Poetry

After Alberto Caeiro (1)

I’m a shepherd grazing my flock

But it’s a flock of goats not sheep

I am therefore technically a goatherd

Though I have a few sheep

With goats there is only the milk

And then the cheese, some flesh

Goats are not picturesque as sheep are

They are not so helpless or docile

They are troublesome and contrary

Given to eating many things that are not good for them

And to biting one other aggressively and without reason

When tethered my goats become wound up in the tether

If I allow them their freedom

And follow them to where they are going

They get lost in the thickets

The secret obscure and difficult places

They somehow always manage to find

Though I know they are not looking for these places

These places find them

As a consequence of their own foolish goaty willfulness

That seems to be as indelibly a part of their nature

As talking of them seems to be a part of mine –

If, as I say, I follow their entanglements

I become drawn into their dreams

Until my beard becomes like that of a goat

Wiry and full of a certain roughness

That not even dutifully applied oils will smooth away

Goats make bad meat - nothing like mutton -

Although it is edible I would prefer almost anything else

Except coyote or cat which are worse

So I do not slaughter my goats nor sell them to one who would do so

Because it is too much trouble to find such a one

And I do not have the stomach for that sort of searching

Nor anything for which I care to trade

So that when a goat of mine grows too old to breed

I simply stop paying attention

And this goat slowly leaves the flock,

A little more absent today

Than the day before

Until finally one morning the goat is gone

Having faded entirely away

Not to be seen anywhere

But remembered faintly as a odor

Hovering over the brush and grasses

And is not missed

Goats do not make good companions

They are all mouth and their bodies seem forever to be straining

Toward something they do not find

Nor even recognize, a useless painful straining

With nothing elegant or noble about it

Perhaps their mountain ancestors expressed something of animal nobility

But the goat wedded so long to the human

Made brute by doing our bidding,

Living in our houses, feeding our children

Has very little to recommend him

His smell so unmistakable and sharp

Has accompanied me these many years

Until it has become my chief thought

And it has become as well

The smell of the plains and buttes

Even of the bushes and grasses

Even our great cities where merchants gather with their various exotic wares

Brought from abroad

Now smell of goat

Beneath the many other odors the cities contain

That are far preferable

Because they make us feel sophisticated and worthwhile

But one can’t escape even there the odor of goat

Hanging on the air, the basis for all other smells

People make fun of me because I live with goats

But I am not troubled by this

Goats are no worse than cows or pigs

In many ways they are better and easier to keep

Besides, my goats though unintelligent and unpleasant

Possess a certain goaty integrity

They do not linger

They do not dissemble

They are not insistent

They do not whine they bleat

Which is a stronger and clearer expression

One which requires no retort or response for it is already complete

Goats play out their goat destinies with a pure mute passion

That I appreciate

And although I do not love them

At least I see nothing in them worth hating

Which is more than I can say of some people

Of whom a few

Are worth at least

An indifferent sort of antipathy

And in this number I include myself

Although sometimes I am doubtful

In morning I awake full of stiffness

To look at the last stars

At the clouds gathering in the cold

And wonder

If there is something more in store for me

Than these goats

These a few sheep

But I am willing to go on as I am

Among the many ways men have devised to die while still on their feet

Goats at least are an honorable and harmless profession

After Alberto Caeiro (2)

