Twelve Dawns

Author(s): BRENDA HILLMAN

Source: The American Poetry Review, Vol. 17, No. 6 (NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1988), pp. 3-5
Published by: American Poetry Review
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 BRENDA HILLMAN: poems
Brenda Hillman's poetry books are White Dress and Fortress (Wesleyan). These
eight
poems are from Bright Existence, her manuscript-in-progress.
She teaches at St. Mary's College inMoraga, CA.

Twelve Dawns
"A veil exists between the world above and but nothing could be done without some

the realms that are below, and the shadow cooperation between this
came into being beneath the veil, and that shadow and whatever refused it in this world
shadow became matter." so you invited it in

(from a gnostic codex)

dark existence that comforts and terrifies?

bright existence that could not stay?

Old Ice
The thought that you could even save the light,
that you could stop it from having to be

everywhere at once.

You stood in the ice cream shop

and from the street, in a group
Black Series
of sillyglass trumpets ?Then in the scalloped leaves of the plane tree

light came, a series of short, sharp who's:

and broke into millions of itself, shattered a little owl had learned to count.
from the pressure of being mute who knows how long.
You lay in your bed as usual not existing
There also,
leaning against the counter because of the bright edges pressing in.
the child who saw nothing
All at once the black thick o's of the owl
but the bins of sweet color
made the very diagram you needed.
separately rimmed with silver.
Where there had been two
Behind you, thoughtfully placed by the owners, a photo kinds of infinity, now there was one!
of an avalanche, its violence The smudged circle around the soul
locked in blue spears. . . .The ice moved cruelly, one way only, was the one the gnostics saw around the cosmos,

and behind the avalanche, and behind the mathematical

theposts that held it, toy train, the snake eating its tail.
the cars went back and forth like mediators.
Relieved by the thought that the owl's o's
You who do not exist: had changed but not you, that something

you stared along the edges of the freezer: could change and not be lost in you,
frost glistened and clustered.
you asked the voice formore
Suddenly it looked as ifone act could be completed existence and the voice said
mounting over and over, even under terrible pressure.
yes but you must understand
Perhaps the tiny crystals would last forever.
I loved you not despite your great emptiness
Once it seemed the function of poetry but because of your great emptiness?
was to redeem our lives.
But itwas not. It was to become

indistinguishable from them.

Dark Existence The Servant

?You lay down in your bed ?So you whispered to the soul Rise up!
for ten years, and after ten years but the soul was not ready.

you got up. The room was full of weak color ?Get up! It's our turn! But that part of the soul

stayed still. So you checked the list

but therewas an interestinglittlehill of rich life
from which all things streamed; of those who existed

and you saw between but the soul was not on the list, the soul

existence and the fringe of your responded to none of those things.

non Very well, you said. He sank back in his furs.

quotes
being on thewall And you started across the plain to one he loved?

an active shadow that could not reconcile itself to earth

and was not ironical, that is, not split;

Lhzzziii_^^ . --_===?]
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1988 PAGE 3

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 And so
December Shadow this morning, though you cannot
?Then how to address the place where the soul was not. tolerate your life because it is so
Should you have said, standing next to the trench, difficult, so "filled with promise"
this should have been you?
think of the spirit of darkness
This darkness was not the terror of what we do to each other, that did not abandon you,
or the delicious sexual darkness he'd brought you and the earth that rests outside you, wanting
or the black corridors of the female body the form forwhich itwas created?

remember the early diagrams,

what the inside of a woman looks like?
A cow's skull.
March Dawn
This darkness was the protection of the child,
?Remember the darkness
it included the vast fluttering
of the beaten child all your days. Who was meant
as the oak included the moths
to protect her. They hid under the stairs.
with its shadow
The mother clung to her and beat her,
remember in the brilliant day long ago, clung to her and beat her,
the ball coming toward you? the carefully heard.
You played with the other children like this?
So much that child wanted the mother's good opinion
not as anything?
but the mother never spoke well of her,
blocked the sun with your non
. . .
hating her flesh, its ignorant blood
being as itwere, . . .Look: dawn
Motherhood.
but by that pewter shadow you could be affirmed . . .
the color of the piet?. Motherhood
One by one they kissed you. is sorrow . . .

