Jesse Ball - The Village on Horseback - Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

I am setting out this morning for a funeral, my own

at a place not of my choosing.

With a telescope, you see from far away

what you will look like after a while,

but this

you cannot see:

for the plot is small, and it rains so soon after.

Yes, the skin feat! And my kissing of your hands!

I run out of the house to where you are standing with

your bags.

I embrace you, I raise you up — I am strong

and you are very little.

You are coming to live with me. Everyone you know

has vanished in a plague.

UP and DOWN the halls of the house we go merrily.

I have made you a room, and set you a bed.

I have given you paper for letters — though there’s no

one to write to.

We will eat together and sit with wild thoughts mulling.

My hair is growing longer and so is yours—

my wife will shear it off, will hold us like sheep

and shear us.

I want to show you the town where I play my tricks—

for they are quiet tricks,

yes, quiet tricks

and no one knows I play them.

What ends this story of the skin feat? I find

I have explained it badly.

I worry that you will go back along this bridge of hands

and not carry my book with you.

The sun is climbing in the sky—

and out past the fence you can see figures

walking the road’s edge.

I am looking now at the map of your life,

at all the rooms, the roads, the lawns and hallways.

You have dreamed of it, and you will dream of it again.

A light breeze blowing, a season ending—

you find a small house

and the windows lit.

Who is there, waiting, pacing the room?

Is it one, or many — are they saying your name again and

again?

What is violent? What is beautiful?

What aches, what falls?

You are running and you will be caught.

Your very legs will fall apart, and you will still live.

And when you die others will forget you. So soon they

will scour your name.

I tell you this because of my heart

that wakes me and wakes me

and wakes me with its beating.

Jesse Ball is the author of The Curfew (Vintage 2011), Samedi the Deafness (Vintage 2007), The Way Through Doors (Vintage 2009), Vera & Linus (Nyhil 2006), Og svo kom nóttin (Nyhil 2006), and March Book (Grove 2004). His novella, The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr, won the Plimpton Prize in 2008. His work has been translated into many languages and work of his was included in Best American Poetry 2006. He is currently an assistant professor at the Art Institute of Chicago.