When the last long rays of the sun

That bring with them a melancholy feeling

Run low across the fields and sky

I find myself thinking

Other times of the day I do not think so much

At least no more than I am comfortable with

For most thoughts are disturbing

And once admitted to mind will not be removed

Even when I try to replace them

With whistled tunes

Or old songs

Whose snatches of melody

That accompany my long days in a subdued fashion

Are associated with vague memories of a strange past

I am wondering how much longer it will be possible

To keep on with this tending of goats

That I have been doing for so long

That I know nothing else

All other aspects of my life

Having become a dream

I suspect a dream

Or a waking delusion

It may even be that my life as a goatherd

Here among the buttes and stones

Is also a waking delusion or a dream of a delusion

Sheep dung and goat dung are not useful for anything

They fade slowly into the soil as anything will

That is left long enough neglected

On this pitiless earth

That endures the extremes of the seasons

With an immense cruel patience  

That is pitilessly relentless

My lifeless body

Once I have let go

Of the grinding daily effort

To maintain its vitality

Will fade just as a goat turd does

Into the earth

Eventually in this dry air

Somewhere on this windswept plain

Beneath a bush

Where I might have crawled

To escape disclosure to the sky in my perishing

And no one would discover my body there

Any more than I discover the body of a goat

Whose absence from the flock I have taken no notice of

Though goats are my profession and my life

Possibly there is some better way to earn my coarse bread

Could I learn the trade I might sail out to sea

To the unreachable place

Where sky and sea meet in a flat ever-changing line

Unlike the unmoving line

Here where the plain’s bitter edge

Touches the sky that deigns to dip to meet it

It is possible also I could journey out on roads

To deliver produce or other goods

For people from one place

Forever need something available only

In another location

At some distance too far away

For them to fetch it themselves

And so must rely on others

This I could do on foot

But then the burden would be great

Even had I a cart to pull

Along behind me

Better if I could find a bullock cart

In the village that someone would trade for a goat or two

Then I might leave this life

Absent myself from this brown plain

With its sparse grasses and bits of gray stone

Scattered here and there among the ancient sheepfolds

Who then would carry on

With the godforsaken goats

And what would the goats do

Without human stewardship

Who would walk on their behalf

This distinctive pattern of steps

That I have been obligated to trace out

Coursing a design that seemed predestined

Each step following with inevitability the last

As if written out as a script

Upon and beyond the faint pathways the goats have traced

Through the ages

And it is not clear

That goats would tolerate my absence

With more or less pleasure

Than they have tolerated my presence

Nor that this desolate place

Has tolerated my presence even indifferently

Or whether it has felt it at all

As I have barely felt the presence of the goats

Nor they mine

So absorbed are they in their own goaty thoughts

Their cantankerous goaty deeds and determinations

Perhaps these lingering bitter evening thoughts

I wish to prevent

And cannot prevent

So must bear sad witness to

And give voice to

Because it is my nature

Are floating indifferent presences too,

Barely felt or known  

Perhaps this solitary life has been pressed on me

In my sleep by another

Or concocted as a scheme or joke

By a cynic nameless deity

In the long years that preceded my birth

When people relieved their days simply

In evening reveries

Spoken or sung or played out in the silences of these hills

Whose sad shadows lengthen as they swallow the landscape

Bringing anonymity and sameness    

As they did long before there were sheep and goats here

When other animals roamed these parts

Eating and being eaten

Universally peaceful in their mutual terror

Looking out into the distance

I see clusters of sheep and goats gathering

To fend off the fear they surely feel as darkness falls

They make distinctive patterns on the slopes of the hills

Like clusters of guitar notes

That solemnly vibrate

I do not think my life

Should it end soon

Say by the time the sun sets tonight

Or rises again in the morning over the hill

To the east opposite

Where the dust rises when the goats run

After one another

In their mating ruts

Or for the fighting that precedes mating

Because no grass covers the bare dirt

Is anything more than another poor instance

Of doomful destiny

Without any particular purpose

Or shred of humor  

I spend long hours standing here

Or there,

A place I can see from here

Places in which I have stood many times before

I seem to have spoken before

These very words

Whose kernels of simple intelligibility

I can only faintly grope for

And that remind me of the way the goats look at me in high summer

When there is very little water to be had

And they are expecting me to bring them water

In the old leathern sacks which are more and more heavy to carry

Uphill from the stream the older I am becoming

I do not think I will be able to keep on

For many seasons longer

With this tending of goats, foolish goats

And the sea is very far away

And that I can learn

The necessary sea-going skills

Is doubtful

Nor is there much chance I might acquire a boat

And why would anyone

Whose family possessed a small boat

That does not accommodate so many

Want to take on another hand,

Inexperienced in the ways of the sea

And advanced in years

And I doubt anyone would trade

A good bullock cart with strong wheels

So useful for a variety of tasks

And very difficult to make

For one or two mangy goats

With dispositions so troublesome

That days and nights of tending them

Are continually unpleasant and annoying

After Alberto Caeiro (3)

