Two Poems

Andrew Hudgins

Blur

Smoke dwindles at the chimneys, disappears.
The sashes all jump upward and the long sweep
of May wind bellies the curtains, chases
the stale smoke from the farthest corner, rousts it
from our clothes, our hair—and in passing tousels
the first uncurling plumes of horsetail fern.
Storms of perfume lift from honeysuckle,
lilac, mown grass, clover—and drift across the threshold,
outside reclaiming inside as its home.

Warm days whirl in an unnumberable blur,
a cup—a grail—brimmed with delirium
and humbling boredom both. I was a boy,
I thought I’d always be a boy, pell mell,
mean, and gaily murderous one moment
as I decapitated daises with a stick,
then overcome with summer’s opium,
numb-slumberous. I thought I’d always be a boy,
each day its own millennium, each
one-thousand years of daylight ending in
the night watch, summer’s pervigilium,
which I could never keep because by sunset
I was an old man. I was Methuselah,
the oldest man in the holy book. I drowsed.
I nodded, slept—and without my watching, the world,
whose permanence I doubted, returned again,
bluebell and blue jay, speedwell and cardinal
still there when the light swept back,
and so was I, which I had also doubted.
I understood with horror then with joy,
dubious and luminous joy: it’s a carousel.
It doesn’t need my feet to make it turn,
my hands to push it. It doesn’t even need
my eyes to watch it spin. It simply spins,

and I, though a latecomer to its surface, I’d
be leaving early, flung off by its spinning
of light-dark, hot-cold, yes-no, live-die,
so it behooved me to watch and stay awake
if I could stay awake and sing if I
could keep my mind on singing, not extinction,
as blurred green summer fulfilled its promises,
and the pendulum, lifted to its apex,
succumbs to gravity and plummets, falls
to autumn, Ilium, and then ashes. In joy
we are our own uncomprehending mourners,
and more than joy I longed for understanding
and more than understanding I longed for joy.

In the Cool of the Evening

Among lilies I am Jehovah,
the Lord God walking in the cool of the evening,
delighting in everything that buds,
blossoms, grows—and sorrowing
for those that fail. When I can be,
I am Christ the healer, dusting for mildew,
spraying for black spot and white fly, plucking
aphids and iridescent green beetles
from the green leaves, and when the leaves
are sucked dry, sucked juiceless, brown, I pluck them too
and drop them in the dirt to try again
in another life, beyond the one we have briefly shared.
The Lord God walking in the cool of the evening.

Among students I am merely the questioner.
Have you read this? I ask. Have you considered that?
And with books I am merely the student,
asking why, why, why—exasperating myself
and even the long-dead with my questions.
But among dianthus, I am the decider:
Not here, but there. Not you, but something else.
The Lord God walking in the cool of the evening.

Beside bellflower, poppy, phlox,
I keep the deathwatch. Among lilies
I am the slow mourner for the soft bulb
rotting in damp clay, the quiet griever
over fire blight in the pyracantha—fire blight,
canker, scale—and when I fail
as Christ the healer, I succeed
as the adversary, the root-digger,
extirpator, the one who starts the fire—
the Lord God walking in the cool of the evening.

Beyond branch tips, where they scrape the sky,
I see a crisp bed in a row of beds.
The sheets are white, starched, and my skin is yellow,
yellow and going gray. Down the row,
the Lord God walks in the cool of the evening,
delighting, sorrowing, healing, failing to heal.
I am very calm, I am almost not afraid.
I look neither toward him nor away from him,
the Lord God walking in the cool of the evening.

Andrew Hudgins's five books of poetry, all with Houghton Mifflin, include The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood and Babylon in a Jar. His collection of essays, The Glass Anvil, was published by The University of Michigan Press. Recent essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Hudson Review, and others.

Issue #24 • Fall 1999