An Allusion of the Unified Self:

The Journey through Jorie Graham and Jungs Archetypes

By Hannah Forkel
This essay examines Jorie Grahams poetry in a conceptual manner through
Jungian analysis to subsequently unfold the unconscious and allusive notion to the
unified self deeply rooted within the poem. The author of The Dream of the Unified
Field, Jorie Graham, is an abstract and philosophical poet, who pushes the boundaries of
language. In the title of her poem, the use of the word unified triggers the idea of Carl
Jungs unification of self from a psychological or scientific standpoint. Within Grahams
poetry, there is a physical science element, seen as written from a poetic female
otherness. By encompassing the elements of physical science, and carrying on a
tradition of expressing science within poetry. In academics, there is the assumption that
science and the humanities are not compatible. Science is a collective effort and Jungian
perceptions, such as the collective unconscious, does not exist without collective desires,
collective fears, collective anguish, and collective break down(Jung, 460). Creative
individuals, such as Jorie Graham, display these feelings whether they are poets or
scientists. The scientific elements can be seen in reading through her poetry as it can be
laden with artistic allusions, echoing at loud decibels, the best and worst aspects of
traditional Western culture. The struggle or ache in finding a meaning in existence
through discovering archetypes in experience, propels Grahams poetry and positions it as
a piece that can undergo Jungian analysis to reach a deeper understanding in the search
for the unified self.
Sigmund Freud, a father figure to Carl Jung, developed psychoanalysis in order to

Forkel 2

better understand the subconscious minds of individuals. He believed that everyone was
repressing past experiences and that they were manifesting themselves within prevalent
psychological disorders. A mature adult who was experiencing distinct problems could
undergo Freuds psychoanalysis methods in order to find the source of repression.
However, Carl Jung was also interested in psychology, seeking the source of what
motivates the human mind, and forming his stance more on a racial approach to the
collective unconscious as opposed to Freuds personal approach.
In 1953, Carl Jung published his book The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious. In this text, he focused on extracting universal patterns within human
nature that consequently moved him to conclude all human stories and experiences
combined into a limited amount of archetypal patterns such as the Anima and the
Animus. He considered that the existence of these patterns reinforced his concept of the
collective unconscious. These experiences, on a racial level of memory, would then
settle into a below unconscious level therefore forming the minds of humanity. In contrast
to Sigmund Freud, Jung felt that this collective unconscious was not accessible. When
ancestors experienced an event, it then became genetically wired into their collective
conscious.
Jung would regularly defend himself against charges of mysticism, however, in
recent studies, his theory of the collective unconscious has proved to possess an even
stronger scientific foothold. These studies have shown that offspring can genetically
inherit triggers of fear through the experiences of their parents. Traumatic, ancestral
experiences can carry and be measured through at least two generations (Callaway 2013).
This collection of experiences can then be passed down and the negative experiences, due

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to environmental factors, transmit easily due to their impact. These collective events then
lead to the structuring of archetypes found in The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious. With the collection of experience, they could be narrowed into specific
types. Thus, Jung perceived this collective unconscious as structured by distinctive
archetypes that were inherited and could be seen within the actions and attributes of
characters within literature.
With the background information of racial and genetic collection, Jung goes
deeper into the explanation of the conscious self. He saw the conscious self as having two
distinct layers. Jung termed the first layer, the identity an individual shows to others, the
mask. This layer is also seen as the conscious understanding of ones self image. The
mask is the identity an individual creates and then lives out every day within society.
As Jung traveled deeper into the conscious, the next layer he termed the dark
side or the shadow. This would serve as the inverse of the mask as the individuals
projection. Jung studied the shadow as the part an individual does not want to
recognize, but knows somehow within, it still exists. Instinctively, individuals may not
have the capability of understanding this inverse image identity, therefore, this does not
suggest that the self image is not present, but rather that the conscious is deciding ones
actions and behaviors as classified by Jungs archetypes.
In examining literary works with the background of these unconscious layers, the
Jungian archetypes manifest themselves into characters. These two distinct archetypes are
termed the Anima and the Animus. The Anima is the female portion of the male self that
is displayed in archetypal images. The first of the three images within the Anima is the
nurturing mother, the second is the whore and the third is the destroying crone. The

