“Blake”


saw them glittering in the trees,

their quills erect among the leaves,

angels everywhere. we need new words

for what this is, this hunger entering our

loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays

of hope. we need the flutter that can save

us, something that will swirl across the face

of what we have become and bring us grace.

back north, i sit again in my own home

dreaming of blake, searching the branches

for just one poem.



(from The Terrible Stories, 1996)




BONUS CONTENT:

In 1765 at the age of 8, William Blake saw his first vision while walking on Peckham Rye. ‘A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.’.


“On Peckham Rye (by Dulwich Hill) it is, as he will in after years relate, that while quite a child, of eight or ten perhaps, he has his 'first vision.' Sauntering along, the boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. Returned home he relates the incident, and only through his mother's intercession escapes a thrashing from his honest father, for telling a lie.” (from The Life of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist, 1863)




I see you as a visionary poet. And I put you in the same continuum as Blake.
I like Blake. I have a poem about Blake [in The Terrible Stories].

Blake and Whitman and Yeats and Clifton—what do you say to that continuum?
I like those people! [laughter] Yeats I think is wonderful. People never talk about his mysticism.

It’s all over the place, and it’s all over your poetry, too.It probably is.

“Blake”


The sun is on the roof,
the laundry is drying in the light.
Air moves around me and I prepare.
Make a gift of myself. Make my feet soft,
and think of Blake riding
near the tops of trees
past our house.


The bread is in the oven and we die.
The day is spread and we delay.
Blake already is in the sky.
What is joy in this dark room?
What is light to this?
All night the ghosts of disperse,
of chaos, flee through my dreaming.


I would not repent. Though the world
separated into all its parts
and could not go back.
Get out! Get out! Get out! I shouted,
until I could not tell if anything was left
to talk to that had ears. Still refused.
Then the sun smiled, and Christ smiled,
and my laundry grew soft in the warm wind.
There. See there. The world is good to me.
I am finished with knife and window.
My bed will be underground soon enough.
I will persist in this permanence
that flesh holds. The body smooth,
the voices speaking within.


Blake comes down, calling me.
Says this is the time.
The sea is hitting the rocks.
The light is crushed and flies up,
back to the sun.
Rejoice in the breaking of the light.
Rejoice when you are two and one.
In the leaving and the coming home.
Rejoice in the room that awaits you,
empty except for the empty glass.


I fly up. Disappear inside of him.
It is grand. I see the simple cow,
a red-tailed hawk and a lamb.
The creek with the small fish in it,
and sounds of the sea at the edge of a field.
The sound of it lightly under the trees.
Birds whistling. Wind and leaves mixing
in the slightly swollen heat.
The sound of the sea in his mind.


The glass is spilling.
They both shine in that room,
water and spilling light.


You you can listen to Linda Gregg read this poem online here: https://voca.arizona.edu/track/id/65956