Free Wild Gratitude by Edward Hirsch

1
                             
May I, composed like them
                             
Of Eros and of dust,
                             
Beleaguered by the same
                             
Negation and despair,
                             
Show an affirming flame.
                                 —W.H. A UDEN
I Need Help
    For all the insomniacs in the world
    I want to build a new kind of machine
    For flying out of the body at night.
    This will win peace prizes, I know it,
    But I can’t do it myself; I’m exhausted,
    I need help from the inventors.
    I admit I’m desperate, I know
    That the legs in my legs are trembling
    And the skeleton wants out of my body
    Because the night of the rock has fallen.
    I want someone to lower a huge pulley
    And hoist it back over the mountain
    Because I can’t do it alone. It is
    So dark out here that I’m staggering
    Down the street like a drunk or a cripple;
    I’m almost a hunchback from trying to hold up
    The sky by myself. The clouds are enormous
    And I need strength from the weight lifters.
    How many nights can I go on like this
    Without a single light from the sky: no moon,
    No stars, not even one dingy street lamp?
    I want to hold a rummage sale for the clouds
    And send up flashlights, matchbooks, kerosene,
    And old lanterns. I need bright, fiery donations.
    And how many nights can I go on walking
    Through the garden like a ghost listening
    To flowers gasping in the dirt—small mouths
    Gulping for air like tiny black asthmatics
    Fighting their bodies, eating the wind?
    I need the green thumbs of a gardener.
    And I need help from the judges. Tonight
    I want to court-martial the dark faces
    That flare up under the heavy grasses—
    So many blank moons, so many dead mouths
    Holding their breath in the shallow ground,
    Almost breathing. I have no idea why
    My own face is never among them, but
    I want to stop blaming myself for this,
    I want to hear the hard gavel in my chest
    Pounding the verdict, “Not guilty as charged,”
    But I can’t do this alone, I need help
    From the serious men in black robes.
    And because I can’t lift the enormous weight
    Of this enormous night from my shoulders
    I need help from the six pallbearers of sleep
    Who rise out of the slow, vacant shadows
    To hoist the body into an empty coffin.
    I need their help to fly out of myself.
Fall
    Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
    Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
    That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
    Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
    With the final remaining cardinals) and then
    Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
    Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
    At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
    In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
    And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
    Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
    Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
    A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
    Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
    Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
    Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
    Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
    Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
    Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
    From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
    Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
    Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
    Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
    And every year there is a brief, startling moment
    When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
    Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
    Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
    It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
    It is the changing light of fall falling on