Joseph Donahue
from Terra Lucida
hurricane
The ocean is turning into sky
The sky flies off to the sun
The sun is nowhere to be seen —
maybe by monks in Tibet.
Light frees us, they say.
Dark condemns us . . .
*
As, every hour,
souls pour towards
selves, towards creeds,
ideologies, families,
cults, marketers, armies,
prisons, pensions . . .
As, at all hours,
adoption agencies
those entrepreneurs of
birth, call about a boy
or a girl a world away,
China, Ecuador, Rumania . . .
& rooms are made ready
names are weighed
as plans go astray
like an affidavit in
a third world court
or, at the orphanage,
a mother or nun makes
a last minute stipulation
or an exploded car
closes an embassy,
& sanctions are passed,
& a child goes elsewhere . . .
*
(Lucifer fell in North Carolina)
And so: tobacco.
And so: the moon. In
a milky gel. An irradiated
nuclei in what’s left of a cell . . .
*
At check out:
a reckoning. An
endless phone bill. Each
number is a variant of the one
dialed before. So deep
in that night, who
did you think you
might reach?
*
The streets
of Manhattan are
upheavals & screams.
There seems to be a
mass panic in progress.
You move apace while
reading, with effort,
a fluttering book —
some Torah or
tour guide . . .
The fire storm, that
hurricane of flame, is
turning from sea
towards land.
Doors & roofing fly
off after the pages torn lose . . .
*
May all yet be
Mahler? May that
radiance of the will
come to be, that neon
snag, that purple net of mist?
May wild parrots in the trees
on a mountainside also
come to be, and a cup
half white inside, then red,
(gleam of wine not yet sipped. )
Lightning floods the cloud mass
above the treatment plant . . .
On the beach, some boys find
an obsolete action figure.
Who is he? Can he fly?
Can he blast lasers?
All that matters now is
what the living need . . .
Say what you have to say,
urge the hospice philosophers.
Let your well-being
fill the endlessness
inside a dying ear. Let those
dark arcades on the moon
be lava flow. Let the holes
glow bright that show
the end of the
beginning: when
all not to be is sucked
back into what is . .
Joseph Donahue’s most recent colections are: In This Paradise, Terra Lucida XXI-XL, and Incidental Eclipse.