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Animus is the male portion of the female self that, like the Anima, has three images. The
first is the protector, the second is the lover, and the third, the destroyer. Jung saw
archetypes as part of everyones collective conscious regardless the sex of the author;
these traits would always be displayed within the characters.
In furthering this research to connect these archetypes to literary texts, Jung
identified the existence of a definite struggle for balance that may take on the form of a
quest. The process of unification is a result of the quest and the result is what Jung terms
the self. Accordingly, in order to reach unification, the self-archetype had to be present
and balanced within the unconscious and conscious self. Moreover, combination of the
Anima and Animus is known as the syzygy which signifies wholeness. The syzygy
represents connectedness within objects, as Jung says, an archetypal pairing of
contrasexual opposites, which symbolized the communication of the conscious and
unconscious minds, the conjunction of two organisms without the loss of identity (56).
This act of balancing can be considered the journey to self-understanding. Hence, in the
eyes of Jung, the goal of an individual is to balance the archetypes within ones life, thus
reaching self-unification.
Connecting these theories to the works of Jorie Graham is considerably complex.
In The Dream of the Unified Field, the main character figure of the piece seems to
reach the unified self or self-understanding. Jorie writes:
I looked up into itlate afternoon but bright.
Nothing true or false in itself. Just motion. Many strips of
motion. Filaments of falling marked by the tiny certainties
of flakes. Never blurring yet themselves a cloud. Me in it

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and yet
moving easily through it, black Lycra leotard balled into
my pocket,
your tiny dream in it, my left hand on it or in it
to keep. (Graham 80)
As this section of the poem ebbs and flows, the self-reflection is evident within the
speaker. The image and subject of the poem is examining the concept of true and false
and finding simply motion. Motion repeats itself through the entire poem and then the
connection to the speaker is fluid throughout the motion. Analysis of every action and
motion, neither true nor false, shows the struggle to reach the illusive unified self.
Level by level, the lines can be broken down to plunge deeper into the possible meanings
and symbolism that are widespread throughout this poem.
Within these symbols, it must be kept in mind that Jung strongly believed in
allegory as a limited kind of symbol reduced to the role of a pointer, designating only
one of the many potential series of dynamic meanings (Cirlot, xli). He therefore felt that
symbols pointed to something deeper and when these symbols were grouped together,
they had an even deeper meaning. Elsewhere, Jung observes that ancient people once
dedicated all their energy to mythology while current western civilization now devote
these interests to science and technology. Analogy in ancient times was used as a secret
identity rather than a logical figure (Cirlot, xxii). Therefore, the unconscious brings about
forms in the shape of literary symbols, partnered with archetypes, surfacing an
unconsciously formulated collective.
In examining the first section of the poem, the reader sees what Jung terms, the

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mask. The surface persona of the main character figure is visible and it does not, in the
opening lines, go into any darker layer just yet as the poem reads:
On my way to bringing you the leotard
You forgot to include in your overnight bag,
The snow started coming down harder.
I watched each gathering of leafy flakes
Melt round my footfall. (Graham 80)
This speaker is the everyday persona projected in these lines known as the mask. The
figure saying, on my way, is presumably female and at the center of the poem. They are
bringing a leotard to another figure, presumably a child, who forgot to include it in their
overnight bag. As the female figure brings the leotard to what could possibly be her
daughter, she travels through a snowstorm. The female figure gives the leotard and says,
Here are your things, so it signals to the reader that the leotard has been passed on.
Within this poem, several symbols are displayed that can be linked to Jungs idea
of the darker self known as the shadow. As Jung conveys in his text, The Undiscovered
Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams, symbols point to a complete theory
of the universe and the destiny of the soul (53). Before she passes the leotard on, a line of
the poem reads, Me in it and yet moving easily through it, black Lycra leotard balled
into my pocket, your tiny dream in it, my left hand on it or in it to keep warm (Graham
80). The first symbol is the reoccurring presence of the word black and dark.
Throughout the entire Graham poem the word black and dark are seen in very
somber and abysmal sections. For example, the leotard is black and, later in the poem,
the black flock of birds shift in a unified form as the poem states:

