Free An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky by Dan Beachy-Quick Page B

too—when the time comes—Love ,
    The letters grew shorter. He stopped writing our last name on the envelopes; they simply said—
    Son, my Son ,
    Do you know how much of the world is real? All of it is .
    It is dangerous to speak and it is dangerous not to speak .
    Beneath the song other songs exist;
    beneath the myth other myths .
    The chasm-world is open .
    Songs are doors. Singers betray thresholds .
    Death is a chasm under life. The song sings it open.
    Dark ink on white page.
    Opposites embrace when they collide.
    The song is a form of life that does not deny death.
    Dreams do not teach us to sing but show us there is a song.
    The song is a form of death that does not deny life.
    Every singer is also sung.
    Love ,
    Father’s last letter regained a clarity I thought wholly abandoned—at least, it began so—
    Dear Son ,
    The ship will leave me on the island tomorrow. It will sail away and leave me here. You might receive no letters from me for some time, and I want you not to worry. I will be with the old singer, learning. And when I’ve learned—
    (and here his handwriting changed, lost the canny precision of his cursive hand, closed letters remaining open, a lower case e whose line never crossed fully into its semicircle, an o incomplete)
    I will arrive in
    your dream and tell you—and I won’t be alone—
    Love ,

CHAPTER 8
    I PUT THE LETTERS AWAY AND WENT TO BED. OLD WATER in the water glass on the bedside table. I could taste time in the water when I drank it, stale metal in my mouth. I left the window open even though the spring night was cold. The house empty save for me, would the night breeze increase its absence? Lydia was a name I said to myself in the silence of my head. Stale metal in the head.

    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  father sits in my bed reading
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  the book I am reading
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  is the book I am writing mysteriously bound
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  it’s about me he says
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  his eyes are pale he says come with me
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  father walks outside the house and out
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  across the lawn he peers in at the window
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  the study has a lamp lit on the desk
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  the moth thinks it is a moon
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  he says the study is mine it’s about me
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  he says follow me his feet remove the dew
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  from the grass from every blade of grass
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  the dew wets the cement under his feet as he walks
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  I walk behind him
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  he isn’t singing but there is a song
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  in the apple tree in blossom on the rise
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  my father points at himself he is sitting
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  in the midst of the blossoms singing all alone
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  and when he sees me my father
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  stops his song and says
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  both of them say my fathers both say
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  I looked back and I failed

    I woke before the alarm and heard the alarm click before the radio’s voice began speaking. Investigators believe the poet fell off a cliff on the backside of the volcano. They cannot find his body. Investigators report they found the poet’s footprints near the crater of the volcano. They think he had injured his leg; that he hadweakened. At the cliff’s edge the footprints disappear. No one could survive the fall. Further search has been canceled. I clicked the radio off and in the half darkness went to the study. I pulled out the novel and put it on the desk. I picked it up again. Its heft is some form of life that is also my own. The night’s