i Escaping from allegoriesin the misty east, where inherited eventsbarnacle on the mind; where every gloved handshakemight be a finger pointing; you can’t lookin store windows without seeingreflections/remnants of privateerbones or methodist grandfathers with jawscarved as wood pulpits warningof the old evil; where not-quite-forgotten historiesmake the boards of lineal framefarmhouses rotten the fishermensit all day on old wharves facingneither sea-wards nor inland, mendingand untangling their old netsof thought and language is the law we ran west wantinga place of absoluteunformed beginning (the trainan arkupheld on the brain’s darkness) but the inner lakes remindedus too much of ancient oceansfirst flood: blood-enemy and substance(was our train likean ark or like a seasnake? and the prairies were so nearlyempty as prehistorythat each of thefew solid objects took some greatimplication, hidden butmore sudden than a signpost (like an inscribed shard, broken bowldug at a desert levelwhere they thoughtno man had been,or a burned bone) (every dwarf tree portentouswith twisted wisdom, thoughwe knew noapples grew there and that shape, gazingat nothingby a hooftrampled streamside:it couldhave been a centaur) and even the mountainsat the approach, wereconical, iconicagain:(tentsin the desert?
