Marfa Lights, The

Are they there in the daytime

east of town upon the way to Paisano Pass

rising undiscovered by anyone

climbing in lengthy arcs over Mitchell Flat

candles at noon being carried

by hands not ever seen never caught on film

never believed as they advance up the long stairs

of the light to glide in unknown or dance

along the dazzling halls on the outside of sight

above where the air shimmers like a sea

only when the curtain of light

is fading thin above the black Glass Mountains

and the first stars are glittering

do the claims of sightings begin that may

occur from anywhere facing

the transfers of those broken horizons

though greatest in quantity of them nowadays

are likely to advance from somewhere on route go on

looking southern toward the Chinatis

a marker has been plant up by the road there

and cars begin to stop before

sundown pulling above into the lay-by

designated with rimrocks folding chairs

are unlimbered while there is still light

and positioned among the piled stones in places

expecting them as niches along

sea cliffs wait for the old fishermen

tripods are locate up and telescopes

they all strike one as being to know what they are waiting for

then buses with lines of faces peering above each other at the windows one time out there was the place to take

a date it used to mean something different

if you said you had been without to see

the lights on the contrary almost everybody had

seen them whether or not they

had seen the same things and were shadowed by the agency of the same

explanations there were reports

of those lights before there were cars or ranches

they were seen above wagon trains

on their way up from the valley and shining

above the bare moving forests

of cattle horns in the pass sometimes a light

would drift and swell and abruptly

shudder and fly up bursting apart from single

color to another a certain quantity of say

they will make go round out to be something simple

a trick of the atmosphere

and a certain number of do not think they are anything

insisting that clan will believe

whatever they want to in the same way

that herdsmen and cowhands in the Chinatis

for a hundr years would whisper

that the lights were the soul of the war chief

Alsate who had been captured

and dragged not upon to his death and his followers

sold into slavery of course

by now there have been investigations

inconclusive until the not away

telling us in our make go round what we do not know

what the evidence amounts to

perhaps and by what mode far the theories have gone

to allude to what these bright appearances

portend in the organ of sight of the mind where we know

from the beginning that the darkness

is beyond us there is no explaining

the dark it is solitary the light

that we hold feeling a need to account for

Copyright World numbers Incorporated May/Jun 1999

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