Clay Matthews
Song Sung Sang Again
I have turned the volume up completely
on the empty AM frequencies and believed.
The nothing becomes irretrievable, until beneath
the nothing I come to accept the steady hum
of the small voice inside, which scratches and chirps
in a language that died long ago. There was a bird
and then the bird was gone. There was the sun,
and we knew it as the sun, what we learned
to be life, and then there was the sun no more,
but darkness which was not altogether a new thing
and gave rise to a blue hymn ringing in our chests
until we forgot that we had felt
something like this before. Imagine the human race
that grows smaller while getting older,
the incredible shrinking man
as he becomes wise and learns to carve a flute
out of ivory, then bamboo, then the bones
of the bird he had once broken, the same bird’s wing
he now crawls under to sleep every night.
And still the same tune, but with greater sadness.
Have you heard it before? Can you hear it now
in the old parts of your memory before they fall
into what we call a line? Confess everything.
At the end of this room waits a wall and your ear and hope
for just one answer. The thrum of footsteps or the beating
of something young. A voice, an instrument, a door opening
and closing. Now and again a litany of muffled cries
or the faithful repetition of the same song.
Poem Ending With Hands on Handlebars
Scared means knowing your name is written
in a book somewhere, knowing the wasps
will return next summer for another round,
that the feeling you get on a cliff’s edge is not the fear
of falling but jumping—of taking one step
and not even leaving a crumpled excuse.
My mother said to be scared was ever to know
you are alive. You can imagine what it was my father said.
Every time I sit on a motorcycle I know before
I crank the motor something terrible is going to happen.
Such easy things to lead in the wrong direction.
Such easy things on which to wave and say
Goodbye and I’m not coming back.
~
What I wanted was a cold pillow. What I got
was one memory after another, lining up at the front door
of my head and asking Do you have time to talk?
In 1922 my great-grandfather and his brother rode double
on an Indian Scout from the southeastern corner of Missouri
to the center of New York city. One month of that engine’s buzz
on gravel and dirt roads that wound around the country
like a loose-fitting belt. I wanted to see what America was
he said. I wanted to see the tallest buildings in the world.
For three days they looked up, ate steaks each night,
and then decided to come home. You can grow to love moving
he said to me one night, after we’d finished dessert.
You can also grow to love standing still.
I saw him only once in the hospital before he died,
held his small purple hand and stared at a dinner roll
torn in half. Tell me again about the trip to the city, I asked.
He looked out the window, hacked on his napkin and said
On such a long trip the hardest thing was holding on.
~
The photograph of a man falling from the sky
is the same photograph of the same man flying.
The picture of me on a two-bit Kawasaki is exactly the same thing, too,
regardless of what happens when I leave the frame’s edge.
Before my brother died he could park a truck between
two hills and jump it with his dirt bike on every try.
Jumping between two places is the same as flying
or falling to whatever comes next.
A two-stroke engine’s whine is meaner
than any other engine ever made.
In the picture I had grit in my teeth.
Wearing a helmet was the same as wearing a seatbelt.
Not wearing one the same as wearing old black leather.
Every Sunday in a small town not far from my home
the bikers roll in and eat hot wings and fried livers in mustard.
A gang is like a family without table manners.
The heart of the Midwest thumps like a bible on an empty pew
but no one can afford to rest on the Sabbath.
What we keep holy are engines and afternoon drives.
What we believe in is not so different from a journey.
Any story of loss must begin with a disaster
like Uncle Charles who lost three teeth crashing into a street light,
two fingers when he was working on the chain.
~
Before the first time I wrecked a bike I believed
that I was becoming what I’d always envisioned
I would. After I crashed I believed my arm wasn’t right
and that blood was coming from a warm and unknown place.
To give up is ever to say you were always defeated.
To turn your back means you’re of the yellow brand.
My brother could ride a wheelie for three blocks
and not even use his hands.
In some places not using hands is the opposite of magic.
Here it’s the same as making things disappear.
Common sense is the same as saying find a better way.
History the same as saying stand up and get back on.
Both are caught somewhere between being ridden
and handing over the keys and growling: Ride.
Great-grandpa would eat a mint chocolate and say think about it.
My brother would stand back and say Let ‘er rip.
I would say I’ve been down this road, and it looks like I’m going again.
In the end the clutch will grow soft and slip, the gas tank
will take in the tall grass and give it back.
In the end there will be the brake and the throttle,
and the steady moan of the engine will make you numb.
On a Bus to Chicago While Preoccupied with Yeats
Hands folded on a greyhound bus,
two children sing the wheels go round,
and in the windows, the pale reflection
of this. Come away, come away.
We are moving on an obsolete course,
toward a mingling of words
and hands and luggage passed
over an empty hallway, an empty suitcase
set to motion in an empty direction.
~
The station and hard-backed seats.
We’re all puritans on some level.
Staring at the wall it seems
an apparition appears, a ghost
of some symbol I once knew
that passes through me and into
the vending machines. An old woman
with false teeth. An old woman
with false teeth in her hands
asks if this seat is taken, and no, please
sit. Come away. The clock suggests
time travel. Come away, and we walk
through this dome and into a light.
~
In Chicago under an overpass,
the silhouette of the virgin
in salt stains and a gathering
of candles. Inside, weeping.
Inside, the world is more full
of weeping. A crowd congregates
behind. A small prayer wiped
on a shirt sleeve and lost.
~
I will not contemplate the wheels
on the bus. I will not gather myself
into a ball in the back seat,
and hide from a world that passes
outside life-sized windows.
What is it to be life-sized?
Is it to be like this? Come away.
Is it to sleep against a window?
Come away.
~
The world is more full of weeping.
In the black tint of an El Dorado
I see the manifestation
of a small child without any arms,
a bucket of water hung
around his neck. We wear.
We wear this misery. Come away,
child, come away.
We are traveling in an empty direction.
~
The quiet knitting of a scarf
that won’t stop until we reach
our own point of view. I am less
than tired, but more than able
to fall asleep. Underneath a hum.
Underneath a resonating that calls
me out of where I want to go,
that brings the mind to look out
where the sun makes little
of a long grass plain, where the sun
makes little of what it is to understand.
~
Come away. So we go. To the waters
and the wild. Come away. So we go.
Come away, O human child.
We are heading towards. We are going.
Hands folded, and off the windows
the sound reverberates inside.
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