Two by Dan Bellm

[arielblue.livejournal.com]

Both of these are from Dan Bellm's book One Hand on the Wheel (The Roundhouse Press, 1999).

Hands

Here, scarred over nicely, is where the tip was sawed away -- Working
yourself down to bone there were bound to be accidents
in the tender places -- Here, the thumb of your right hand
got reattached, but at a slant: I like to imagine I feel
a lost tenderness coming to you again
as the tension drains from your fingers -- I mean, the life -- the two of us holding

hands like little brothers, and though you don't hold
mine back you can't pull yours away. Whole days I sit and do the work
of talking for the both of us, easier now, knowing you won't wake again,
but I think you hear me, thanking, forgiving -- no accident
it's me, Dad, your mortal enemy and friend -- I think you can feel
my hands in yours, bone to bone, your hands

going cold on me that were so strong your handshakes
hurt but I could kill you now, I could hold
you down and make you stay, make you feel
proud of me that for once I'd done some real work
with my hands -- Oh wait -- I only notice by accident
you were gone a minute -- you've started breathing again,

that relinquishing groan, your last lung rising up against
the bedsheet, your mouth the gaping O of a saint handing
over his life in a trance, Isaac blessing the second son by accident,
fooled by blindness -- Did I scare you? -- Don't go -- I haven't held
your hands since I was a child, they're so cool and soft, but that's death, working
harder even than you -- It's strange -- I didn't know I'd feel

happy in the end and does it mean our struggle is done that I feel
happy, with your blessing or not, not really wanting you back again
but wanting the farewell to last? I see you leaving for work,
the unresponding God eternally going away, your hands
in fists. I see you one afternoon in '68 holding
two fists in the air and crying in shame -- there's been an accident --

the radiator cap as you turned it flew up by accident
and boiling fluid sprayed over your hands -- as much as the pain you feel
ashamed to be crying, and mad that I saw, and turn your back. I see you holding
one hand down to hammer and hack and burn it again
and again, see you lifting more weight into your hands
than your back can hold. O discoloring skin, unmarrowing bone, o working

armor: any baby, first thing, will grasp at a touch and hold on but I feel
your hands now working themselves away, unfathering me -- What an accident
of death that they begin to look like infant hands, as if you will live again.



Consolation

Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,
et vitam venturi saeculi.

After I kiss his forehead lightly once
goodbye,

after the closing of the box,

where does his suffering go --
of course it's the Catholic heaven
he expects, the resurrection of the body
and the life of the world to come

but where does his suffering go --

I mean whatever of it
that is not part of me --

The fearsomeness of his face has been
drained now and recomposed,
injected with a semblance of spirit,
the lips held shut, so like himself,
but with a semblance of rest

because in heaven
the pain of the body and soul is supposed
to be forgotten and past but it is lost,

or does it suffer without him on earth
and where does it remain
to wait
for more life --

Most of the universe is missing
but it isn't lost,
I expect it's here somewhere, world without end,
hiding in plain sight,

all the suffering banished from God's heaven,
all the imploded substance
and the trapped light.