So simple is the soul
a house finch can haunt its innermost
ever, not for an hour, not for an era, but a
different kind of forever, as in, as in,
as in the dream of an infinite lever, & a lamb
lifts up a mountain by stepping on the end
of an endless branch propped beneath
the stone—. That dream—. Of the long ago
then, a sort of once-upon-a-
time, when the pear sang out the finch’s tune
& desire began again its how-to-
see, how-to-hear, mystery burden so hard
to bear—. Then God was a word
for the perfection that no one could name—.
A sort of lust that the sun will rise tomorrow
as it rose today—. A ripening
into wisdom, or
the lightning-quick flit of a question that wants
no answer, quick as a finch in a pear tree, quick
as a pear, quick as a star
or a sudden tear. Why am I crying, again, I don’t
know. I just feel the lamb in me, & I feel
the mountain, & there’s this stick in my hand
that seems to whisper to me
my own I-don’t-know-how-I-don’t-know-how-to
refrain, dark as a cloud that refuses
to rain—. Though the rain gathers
in the clouds above the mountains as if, as if,
as if the mountains were dreaming of rain.
There it is again, that thunder in the temple
of your hearing, that memory of a guitar
in a cradle, & the lowing from infinitely far away
of cattle grazing beneath the holy oak, some
one weeping in a garden at the memory
of stealing from a neighbor’s tree
a pear among the many pears that bent the branch
down. That’s the long ago when
when Carthage burning the widowed women cut
their hair for the strings of the bows—.
& the arrows’ twang sang that oldest song—
sun is moon is grass is star—. As is, as is
the lamb & the mountain, the finch & its tune—.
Is. As is, as
is the pear, & the possibility of the pear—
the possibility of the pear that precedes the pear—
& that fear that has no name, it is so perfect.
Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator whose most recent book is Elements & Offerings. He teaches at Colorado State University, where he is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar.