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Starting home I heardbothering, lifting, then

bothering again
the huge flock of starlings massed over our
neighborhood
these days; heard them lift and swim overhead through the falling snow
as though the austerity of a true, cold thing, a verity,
the black bits of their thousands of bodies swarming
the settling
overhead. I stopped. All up and down the empty oak
they stilled. Every limb sprouting. Every leafy backlit
body
filling its parts of the empty crown. I tried to count
then tried to estimate. (Graham 81)
The unified attempts for the flock to converge casts a shadow over the piece. The form
does not unify but rather circles over the neighborhood attempting to join. Furthermore,
black and darkness are both negatively represented in literature. According to Ferber
in the Dictionary of Symbols, typically these symbols are strongly associated with death
(29). All of the symbols appear to be focusing on elements linked with existence.
As in humanitys struggle for answers, there is the theory of dreaming that serves
as an attempt to quell the mind into reaching self-unification and understanding. To Jung,
dreams are the matrix of the human mind and its inventions (114). The second symbol
that appears is the tiny dream. The poem reads, your tiny dream in it, my left hand
on it or in it to keep warm (Graham 80). Where the speaker could be referencing the

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leotard itself as the dream, it also could allude to something much deeper. Dreams are
typically the gate into the realm of symbols and they are also interpolated tales within
larger narratives (Ferber 63). Therefore, dreams are seen as premonitions that go into the
land of prophecy and augury.
While all of the symbols have different meanings, some can be contrasted to
expose the meaning behind symbols be presented at the same time. For example, in the
first section of the poem there is the presence of a single, black crow. Previously, the
birds had been a swarm of starlings. The poem reads, I heard it, inside the swarm, the
single cry of the crow (Graham 81). The crow, due to its black coloring, can be linked
also to death. Crows are also associated with the atmosphere and spiritual strength. The
flight a crow takes also classifies the type of bird as a messenger or an allegory of
solitude (Cirlot 71).
The reference of white and the black used descriptively are the first form of
contrast. The white doesnt appear until the second half of the poem. It is in the
presentation of the snowstorm at the very beginning but does not reappear until later in
the poem within the white sands. The reference to black is repetitively used fifteen
times in describing the leotard and the birds as well as woven through the overall
structure. Using black and white closely together within the poem symbolizes a division
that could possibly be an early reflection of the figures self.
The figure goes back and forth between symbols within the poem and reading
through, the language used goes from one extreme to another. Previously, this was visible
in the contrasting of black and the white, but also with the content of the poem there is a
very methodical structure in each part to represent the whole. The struggle is seen clearly

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within section four as Graham writes:

Closeup, hes bluestreaked iris blue, india-ink blueand
blackand oily, firey set of blacksnone of them
trueas where hate and order touchsomething that cannot
become known. Stages of black but without
graduation. So there is no direction.
All of this happened, yes. Then disappeared
Into the body of the crow, chorus of meanings,
layers of blacks, then just the crow, plain, big,
lifting his claws to walk thrustingly
forward and backindigo, cyanine, beryl, grape, steel. . . Then suddenly he
wings andbraking as he lifts
the chest in which an eye-sized heart now beats
hes upa blunt clean stroke
one ink-streak on the early evening snowlit scene
See the gesture of the painter?Recall the
crow?Place him quickly on his limb as he comes sheering in,
Close to the trunk, to landIs he now
disappeared again? (85)
In the beginning of this quote, there is the emphasis on truth and that none of them
true. The truth that is being searched for can be assumed to be finding the true self. The
poem goes on to state, as where hate and order touch, which shows the bending of both
sides of the self in order to reach the unification. Next, there is the disappearing into

