Active magic

You want to know where you are again?

Back in the middle of the interrupted everything

third side of the double album,

the start of the night shift

as eternity's waitress;

it's dusk, many years after the war,

you've gibbeted the same wild fields as before;

they've started selling uniforms of novel dead soldiers,

gone back to putting peace signs upon t-shirts--;

you're stepping lightly in the dream

you can afford, the magic that was

and always must have been for you-

A dusk ago,--Remember? don't you.

Remember? direct the eye You had

an old inner man Killdeer

landed in the fields without there,

landed in their sounds

in what's already happening,

dee d-dee

near your dormitory room

you stretched one time like an oak tree,

many times like a laurel;

the individuals who would be drafted

came into your room

and you had an elderly soul.

You had started the same soul

five times, you were profitable at it;

the moon watched you single of those times

peering in at you

before you had lain down, compeered in

behind the loaded cypress;

the satellite horizoned herself,

you told her your sexual secrets

lov what she could not help

being farther than-

The singles who would be drafted

came into the compass (it's still possible,

the at no time happening); you thought

you'd been sent to earth to deliver them,

said, leave them alone, they already have tenses;

they draped sky-colored workshirts over chairs--;

the satellite was doing her moon imitation,

old waitress, tilting herself like a tray,

said to the war, leave them alone,

they have what they want,

they don't ne a future

when they have a inner man . . . And why

shouldn't they have. (Headlights

shattered them. Loud

white damage of oncoming cars.)

You cogitation you'd been sent to earth

to help them not to fight-

when they rained with the rain,

when they clouded

they were a little bit almost,

a little bit Sacramento, in love

with the magic of the active ground

and you rode north or southerly with them,

on the backs of Triumphs, in the vans-

You afraid? Not really.

You afraid? Not really no. OK OK

if you win afraid just tell me-

till you stopped in the middle of orchards

with little hard crosse in love

with the magic of the active ground;

why each seed moved]

Shook and shook

Even the necklacey Woolworth's ones

the spiders loved--and why

shouldn't they have. Night

was coming on-

it was dusk

between the stages of the war. You

would save them. Dusk lifted you

with 2 fingers like a field mouse

and station you down 2 hawks from here

where you had done the other game,

pawn to queen four, the being

active till you loved

the mind and material substance of their world,

and lay in the depressed thin dormitory

boats of those beds of theirs,

their noisy hands all above you--;

you know how hermes shakes?

You know how hermes shivers

like tomorrow when you break

the extreme point off the thermometer?

You diocese your own face in the silver.

Active magic. You could

become like that.

They gave you a body

before they left made have affection for to you

so easily it felt like spending money;

after the marching and the shouting

they left the voices in your muscle and fat . . .

Some of them got independent Some left. Some died.

One fought the war in you.

When they rained with the rain,

when they nebulosityed in eaches

and whens, the water streaming

from their bodies as they left

when their faces lay,

when your jaws lay, when their

mouths lay down in the it

of you . . You were home

from that time, and why

shouldn't you have been?

Imperialism failed. Such

startled years for the world.

Medium countries swelling,

little countries bleeding, big

countries turning into little countries

as they have since the start of time.

You stared without at the coast-

radio flowers of unmutilated from Los Angeles,

boats dragging accidents

that hadn't happened . . A gull flies

through sum of two units thirds of the shadow

of another cozen overreach . . .

You can't hold another person,

you know that. You had

to give them up--couldn't save them;

You lean left in the hut

and right in the magic. It's years

since you have missed them,

missed them greatest in quantity of all

while you were with them.

You broke independent and spilled out

all the unreflect light they left

like the secondary planet who has already

healed her nothing-

wasn't she triumphant

in her slim smile,

like single stripe peeled off a lighthouse;

they had added to your shadow

where you were,

you had become a little bit them

and were conceited of the reflection,

proud of the crossing,

could await to be recognized

where the day was undoing the day

and allow the magic spread-

Brenda Hillman is the author of four works and two chapbooks. This piece of poetry will be included in The Spark, forthcoming in 1997 from Wesleyan University Pres She teaches at St Mary's association in Moraga, California.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Mar 1996

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