Three Secrets

I. JOSEPH

Now Joseph, being a man of principle, and not wishing to make

a spectacle of Mary, decided to dismiss her secretly.

Matthew 1:19

That's way too strict a version of the truth.

The principle was-I'd never seen her like,

Not in fifty years (and I'd seen a few).

My first wife had died the previous winter;

And once we had her cold underground,

My boys gave skittish signs of dread-

The aged parent, unobligingly hale,

To stuff and josh through centuries more.

Without my knowledge, they set up a hunt-

Some well-fixed widow or crosseyed girl

Who might not gag at stringy hams,

The treacherous tool that let me down

More times than not those last years.

They came back dry and said as much-

"Take it from here; our hands are full."

"-Of the trade I taught you," I thought but didn't say

And turned back to minding my own cot and pots.

Still they'd set me off, and the itch gnawed steady.

So I made my own hunt-dignified, cunning,

Best foot forward-with no better luck;

Then resigned myself to space and peace

(A big, not entirely unwelcome surprise).

Toward spring, however, an old local girl

Moved back up here. She'd married well-

A Temple priest-and lived in the City

Till he keeled over one day, slaughtering doves.

I'd played games with her before she got grand

And wondered now what play was left.

None at all, not a skip-she let me know

On my first visit (and l'd washed my beard).

The daughter though-the blinding girl.

I hardly watched her serving our tea;

My eyes would skid off her face like ice

Or live wood-coals. She looked that rare.

Whatever her mother had had, long since

(Good eyes, straight teeth), whatever the priest-

All boiled in her and changed to skin

Rich as goat's cream, eyes

Deep enough to hold the world.

She never spoke. But as I left

Anne seized my arm and said "Protect her."

I thought she'd gone off her rocker in town;

Baffled, I bowed and scuttled out.

Protect her from what up here?-the odd snake.

But I dreamed about her the next three nights

And then went back to ask Anne's meaning.

She meant what happened, a marriage deal.

And though I faced a hail of jokes,

I kept my bargain and married the girl-

Even with a belly slung on her by then,

A wen gorging hour by hour on blood.

Why? Not principle. Not manly kindness

And-God knew then-not second sight

(The way I saw it, some City boy'd ruined her).

I was glad enough to take people's pity,

Nod my thanks when they said "bighearted."

My heart's big as yours, a small man's fist.

The principle was her-all skin and eyes,

Lank horsehair bound at her strong-stalked neck,

The covered promise of undreamed more.

My secret till now (and it scalds to tell)

Is the one fact no one's guessed at yet-

I saw her just once, the whole bare her.

Wracked in dry straw, sweating great clots

Of absolute dread, her bloody thighs

Swung boneless out and blue with agony

To make clear room for that huge head-

Her first live boy, a ten-pound wedge.

The ox-team bent down nearer than I.

Years after, back home (the nine years left me),

I never begged more. A younger man

Might have barged through risk to claim that glory-

Even one short night, succeeded by her death.

Not I. I slept at a good arm's length.

Though in reach of her breath-the musk of milk-

Till I died, still stunned.

2. MARY

The angel said to her 'The Holy Spirit will come over you, and

the Highest Power will darken you."

Luke 1:35

It did, no question.

My hands worked to save me;

The dark was so deep

They couldn't find my body.

My skirt had melted away

In the glare (I felt that much),

And the wind scorched my legs-

The scars are still there,

Though no one's seen them since Bethlehem.

Mother begged to see, any shred

Of proof for the cock-and-bull story

I had to tell-a girl

Flung down by the Last Resort,

His hot seed blown

Into her green womb: a country

Girl, never asked to write

So much as her name, now asked

To gouge it plain enough to read-

An ordinary name in the dome of creation.

I stood and wrote, apparently

Right-the word still echoes,

A million mouths, each instant

Each year. Who was I, fifteen,

To say flat No?

Twelve thousand days later-

Toothless, hunched, at his raw

Red feet-I knew my answer

And mouthed it toward him. I doubt

He heard; he was screaming by then.

So I've held it in, two thousand

Years, and see no cause to speak

It now.

