Kevin John Hart

Say wood and everything is clean again.
The word is all around you, like the night,
Impossible to grasp. Your mouth is dark.
...

There is a silence words can’t touch.
There is.
And there’s a name inside my name
Though one my mother never said out loud
...

There is a radiance inside the winter woods
That calls each soul by name:
Wind in young boughs, trees shaking off thick coats of snow,
...

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.
The dark has taken root on all four walls.
It is a room where knots stare out from wood,
A room that turns its back on the whole house.
...

Dark One, it is the summer now: the evenings feel
Beneath my shirt, and it is good.
The trees, they sway a little when they get high,
And higher still the nests and stars are quiet.
...

(after Tu Fu)
All day fat brooding clouds blow by
But you, old friend, don't come to town.
Instead, you're lit in dreams three nights
As though your spirit's running down.

When we must part you always sigh,


'Wife, kids ... it's hard to leave the fray,'
'Besides, the dough ... the fuckin' flights.'
Your smile says, 'Life's just gone astray.'
DC's new crop of boys gets high
While you, sad friend, stand still and wave.
And you, don't prate of 'Dream' and 'rights':
My friend can't dream inside the grave.
...

'Two boys are hanging there,' my sister said,
Ind'Two dirty ones like you.'
'Our father strung 'em up last week,' she said,
Ind'By now they'll be quite blue.'

My parents' room had curtains always drawn
IndAnd shadows flush with ears,
The wardrobe lived inside that darker world
IndWith shouts and cries and tears.

That wardrobe creaked across my dreams all week
IndIt knew where bad boys are,
Its door would spring full open in my face
IndAnd fling a smell of tar.

And then one day, when everyone was out,
IndI — slowly — turned the lock:
I saw the dead boys in my winter coats
IndAnd ran right round the block.
...

If there was only a hunk of bread, days old,
If there was only a glass of something strong
(And candles feasting in the simple cold),
If there was only a woman, hands like song;

If there was only an evening playing blues
(And fireflies flickering along the road),
If there were only trees that froze in queues,
If there was only a heel of bread, days old ...
...

My gentle father died when day was young,
When there was very little left to take:
Gray face, a raft of bones, a bitter ache,
A word or two still living on my tongue.

There's bread that only dying men can eat,
Worn words that only weary men can say.
Sometimes those wispy words just slip away,
Sometimes that gritty bread falls on a sheet.

In those last days my dad ate nothing much;
His words were mostly gnawing at warm air.
Dark One, I'll be the one to smooth his hair.
You be the one who lets him know my touch.
...

There is a silence words can't touch.
There is.
And there's a name inside my name
Though one my mother never said out loud

She never said it, never once, although
She knew there was another name
That sleeps inside my name



Sleep now, old name,
For no one wants to know of you

My mother, she is dead these dozen years
And she is grown so small
She sleeps inside my name when it is said

I think she sleeps
Within that other name as well, more deeply, far
More quietly, turning only once or twice
Inside that paradise



Sleep now, old love,
It is too late to say a word to you
...

When the last day comes
A ploughman in Europe will look over his shoulder
And see the hard furrows of earth
Finally behind him, he will watch his shadow
Run back into his spine.

It will be morning
For the first time, and the long night
Will be seen for what it is,
A black flag trembling in the sunlight.
On the last day

Our stories will be rewritten
Each from the end,
And each will hear the fields and rivers clap
And under the trees

Old bones
Will cover themselves with flesh;
Spears, bullets, will pluck themselves
From wounds already healed,
Women will clasp their sons as men

And men will look
Into their palms and find them empty;
There will be time
For us to say the right things at last,
To look into our enemy's face

And see ourselves,
Forgiven now, before the books flower in flames,
The mirrors return our faces,
And everything is stripped from us,
Even our names.
...

There is a radiance inside the winter woods
That calls each soul by name:
Wind in young boughs, trees shaking off thick coats of snow,

The rattle of frozen rain on a barn roof: all these
Will help you lose your way
And find a silence older than the sky

That makes our being here a murmur only,
That makes me walk along the river
Beyond where it has flooded itself

While freezing over, past these dead firs,
The great assembly of cedars,
So that I must say, I do not know why I am here,

And move around in those few words
And feel their many needles
Upon my lips and warm them on my tongue

Though I say nothing, for it is a calm
Beyond the calm I know
That wants to talk now, after all these years

Of hearing me say spruce, wind, cloud and face,
Not knowing the first thing about them all,
Not knowing the simplest thing,

That every word said well is praise:
And someone deep inside me wants to say
I am not lost but there are many paths!

While someone else will whisper back,
So you are on the longest quest of all,
The quest for home, and not appear

Though I have walked along the river now
These good five miles
While letting wind push me a little way

And letting thoughts grow slow and weak
Before I feed them words, for what
Is told to me this afternoon

Is simply river , with each Iand itdissolved,
A cold truth but a truth indeed
Held tight on the way back

Past curves and forks, as evening takes hold,
A strange light all the way
That falls between the words that I would use

When talking of this strangeness or this light
So that I speak in small, slow breaths
Of evening, cedar, cone and ice

In words that stick to skin -
...

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.
The dark has taken root on all four walls.
It is a room where knots stare out from wood,
A room that turns its back on the whole house.

At night I hear the crickets list their griefs
And let an ancient peace come into me.
Sleep intercepts my prayer, and in the dark
The house turns slowly round its one closed room.
...

At times my name gets tired of me
And wanders off into the dark:
Some times it claws me with a bark
Some times it leaves me almost free

And then I cannot see a thing
And flesh is barely tied to soul:
Those nights the density of coal
Those nights when I am not a king

Then hours bunch up to watch me fall
And I am turned into a prayer:
Some nights I circle God's dark lair
Some nights an endless night is all
...

Say wood and everything is clean again.
The word is all around you, like the night,
Impossible to grasp. Your mouth is dark.

A splinter found its way into your quick.
That old tree slit by lightning won't be moved.
Last year's thin rain froze hard inside a trunk

And now a honey flesh shines through cracked bark.
Your mouth is dark. Go far into yourself,
Let quietness gather there, then say the word.
...

Dark One, it is the summer now: the evenings feel
Beneath my shirt, and it is good.
The trees, they sway a little when they get high,
And higher still the nests and stars are quiet.

Those wasps my children fear
Are tight in their mud house, near lax electric wires,
And those two girls, dipped in a humid day,
Are deepening in sleep;

And I am left alone
With you inside those wild electric wires out there
And playing with my half-unbuttoned shirt
And growing in those shady leaves

And in a black and yellow summer sting


A single word can darken the widest room
Even in summer:
glass all through my bread
For year on year


Yet I would give
This sunburned air for just one word,
Dark One,

Even a word that filled my mouth with blood;

But you keep quiet,
Just hiding there, behind my death,
For year on year

Your voice—
I would give up this champagne light

To know it just once more,
Even if sheathed in a sparrow's song,

A flash
Of a sparrow's outstretched wings,

Or the memory of that sparrow
That smashed into my windowpane
In a black storm


Untuned Spring: the young grass flirts
With stringy weeds; the tanagers
Sing with a splash of Spanish; wind
Saves gobs of old man snow in shade.

Between big awkward chords, I push
Stiff windows high, tack on new screens,
And taste this sweet old thing: chill air
That's brushed some baby leaves of oak.

You're here as well, Dark One, so where's
Your hidey hole? The kettle's hiss,
My daughter's drawing of our cat,
That crumbling wasp nest by the door?
...