at the Despair.