Table of Contents
The Calling of the Elect to Heaven
The Dead Go Down to the Stygian Waters
Waking Hungover in a Field, 1979
Also by Eric Pankey
The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984–2008 Reliquaries Oracle Figures Cenotaph The Late Romances Apocrypha Heartwood For the New Year
for Clare and Rob
There ain’t no dark till something shines
— Townes Van Zandt
I.
The Sacrifice
Gradually, the blood drains:
A thousand words never meant for scripture.
Still hunkered on the mountain ridge,
The moon: a saline ghost, a mouth
Opened around a hollow syllable.
When we move toward the sacrifice,
God lifts as a swarm — a body of flies —
As sated as God ever is.
A Bird Loose in the House
The frame — a grid — contrives a theater,
A shadow-play alive on a curtain alive with wind.
Call the bird
The arbitrary inventoried in its variety,
Or