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the body of the crow as it absorbs these colors and then the crow appears, yet disappears,
again. This continued movement seems to denote an obvious split. Jung says that when
addressing a split that hinders unification and when taking an interest in the symbols,
nobody can dismiss these numinous factors on merely rational grounds. They are
important constituents of our mental make-up and vital forces in the building up of
human society, and they cannot be eradicated without serious loss. When they are
repressed or neglected, their specific energy disappears into the unconscious with
unpredictable consequences (133). All symbols point to facts within the conscious and
dismissing these would further distance one from reaching unification. Therefore,
examining through the use of archetypes provides a stronger analysis of the characters.
The first archetype to surface is Jungs Anima as it is displayed to be the
nurturing mother as the poem states, On my way to bringing you the leotard you
forgot to include in your overnight bag (80). Nurturing figures, such as parents, know
occasions when something is forgotten, an important article, and they must return home
to collect it. The possible mother figure is therefore taking care of the presumed
daughter figure by returning her leotard. As the mother figure is leaving from
delivering the leotard, she looks through the window to watch the child dancing in her
friends house. The point where the poem directs and sets the overall structure is within
the last line of the third section as it reads, I watch the head explode then recollect,
explode, recollect (Graham 82). The reason this is seen as pivotal is that the word
recollect could be read two different ways. Recollect can mean either the gathering of
something lost or spread out, or it can mean the recalling and remembering of the past. In
the context of the poem, and Jungian criticism, it seems that for the purpose of reaching a

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unified self, the mind would be better served if the female figure were recollecting
something from her past. The mother figure could be nurturing her past self or nurturing
the child figure in a way that the mother figure never received. The child figure could
essentially be the presumed female examining her past self in a mothering nature.
Overall, the recollection of the head can be seen as symbolic of the mind going through a
process to reach self-unification and the symbolic mother could be aiding in this quest.
The definition of mother is ambiguous because men cannot physically be
mothers but they still can act as a nurturing mother. A mother is also seen in reference
to nature, like Mother Nature. Returning to the mother is also the equivalent of dying,
which as previously mentioned, is regularly alluded to through symbols. The term
mother does not simply have to be used in reference to someone who has given birth; it
can be used for anyone displaying these qualities, which is what Jung identifies as the
mother symbolizing the collective unconscious. Therefore, these possible interpretations
lead even further into parallel possibilities.
Not only could the child that was first assumed to be the daughter actually be the
speaker, the figure of the younger child in the leotard could serve as the shadow. The
inverse of an adult is a child and the inverse of the mask is the shadow. Thus, if the
mother is interpreted as the mask, the child can be interpreted as the shadow, an
alternative side to the speaker. Jung sees the shadow as being on the deeper layer.
Possibly, this child figure is the deeper darker layer of the speakers identity. Originally,
the fondness with recollection, the looking through a window, could actually be more of a
destructive force. While she is looking into the window, the crow calls. The call could be
signaling the dark self or signaling yet another division within the self. The poem is