3. JESUS

"There are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's

womb. There are eunuchs made eunuchs by men, and there are

eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 19:12

I said as much to test their edge

And waited for the question Which are you?

-Sweaty silence. I'd lost them again

To the nearest sight: two amorous dogs

And a peg-legged girl. When would I learn?

I was not meant to be heard but seen,

The final emblem.

It was near the end;

I was all but hungry for the final round.

So I let it rest on the humming air

And turned toward blood, thick sheets of blood-

All I had.

The question waits though,

Three-pronged riddle any man must solve

For himself or choke-Who cut my roots?

The lines to power, and why, and so what?

My premise plainly was Power is flesh.

Man's power-woman's-maybe God's,

Flesh as it yokes with alien flesh

In single relays, bearing the charge

Till flesh burns out and is someway replaced.

Me? I came here fully equipped,

All requisite organs, members, glands;

All ticking dimly at the human rate-

A fresh bud here, a wilting there,

Crisp hair and eighteen separate scents:

All triggered also by natural time.

At fourteen no boy anywhere near me

(Where we swam in the quarry) showed more than I-

A convex exhibit of Ready Boy,

The height of the climb, my splendid noon.

All wasted, unspent? All slashed and hurled

In the rank dog's-bowl?

Never, no.

The loyal women who watched me nailed,

Hung high to drip, know I died intact-

A youngish man still fit to stamp

His face on countless scores of souls

As yet blank, dumb, in the waiting line.

Even soldiers flung up cheers

At my pelvic gear.

So yes, I chose;

It was not specified in my commission.

I made myself this dead-end road

I walked to the end, this low Skull Hill.

I vowed it at twelve when my fork took life,

And twenty-one years I kept the vow

With no more ease than a healthy stallion

Tethered in a field of fragrant mares.

More nights and dawns than any friend knew,

I gnawed the heel of my hard right hand

To purple pulp to balk my yen

To know the common sweetness of skin.

Why? I knew I'd need clear gaze,

No flickering others at the rim of sight,

No colored glass between me and day.

I was the prism, sole translator

Of this whole world that poured through me

Toward God's own mind-the stroke of dark,

Light, jackal-crunch of teeth in bone,

Human eyes so swamped by pain

I'd have howled and run except for the choice.

Every conscious moment, I stopped my arm

On the near edge of touch. Healing, scourging,

Anointing, yes; never the melding

That brings frank joy, knowledge and joy-

Likewise shackles, blinders, gags.

That was the cost. I was always free.

I could speak any syllable that creased my mind

(No family glares)-sleep in the dirt

Where I happened to tire-raise a cold corpse

Without its permission and then walk out.

Few ever saw me twice, except the twelve pupils.

They were close-by daily, huddled close at night;

But they were who I touched least of all-

Once when I tapped them to follow me;

Second, that last time as they sat bolting

Down broiled perch to numb their betrayal

And I stepped through the shut door-live!

They had to touch me to prove their fear.

He meant all he said. This country eunuch

With a two-edged tongue, a babymaker

In mint condition (never unwrapped),

This silvery bore died in the pain

That splits black granite in the hearts of hills

And stands here now, skin pierced but closing-

Reach here in the side, know a new brand of flesh.

I managed, just, to bear their touch-

One by one, eleven in line;

And then the three women, diehard loyals

From the earliest days. I thought I'd shrink,

That the flesh itself would flee their hands

As it always had. But no, it held

In place for all three (Magdalen last).

And as they rushed out to scrounge me a bowl,

Salvage some scraps-I must be starved-

I suddenly saw a changed new world,

Sight strange to me as my face to this room,

What my vow had forbade my knowing till now.

Each particle linked, perpetual chain:

Yoking, binding, bonding in glee

These fourteen before me, old companions,

Now newly born, more welcome than rain-

Bumping and jostling to dry my hair,

Guiding my elbow on to the bench

They'd cleared to bear me, crouching round,

Hand joined to hand at the white core of space

Where they'd been from the start,

The lovely tread of lean and hold

-Which I knew in an instant I now must flee.

I wept hot tears to learn so late.