Suddenly the sun

That has been absent

Behind clouds and mists these long winter days

Bursts forth

Warming me and my goats finally

After such a long time of bitter cold

Sun so different

In the morning noon and evening

In summer, in winter

And whose nighttime absence

Brings a powerful silence

Who could replace or produce

This special pleasure

Of warmth

Suddenly after much cold

That inhabits even the spaces between

The coarsely woven fabric of my coat and shirt

Even the spaces

Within the flesh of the muscles

And the spleen and lungs

That grow brittle in the cold

A penetrating warmth finally invades  

Opening the whole of the landscape

To the soft wide sky

As a book that has been closed

Suddenly when dropped from a shelf falls open

And begins its tale of distant worlds

That come closer

As the words of the book speak

The sky

That has been pressing down on me

Seems to become friendly

It caresses me

So that even my thoughts

Fall open as the book that has fallen open

From the shelf

Words of my heart begin to stir

And the ground begins to speak

Advancing in the light

Toward me and my goats

With disarming intimacy

The feeling of the approach

Of soil and sky

Is so immediate I smile

And the beginnings of the smile upon my lips

Cracks them after the night’s cold dryness

Bringing a few spots of blood

Which are warm and tasty

The goats begin to frolic

Not so much out of joy

For I have seen them in moods that are close to joy

When they have from time to time

Found special things to eat

Unexpectedly

But simply because

The strong sun has awakened in them another form of life

Different from the nighttime life

Different from the winter life

The warmth has dissolved their dreams

Which for so long had unfolded painfully

Satisfying their wintry nature

As a lion’s nature is satisfied

By the pursuit and slaughter of an animal

The sun’s warmth

Has brought to them a crisis of brightness

In which their small uncertain black eyes

Blink wildly around in all directions

The tiny vacant pinpoint holes at their centers

Fill with desire beyond object, beyond image

And this disturbs them terribly

They begin to butt one another violently

Simply to express this objectless disturbance

That their crude dreams have failed to account for

And there is desperation in their sharp movements

Their stabbing horns

Go in deeper

With the sun’s softening warmth

That removes the hard tension of cold from the body

Releasing the flesh to flow like water in springtime

When it has first been unlocked from the snow and ice

And runs merrily down

The rivulets and cracks in rockfaces  

My flowing flesh

That had been frozen in me

Releases floods of memory

Of days

Of warm sun  

And bright worlds

That equally flowed like honey

But when I try to offer my thought

To honeyed memory

It can’t hold purchase  

As sunbeams

That glance off bushes without adhering

And off the dark coats

Of the goats

And the light coats

Of the few sheep

So that their colors

Seem more vivid to the eye

Sharp and closely etched

Though some certain amount

Of sunlight is also absorbed by them

And so too my memories

Which by and large are not happy ones

Glance away from my mind

Though some few are absorbed

So that I can see myself

Poor goatherd

Reflected in the mirror,

The aura, of goat

Which has swallowed

All of the past

In its crude relentless presence

In the presence of goats

The carrying of water

The seeing, hearing, smelling, the wonder

Of goats

Their moods sins and intimate confusions and passions

And if I have ever had a sense of another life

Beyond a devotion to goats

It has dissolved

And the past is no longer personal

It is an elemental inchoate goat-haunted myth

That slowly melts in the day’s warmth

Becoming indistinct from the present moment of goat

As memory and perception blur

Mixing my human destiny

With goat fate

Goat image, goat smell, and sensibility

This long brown plain

With its mounded hills, its colorless bushes

Persistent grasses, scattered stones

Dry stream bed below

Whose white gravel gleams like silver

Against the sun’s relentless stare

All so satisfying, so barren

So utterly complete without urge

Shining brightly

Under the sun’s pitiless

Inquiring gaze

Heat waves wiggle up from the soil