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complicated and that in itself provides a layer that the reader must see to in order to see
the shadow as the poem unfolds.
Later in the poem, the speaker recalls her younger days when she was eight years
old in the ballet studio with Madame Sakaroff:
how her eyes eyed themselves: no wavering:
like a vast silver page burning: the black hole
expanding:
like a meaning coming up quick from inside that page
coming up quick to seize the reading face
each face wanting the other to take it
but where? And from where? I was eight
I saw the different weights of things. (Graham 85)
This point in the speakers life seems to be pivotal due to the fact it is recollected with
such vivid detail. Within the poem, Madame Sakaroff seems to be a stern figure toward
the young children as she makes them repeat the dance steps until they are perfect. She
could be seen as embodying the archetype of the crone because of the qualities
reflected in her demeanor as seen by the child figure. Madame Sakaroff also displays
elements of Animus in the destroyer when the poem line reads, how her eyes eyed
themselves: no wavering: like a vast silver page burning: the black hole expanding
(Graham 84). The Animus is seen within the female as the destroyer due to the
destructive nature of the Madame Sakaroff character. In this section, there are again many
mentions of black therefore possibly denoting the presence of death. The juxtaposition
of dance, yet the occurrence of destroyer qualities, further seems to split the process of

Forkel 13

unification.
Dance or the act of unified motion is alluded to throughout the entire poem. When
watching through the window, the young figure is seen dancing, then the birds take on a
dancing form in their swarm and finally, in the studio recollection, there is the act of
dancing. The symbol of dancing is crucial in the analysis of the poem because it could be
translated as the symbolic movement through life or as Jung calls it the quest. Time in
itself is even a form of movement that has a dance like pattern. In order for a dancer to be
in sync with other dancers, they have to be able to keep time. Yeats termed dance as the
unity of being which serves as an unselfconscious harmony of mind and body
(Ferber 51). Thus, as the figure travels through the poem, the reoccurrence of dance and
the apparent struggle of experience spread throughout the entire poem, act to unify the
speaker within her quest due to her previous deep division. Just as the dance begins, it
ends as the poem transports to another time.
The poem abruptly travels back in time where there is the possible surfacing of a
collective conscious experience. The poem goes to colonial times with the images of
ships and conquering land surface:
At the hour of vespers
in a sudden blinding snow,
they entered the harbor and he named it Puerto de
San Nicolas and at its entrance he imagined he
could see
its beauty and goodness, sand right up to the land
where you can put the side of a ship. (Graham 87)

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The ship has entered at Puerto de San Nicolas and within these images, the story of the
poem ends. This could be a dream of the past, but perhaps the division of the self begins
at this point on a racial level as Jung believes.
Therefore, is self-unification through this poem, and in the eyes of Jung,
achieved? The speaker never seems to be completely unified. While she may be
attempting to come to terms with her past experiences, as seen through the symbols
signaling possible links, there seems to be a void between the balancing of the self.
While displaying positive attributes toward unification, there are the reoccurrences of the
dark images that keeps the figure divided. What seems to be constantly in the way of selfunderstanding is this darkness. The little girl in the leotard or the shadow is what
keeps the speaker from progressing because past images continue to pull at the conscious.
As the images of whitepositive are present, images from the past times keep
drawing her back into the darkness and the division. At the end of the poem, as the last
white image is seen there is the reference also to gold:
The snow was wild.
Inside it, though, you could see
this woman was wearing a little piece of
gold on her nose, which was a sign there was
gold
on that land. (Graham 87)
At the end of the poem there is the exploration of a new world. It portrays the claiming of
other lands for country and the search for gold. As these images of an exploration to the
new world emerge, the journey seems to have only just begun. As Jung said, A complete

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picture of the world would require the addition of still another dimension; only then could
the totality of phenomena be given a unified explanation (105). Hence, where
unification appears to be, Jung might consider it just a dream.

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Works Cited
Callaway, Ewen. "Fearful Memories Haunt Mouse Descendants." Nature. Nature Publishing
Group, 01 Dec. 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
Cirlot, Juan Eduardo. A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1971. Print.
Ferber, Michael. A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.
Giles, Steve. Theorizing Modernisms: Essays in Critical Theory. N.p.: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Graham, Jorie. Materialism: Poems. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1993. Print.
Jung, C. G., and R. F. C. Hull. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1980. Print.
Jung, Carl G. The Undiscovered Self: With Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams. 2010 ed.
N.p.: Princeton UP, 1957. Print.
Jung, Carl G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. N.p.: Knopf Doubleday Group, 2011. Print.

