Some Things I Said by David Ferry

Some Things I Said

writings on the wall
 

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I was the one who said
the ditch in the backyard was maybe a river
that had flowed from somewhere else and was flowing to
somewhere else
 

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I was the one who said where are you now?
 

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I was the one who told about the one whose photograph in
the book of Eakins’s photographs was of
a guy the perfection of his body was his doom, and
Shakespeare said so too
 

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Right there before my eyes was the one who said
where are you now? Where
are you Anne? I was the one
 

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Who saw how Aeneas lay there in the darkness watching the
light, the little motions of light moving around the ceiling
and telling him something
 

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I was the one whose mother’s voice called out of the urn
beseeching
 

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I was the one who said how the day light knocks at the lid in
vain
 

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I said be keep to your self be close be wall all dark
 

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I said good people are punished, like all the rest
 

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I said the boats on the river are taking it easy
 

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I said the brain in your head whispers
 

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I said death lives in our words
 

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I said how beautiful is the past, how few the implements,
and how carefully made
 

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I was the one who said
her body witness is, so also is her voice
 

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I said better not know too much too soon all about it
 

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where rhymes with beware, I said
 

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I said it is the body breathing,
the crib of knowing
 

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I wish I could recall now the lines written across my dream is what
I said
 

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I said the horse’s hooves know all about it, the sky’s statement of
oncoming darkness
 

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The fumes on the roof are visible and drifting away like
martyred souls, I said
 

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I said the knees of the committee touch each other under the
table, furtive in pleasure
 

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I said
Eurydice, My Father
 

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I said we huddle over the ice,
the two of us
 

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To squeeze from a stone its juice is her art’s happiness is
what I said
 

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I am the one who said,
I hum to myself myself in a humming dream
 

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And how we’re caught, I said,
In language: in being, in feeling, in acting. I said, it’s
exacting
 

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I said the sea upheld us, would not let us go nor drown us,
and we looked down say a million years, and there were the
fish
 

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See, the dead bloom in the dark, I said
 

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The nightjar feeds while flying softly, smiling, smiling, I said
 

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I said revenant whitefaced Death is walking not knowing
whether
 

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I said the formula on the blackboard said who are you
 

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I said Utnapishtim said to Gilgamesh blink of an eye
 

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I said where are you now    Where are you Anne
 

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Stanza my stone my father poet said
 

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vwx    stones and sticks
 

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The day doesn’t know what day it is, I said
 

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What’s in the way the sun shines down, I said
 

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I cried in my mute heart,
What is my name and nature