Psalm of the City-Dweller Gone Home, By April Bernard

There must be as many windows as possible, while the long

white ghost

floats from a hanger looped to the shade

Arcturus palsied, and tonight the moon

will be blotted

somewhere west of here

I’ve been looking for faces in the snow, the spit of ice

from ghost grass, the spangles of ice from the moon

The things that come out of my mouth

No longer trusting to memory, the man with rags to bind his feet

springs lightly as a deer across the shaggy meadow

The landscape will not yield to winter’s plow: The ones

I lusted after,

not knowing where lust would take me, or how

Mechanical rumbling of stars that shift in the bed of black;

and in their cold inadequate light we are urged to be afraid

They illume the streets, lamps holding new gases under glass,

indicate hideous bright new tones, creep up the meadow

Mice, wretched with winter, creep lightly as deer about the attic

If I wandered with bloody feet on this bitter night

and asked for God,

I would be afraid to find him

That sheet waved perpendicular by ice and wind, though

there is no wind

across the bitter skin of the moon

Colder now and tired, looking for God, as for my bitterest enemy

From “Psalms” by April Bernard. (Norton: $17.95.) 1993 Reprinted by permission.