Forkel 17

The Dream of the Unified Field, by Jorie Graham

1
On my way to bringing you the leotard
You forgot to include in your overnight bag,
The snow started coming down harder.
I watched each gathering of leafy flakes
Melt round my footfall.
I looked up into itlate afternoon but bright.
Nothing true or false in itself. Just motion. Many strips of
motion. Filaments of falling marked by the tiny certainties
of flakes. Never blurring yet themselves a cloud. Me in it
and yet
moving easily through it, black Lycra leotard balled into
my pocket,
your tiny dream in it, my left hand on it or in it
to keep
warm. Praise this. Praise that. Flash a glance up and try
to see
the arabesques and runnels, gathering and loosening, as they
define, as a voice would, the passaging through from
the-other-thenhuman. Gone as they hit the earth. But embellishing.
Flourishing. The road with me on it going on through. In-

Forkel 18

scribed with the present. As if it really

were possible to exist, and exist, never to be pulled back
in, given and given never to be received. The music
of the footfalls doesnt stop, doesnt
mean. Here are your things, I said.

Starting home I heardbothering, lifting, then

bothering again
the huge flock of starlings massed over our
neighborhood
these days; heard them lift and swim overhead through the falling snow
as though the austerity of a true, cold thing, a verity,
the black bits of their thousands of bodies swarming
the settling
overhead. I stopped. All up and down the empty oak
they stilled. Every limb sprouting. Every leafy backlit
body
filling its parts of the empty crown. I tried to count
then tried to estimate
but the leaves of this wet black treat the heart of
the stormshiny

Forkel 19

river through limbs, back onto the limbs,

scatter, blow away, scatter, recollect
undoing again and again the tree without it ever ceasing to be
full.
Foliage of the tree of the worlds waiting.
Of having waited a long time and
still having
to wait. Of trailing and screaming.
Of engulfed readjustments. Of blackness redisappearing
into
downdrafts of snow. Of indifference. Of indifferent
reappearings.
I think of you
back of me now in the bright house of
your friend
twirling in the living room in the shiny leotard
you love.
I had lookedas I was leavingthrough the window
To see you, slick in your magic,
Pulling away from the wall

I watch head explode then recollect, explode, recollect.

3

Forkel 20

Then I heard it, inside the swarm, the single cry

of the crow. One syllableone inside the screeching and the

skittering,
inside the constant repatterning of a thing not nervous yet
not ever
stillbut not uncertainwithout obedience
yet not without lawone syllable
black, shiny, twirling on its single stem,
rooting, one foot on the earth,
twisting and twisting

and then againa little further off this timedown the

ravine, a voice inside a head, filling a head. . . .

See, my pocket is empty now. I let my hand

Open and shut in there, I do it again. Two now, skull and
Pocket
With their terrified inhabitants.

You turn the music up. The window nothing to you, liquid, dark, where now your
mother has come back to watch.

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Closeup, hes bluestreaked iris blue, india-ink blueand

blackand oily, firey set of blacksnone of them
trueas where hate and order touchsomething that cannot
become known. Stages of black but without
graduation. So there is no direction.
All of this happened, yes. Then disappeared
Into the body of the crow, chorus of meanings,
layers of blacks, then just the crow, plain, big,
lifting his claws to walk thrustingly
forward and backindigo, cyanine, beryl, grape, steel. . . Then suddenly he
wings andbraking as he lifts
the chest in which an eye-sized heart now beats
hes upa blunt clean stroke
one ink-streak on the early evening snowlit scene
See the gesture of the painter?Recall the
crow?Place him quickly on his limb as he comes sheering in,
Close to the trunk, to landIs he now
disappeared again?
5

