Sometimes I think we can see
the world before it began,
and that’s what makes us
so sad. Before the world began
there were swallows flying
across a lakeside field
as the sun allowed the trees to shade it.
There were leaves fallen
during dry seasons that made
a golden road. And there was
silver and stone and clover,
and a man on horseback
with a dog with no tail
that loped across the field
in a lazy semi-crescent as though
drawing the orbit of a small moon.
There was a burro
on a ten foot length of rope
stomping a dust patch in the earth.
And there were pelicans
with injured wings handfed
by a waiter and so many willows –
so many! growing by the water’s edge.
There was the clink of bottles
before the world began
and so its sound still
makes us melancholy
the way ice can, booming
on a river in spring
or tilling a glass in a woman’s hand.
Stones, too, uncovered from earth
pockmarked with clam houses,
and also clams. And pianos, there were
pianos, their cascade made us
restless – they could not offer
nuance greater than the half note.
Things kept coming
before the world began, and stacked
and tumbled over themselves
in drifts like snow,
insensible. The world
before the world was annotated,
expansive, all the stones
the boys could throw
never hesitating once to feel
glory, to feel jealousy,
boredom, and the nostalgia
the grass feels as it clambers
above itself, and loses
its former lives in the clean,
disintegrating thatch
and dust and clay.
The sadness of the alternate
armed rower, who walked his boat
to shore! The sadness of the far shore
and the thud of a foot against a ball,
the bent hook of wire hanging
from a tree’s lost branch stub,
the question in the ibis’ voice,
the sudden flash of a red bird
like a compass of ink in the brush.
Before the world began
there were bells that never
rang the correct time, and wings
and spheres of sad eggs in water.
The burrow walked in his circle
and the carpenter never saw
his children further
than 6th grade. He never
painted his room yellow or cooked
on anything but a burner
on a board. And the neighbour,
after the party, she never
gave the plate back though
she said she would,
she always said she would.