The Changeling

BLOSSOM

Mary Oliver
from American Primitive

In April
the ponds
open
like black blossoms,

the moon
swims in every one;
there's fire
everywhere: frogs shouting

their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron

hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights

in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thurst
from the root

of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet

we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most

thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals,
into the fire,

into the night where time lies shattered,
into the body of another.


The Fairy Dwelling on Selena Moor

Once a Mr. Noy was taking a short cut across the moor, when he became lost. When at last he saw lights ahead he thought he had come to a farmhouse, but upon reaching it his horse and dogs would not approach. He went ahead through an orchard towards a house, and saw many people feasting and dancing. All were richly dressed but seemed quite small to Mr. Noy, then he noticed a girl dressed in white and taller than the others.

He approached the girl and she asked that he follow her to the orchard, away from the others. Once they were in the quiet he recognized her as Grace his sweetheart who was thought to have died several years before.

Grace was pleased to see him but told him that she was glad that she had stopped him before he could take a drink or eat any of the food, for if he were to do so he would be trapped forever. That was what had befallen her, she said. One evening when she was out on the moor she had heard Mr. Noy's voice and went towards him, but became lost and wandered for hours until she came to the orchard. She was so hungry that she picked a plum from one of the trees, and at once fell into a faint. When she awoke she was surrounded by the little people, who were well pleased that they had a girl to look after their children and bake and brew for them.

She was more content with what had befallen her now, she said, but Mr. Noy hoped to save the both of them. He turned his gloves inside out and threw them into the midst of the fairy gathering. At once everything, including Grace, vanished and Mr. Noy felt something hit his head and fell to the ground.

Mr. Noy was found later by friends and told them his story, but like many mortals who have been to fairyland he soon lost interest in the mortal world.


- William Bottrell, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of Cornwall

***


CHANGELING (1)

2003

She has changed in my soul's eye
as I rowed isle to isle in search
of her: Her eyes from blue to green,
her hair from blonde to red
to a mellow auburn; the swoon
of her once-revealing breasts
has lowered to the sight of
her walking away from me.
At first it was my historic row
with her, each night a chase,
each bed a beckons beyond
which I had no sense or smarts
to follow. Then it was my history's
scriptorium, as I wrote down
the story of each encounter,
weaving spoory myths around
her nightly thrall. Now it
seems I just boat the narrow
straits inside the story, and
I do not see her at all, just blue
beckons, red plunge, the ebbing
tide of farewell. Her song was first
snatched from the faintest breeze
piping from the flimsiest reed,
but it has grown as it dove down
through all the tenors of a
salt orchestra, piccolo to flute
to bassoon to doublebass, on
down to a grand tolling organ,
whose vox humana notes grind
the oceans from the lowest,
basalt bass. Deep and deeper
do I find her, down the long
shelves and arras of the abyss,
down to the very crack of doom
which splits the sea-beds wide.
And in that malefic fire I salt
her female swoon, all my ends
crowned there with her O Gods,
her heart-bursting O Yes. Will
it ever end, this blue descent
into the matins of the muse?
Do I even care? For if every day
there's fresh milk and strewn
underwear then I can row forever,
a changeling at the oar who
became wavelike in his roar,
racing over seas all night of
a life to psalm each day's greeting
on the next new nippled shore,
my inkwell ever changing
the hues of her dolor
- though the pulse is singular
and just one heart I know houses
the whole symphonic pour
of her parallelling vicissitudes,
of her every dawning door.



CHANGELING (2)

March 3, 2006

she speaks

Death only appears
ward me; instead I
fizzed into pure
lucence on a night-borne
wave. This beach only
seems bone-washed
in the hard bulb of the
moon; mist your eyes
and look askance
and far glamours
silver the strand.
The surf intones
her sursurrant sigh
and its crashings
wraith dark gears
working below,
panoplies of thrust
and suction oiled
with the sweat
of lovers thrashing
under sandy bedcovers.
And I'm not even there,
not now, nor ever,
though your dream's glass
ever passes those sands
back and forth in thrall.
Your heart senses me
just outside its
rim of feeling with a
certainty not faith
but close, beyond
the such words,
tantalizing and
frustrating as a brassiere
that teenaged boy
still in you can't
quite unclasp. As your
history is dead to me,
so you are my phosphor,
my fey lover man, sidhe
to my every woman-like
longing. I stand in the garden
of your 4 a.m. and watch
you writing me wretched
in the words you mound,
failing in any blossom enough
way to say what the surf
so surely propounds me.
Yet here I remain, ever
faithful in the bowers
of pale moonlight down
the garden shore. You
cried and reached for a woman
walking from the room
I filled when she was gone,
the augment of desire which
hallows every broken bone
which fills the sundered heart,
the arching roof of your
cathedral ache which no
wave or booze or woman's
Yes was ever meant to slake.
My tribe has gathered on
this shore with your every sad
farewell, one life emptied
slow filled this other side
with the resonance of
ebbing sighs, the toll of
all those farewells belling
pale and blue this garden's
buds which in spring moonlight
now break and ring a high
strange distant music,
sweet and dangerously lush,
the inside scent of love
which can neither last nor die.
My hair is wreathed in
of orange blossoms,
arousing faint and sure
the glamour of a dancing
ground where you and I
become pure welcome,
sweet and bottomless
as the echo of far surf
in every loving sound.