The Land

The Land

The dream companion, me, but more persuasive,
whispered the cantrip on the first night
I was afraid to sleep, after my sixtieth
birthday when my final friends,
all aging, all some way bereft,
came down, a-down a-down-o
mocking me, gently, but mocking all the same.

“Come on,” he said, this voice from the stranger’s
side of my bed, “come go with me.
Let’s go together, into the Land!”

The city’s not my thick, particular New York.
An open, fertile plain replaces Central Park,
where campesinos bend to their fragrant crops,
sun-scoured, stooped but not bowed, and beckon me
to the harvest, before the harvest time is past.
And yes, it’s hard to leave the fields:
my subway line is air-borne there, and there’s no schedule.
Cling to a handle, bang on the door that doesn’t always open,
Slip through the cracks, and down, a-down, a-down-o.

But still, “Let’s go, come on along with me,
let’s go together, into the Land!”

The grand house on the hill’s no longer mine. Relative
strangers haunt it. I’m the cook. The stove’s on fire,
the glassware cracks, the roast is burnt, the sauce is sludge,
and the dead smile, passing down a-down-o,
mocking me, gently, but still mocking.
And yes, it’s hard to leave the house I lived in, long ago.
The cars are all bespoke, the trains are gone, I’ve missed the bus,
you can’t get here from there.

Again, “Come go along with me, come on,
we’ll go together, into the Land!”

The water in the harbor down below
the blooming city and the burning house
teems with fish as long as I’ll be when I am a fish
with teeth. A yacht is foundering on the farther shore,
though the day is calm. There’s a skiff I could use,
if I could find it, to reach a picnic on the beach
where everyone I never came to know is dancing
down a-down a-down-o: they all laugh at me,
gently, but it still stings. And I’m too tired for this.
The weather’s gone all tricksy, permanently,
and who are they to me, this endless afternoon?

Insistent: “Come on, go, let’s go together
into the Land.” Tonight, again a visitor, yes, I will.

An uphill torrent cuts the Land in half,
But no one needs the obol or the skiff.
It’s swimmable. I’m in a bathroom, but the toilets
are befouled, just when I need to pee – but don’t I take pills
for that? Sometimes, without a script,
I’m starring in a play I do not know. But that’s
my failure’s fault, and not the Land’s. And the trains
that run a-down a-down on someone else’s time;
my neighborhood a maze of bricked-up cul-de-sacs –
they’re only side effects my doctor warns me of.

And so far I can wake, the monsters in the water harmless,
the sinking ship afloat again, my city solid, and my dead still dead.
But nowadays a backflash from the Land, caught in the mirror
as I brush my teeth and meet my muddy eyes,
persists, not beckoning, just here
and gone again. A souvenir of sorts.
Not bad to visit, but will I want to stay there?
Who knows? But we must sing a-down a-down-o
and there will be no guide, last time we hear, “Come on,
you’ll go, it’s time to go, go on now, into the Land.”