Whose earth-moist aroma

Penetrates the goat odor finally

Hot pungent earth-smell, dank and musty

That causes the small ground-scurrying animals to sit up

Wherever they happen to be  

Making themselves heedlessly vulnerable

But for me there is no pleasant reverie

For I must fetch feed for the goats,

Grain to supplement the grasses and bushes

They gnaw on so constantly

It is no wonder they suffer as they do

From painful teeth and bleeding lips

Yes the sun’s warmth is good

But it is also a cause of some anxiety

For perhaps the pleasantness of the day

That transforms this place into a worthwhile visitors’ spot

Will bring some person to these hills

In search of wildflowers

One who does not know

There are no flowers here

Except very small ones

That come late in the season

And are within days entirely eaten by the goats

So that each year there are fewer of them

Just as there are fewer goats each year

And each year less of me

After Alberto Caeiro (4)

When will I die?

And does it matter

Is it even sensible

This question of when?

The goats do not think such things

They do not question, laugh, or cry

They have no need to do so

As I must

So it may be that goats do not die

Because to think of dying

Which is not possible to do

Except as a groping, urging one onward

In time

Is to die

And not to think

Of dying

To have no such word, no such thought, no such question

No such emotion or lack of emotion

Associated with such a thought or word

Is not to die, so goats do not die?

And if as it may be

My own thought of death

Is a self-reflexive impasse

A waiting room at the frontiers of thought

Full of benches and walls

Constructed from confusion

A reflex of the language I speak

A crude local dialect

And therefore not really a thought of death at all

But simply an expression of fear, my own fear

Or perhaps a fear I have received from the goats

Who have no other means of expressing fear

Save through me

Or is if not that then possibly my dialect itself

Expressing its locale and limit

Then it is possible I too do not die

After Alberto Caeiro (5)

From this hilltop

I can see the sun

Setting to the west

Becoming a blazing red ball

That flattens and resolves into a thin red line

That enflames the clouds

Enrobing them in yellow

As my life is enrobed in goat

Summer evenings are peaceful

The goats are quiet

In the dying of the light

Darkness comforts them as it does me

And they do not much mind the cold

That still comes with the darkness

Since they do not know it as cold

But only live it as sensation

The only possible sensation

And not even known as that

They cannot therefore complain of the cold

It does not matter to them

And it is possible that the cold

Does not exist for them

Surely it does not

But for me the cold

That seeps

Into the corners of my soul

Even this time of year

Brings strong bitterness

For it makes me remember the winter cold

That I cannot let go of

That has become my chief thought

Accompanying all other thoughts

That come to mind

The defining feature of my life

Shape of my mood and temperament

Cause of the curses I fling upward to the sky

Against a God I seem not to believe in

Yet persistently blame

Even without naming Him

Or acknowledging Him

For the wound that is my life

This God

That in my resistance and despair

Lives more fully

Than He ever has

In prayers and observances

In the choirs of churches

In thinking

In sensation

In the emotion

Of being here among goats

Dumb undying aromatic stubborn goats

That will never go away

That do not die and do not know

They have been born

Here among the silences of spaces darkened and lit

And too seldom warmed

By the sun

That seems to want to go and return

Without cease and without ever once

Stopping its relentless movement

This God lives and quietly fails

To console

Other than in

Listening to these words

I have been speaking

It turns out to Him

Not to you, dear reader,

He Who unlike you

Does not mock

Or judge for good or ill

But only

Without sighing or bitterness

And without explicit response

But with a totality of covering absence

And equanimous clarity

Causes the words to echo

So that my heart hears them

And is comforted

More than a person could comfort

More than a goat