One by one the guests advanced themselves

You who do not exist: remember:
into the night where you would have been
darkness created itself
had they looked for you
forthe child;
though itwas not in the dim night she put that poem under the stairs of chaos
that you'd planned to receive them but the edge still shines.
but at midday, when the druid oak
See what lies around you; look at his back.
blossomed with moths, with being gone?
Or at the dusty iris,
the hounds-tongue in the forest.
See your shadow in the dark?still gray grass,
some radiance above it:
January Dawn
everything has a border doesn't it?
?Two window shades: the stiff
the edge where light cannot get in
premonition forcing its way around them,
then the first sparrows, chipping through the ice. until joy knows the original wound.

And god lies beside you in his? Which is why the earth is feminine,
Wait. So god lies beside you and the body, not the soul, cries out in heaven?
in his brokenness
covered with black feathers

and in his claw

a small fish
Blossoms Appearing
shiny and new?like a metaphor. ?In the pause between

No, wait.
When Elijah came to the widow of Zaraphath
Between winter and the time you greeted it:
she was by the well?weren't they always
plum blossoms. Plum blossoms everywhere!
by thewell, loweringthegold
rope of consciousness Always in this season there was this
black self-conscious eye above the landscape,
Elijah's in the desert had been represented
need
one feverishly plucked, forties eyebrow
by the circle of black ravens
arched like a fermata inmusic
holding fish and they were
dazzling in the text?just dazzling!?and behind them watching the modern variations in pink
all the way down Euclid Avenue?then
o the little tents of change O the tents of Ahab's men.

dizzy and with what hope you managed your predicament:

The widow trusted him
not to lose your shadow to the shared
though her son died, for Elijah had known
delirium of each tree.
one great moment of faithfulness.

11- I
PAGE 4 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

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 One day it came to you. And the voice behind the voice
replied:
Spring cried as you turned the numb soil. Always. Like yours, his fate was to exist
Earthworms twisted warm cuneiform bodies, arching up even against your wall of hope.
in something?if itwas not delight
So you got up. The islands winked
itwas so much like delight?
red, blue, white, in patriotic
and a rusty robin landed slowly as an old biplane, disagreement. Commuters began their orderly

shook the branch, and all bright care. Then, E E E,

the blossoms fell chiff chiff. Notes from the cypress,
on you deliciously itwas not sorrow from one who did not doubt: a jay

then you knew for the bird as for you the world sat on top as if he caused the tree to be there?

split open was stunningly beautiful

though being alive was nearly impossible?

First Thought
The firstthought
Every Life was rage

?And right before daybreak the little owl returned:

In certain systems, the point at which that thought
two small solid o's,
emerges from God's mind is his consort,
like napkin holders.
but before she turns her rage onto the world, the violent
Then the briefer, brighter o's of another bird of prey, lords must give her the body of a woman which is not easy.
not a victim, Imagine them standing around before they will trap
came across the field to welcome her. God's vague thought into female flesh. The way
their robes undulate, the slightly yellowing raiment
Dawn has four stages. In the third,

everything chooses how much more itwill become; poor things.

until then, They will not understand the rage.
the door is the same color as the hinge, It will be expressed forever in the split in things.
In the two-toned lupine,
poems fit into other poems, every life
in the cupped, silk lining of the tulip,
fits into every life,
in the red and white of all armies in all wars,
bright into dark, not deciding.
itwill bend over my dream wearing his face.
After that,
The moment my daughter was lifted
the wall notices the shadow pulled out of the soul,
from me, that sticky
gray as a puritan
flesh screamed fury,
and the brave, dreamy hyacinth starts to be seen? for she, too, blamed the female body?
I loved it that she screamed?
could the garden have said
to the gardener, I made you grow? They were and I knew I had been sent to earth to understand that pain.
beside one another.
The nurses moved about, doing something
Could that which was not yet over to the left. Probably weighing her

press forward in the world? It seemed for a brief time on what looked like blue tin. The flash of non
it could? existence always at the edge of vision,
and in the next moment, some unasked-for radiance.

Under those lights,

the nurses seemed shabby?
the ivory lords, come haltingly
?Your shadow came to the wall one last time into the bridal chamber, slightly yellowing raiment.
as the lioness comes to the stone gate of heaven
The last pain on earth will not be the central pain,
It was the female ego, fueled by desire.
itwill be thepain of the soul and not thebody,
And you asked: our love, will he always the pain of the body will be long since gone,
be with us? Dawn came in, absorbed into the earth, which made it beautiful?
weak around the edges, a whorl of parafin.
don't you love the word raiment?
So you waited, in your creatureliness, crouched Dawn comes in white raiment.
like an attic rat, you waited till spring, Something like that.

you loved its glorious imitations

of being alive, young sparrows, their orange scribbles.

Then you asked again: our love,
will he always be with us?

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1988 PAGE 5

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