Two Poems by Addison Schoeman

Friday Evening, parts I-III

I

Capillary action in the candle,

And one’s respective light upon the wall

Like an old aura from a dream dispersed;

The twinkling of keys; the sad, chiming tune

That is the solitary room’s content;

The image, in the mind, of being out

And lively as a pigeon commingling,

Or in the oval bathtub, purpling

The water’s touch, as pyramids at dusk;

As a local hill, mist-dipped, might wager

The expectation one will be fulfilled

With diurnal knowledge that one will not:

This is desire. This is where it’s made.

One’s expectation is itself complete,

A crescent figure in the open moon.

II

Desire is the open figure: a moon

Half-bitten, a shadow on the desert

Or sky, whose outlines draw around what’s left.

To let desire form itself from what

The body knows: longing for the same light

One sees at sundown, glutting after warmth

One feels in faces as they touch, the heart

Is bulbous, blown. How should one seek one’s blood

Outside its cup? The heart encodes only

What it has seen; a silver aperture,

Or solemn valve. Between the head and heart

As between the earth and moon, a system

Of invisible copper pipes connects

The boiling vapor of the body’s lines

To the evanescent, blooming half-world.

III

When one shares a shard of peach with Eros,

And the pink pith is swallowed from his gums,

And turns the rays of stomach into light

Glimmering the body as particles

Moistly mint the air with spectral color,

Does one lament its ultimate passage?

Should one not stage the hunger deep behind?

The textured peach is porridge, where the breath

Of Eros always breathes. One’s pangs; one’s thirst

For elements outside the self; one’s total

Abandonment of the interior,

When the interior is draped with paths

Of vertical gold, of self-sustaining

Evening. . . one flees completeness; for Eros,

Oizys goes hungry; peaches drip to dirt.

The Whole Square

   The dragonfly suns. I sun

too, in November’s air. In November’s light,

   sight is a thing for seeing: no longer

summer’s joy-monger; not the unopened door

   anymore—

   but the red insect

on the black-and-white sign; the glitter

   in the lingering, lowering

pine. So the towering holly

   never flowers.

Its dark leaves’ prickles

are the red berry’s eaves.

   November makes it known that glowing

is a property of the interaction between the leaves

   of chicory, and those

of the late afternoon sun.

   Suppose the rays of summer rose

here, in November, and made the insect

   disappear—

   Would it recall fall’s clarity?

Would the blaring aspen blare?

   Is it that the light, here, wrapped in foliage

and red, is more essential, having traveled further?

Could it be a mere autumnal fervor?

   Should the light free itself,

and split its carapace of sky,

would there await a porousness,

   like lace, in all things

corresponding to its tap?

   Would you see it

in the scarlet oak

   and foaming at the edges of the cataract,

in the categorical totality;

   in the sedges?

Or would it be as bristles

   in hedges: indistinguishable,

dark.