Hilary Clark - revenant 1

Queer ghost whose aspect is focused backwards . . .
Jennifer Moxley, “Behind the Orbits”

Queer revenant whose other face—Janus, owl-face—whose dark side
is glimpsed in a mirror, hinged—

Squint apparition whose profile, blurred—an aspect barely caught,
lighthanded—

                   whose home is a dictionary, a book of hours,
of dwindling accounts—
whose home is a mildewed bible, screen
of shrouded insects

                  whose presence is rarely noted—a word at the back
of the tongue, the word abandoned then found in a 20-year-old notebook,
a balled-up grocery list, unwanted flyer—a word saved before sleep
yet unlocatable in any of the morning’s files

Eccentric, spectral, poor Yorick—blackened scarecrow whose bones
the children play with behind the wasp-filled woodpile

                  whose body is beaten, crushed under our wheels, flung
over bridges—rendered bread for gulls and meat for eels, bottom-feeders

Alas, poor prince, whose book of venom—who, folded fatherless,
lingers in our poems—who, given to earth, returns

                               whose words return as hay wisps picked up
by birds, as bits of used paper and string

                               whose words are carried to the rooftops, elm tops,
steeples—trail from passing balloons

Slant shadow whose trace can be read only in the last moments
before sunrise—

                    who, persistent, haunts the ear’s inmost chamber,
the flickering cursor

                               cadence or watersurf, a dying fall—a dead thing
returns