Forkel 22

. . . . long neck, up, up with the head,

eyes on the fingertips, bent leg, shift of
the weightturnNo, no, begin again. . .
What had she seen, Madame Sakaroff, at Stalingrad, now in
her room of mirrors tapping her cane
as the piano player begins the interrupted Minuet again
and we line up right foot extended, right
hand extended, the Bach mid-phrase
Europe? The dream of Europe?midwinter afternoon,
rain at the windowpane, ceilings at thirty feet and coffered
floating over the wide interior spaces. . .
No one must believe in God again I heard her say
one time when I had come to class too soon
and had been set to change. The visitor had left,
kissing her hand, small bow, and I had seen her (from the curtain)
(having forgotten I was there)
turn from the huge pearl-inlaid doors she had just closed,
one hand still on the massive, gold, bird-headed knob,
and seea hundred feet awayherselfa woman in black in
a mirrored room
saw her not shift her gaze but bring her pallid tensile hand
as if it were not part of herslowly down from
the ridged, cold, feathered knob and, recollected, fixed upon

Forkel 23

that other woman, emigre,

begin to move in stiffly towards her. . . You out there
now,
you in here with me I watched the two of them,
black and black, in the gigantic light,
glide at each other, heads raised, necks long
me wanting to cry outwhere were the others? wasnt it late?
The two of her like huge black hands
Clap once and once only and the signal is given
but to what?regarding what? till closer-in I saw
more suddenly
how her eyes eyed themselves: no wavering:
like a vast silver page burning: the black hole
expanding:
like a meaning coming up quick from inside that page
coming up quick to seize the reading face
each face wanting the other to take it
but where? And from where? I was eight
I saw the different weights of things,
Saw the vivid performance of the present,
Saw the light rippling almost shuddering where her body finally
touched
the image, the silver film between them like something that would have

Forkel 24

shed itself in nature now

but wouldnt, couldnt. here , on tight,
between, not thinning, not slipping off to let some
seed-down
through, no signal in it, no information. . .Child,
what should I know
to save you that I do not know, hands on this windowpane?

The storm: I close my eyes and,

standing in it, try to make it mine. An inside
thing. Once I was. . .once, once.
It settles, in my head, the wavering white
sleep, the instancesthey, accure,
grip up, connect, they do not melt,
I will not let them melt, they build, cloud and cloud,
I feel myself weak, I feel the thinking muscle-up
outside, the talk-talk of the birdsoutside,
strings and their roots, leaves inside the limbs,
in some spots the skin breaking
but inside, no more exploding, no more smoldering, no more,
inside, a splinter colony, new world, possession

Forkel 25

gripping down to form,

wilderness brought deep into my clearing,
out of the ooze of night,
limbed, shouldered, necked, visaged, the white
now the clouds coming in (dont look up),
now the Age behind the clouds, The Great Heights,
all in there, reclining, eyes closed, huge,
centuries and centuries long and wide,
and underneath, barely attached but attached,
like a runner, my body, my tiny piece of
the centuryminutes, houses going byThe Great
Heights
anchored by these footsteps, now and now,
the footsteppingnow and now carrying its vast
white sleeping geographymapped
not a leaseposessionAt the hour of verspers
in a sudden blinding snow,
they entered the harbor and he named it Puerto de

Forkel 26

San Nicolas and at its entrance he imagined he

could see
its beauty and goodness, sand right up to the land
where you can put the side of a ship. He thought
he saw
Indians fleeing through the white before
the ship. . . As for him, he did not believe what his
crew
told him, nor did he understand them well, nor they
him. In the white swirl, he placed a large cross
at the western side of
the harbor, on a conspicuous height,
as a sign that Your Highness claim the land as
Your own. After the cross was set up,
Three sailors went into the bush (immediately erased
from sight by the fast snow) to see what kinds of
trees. They captured three very black Indian
women one who was young and pretty.
The Admiral ordered her clothed and returned her to
her land
courteously. There her people told
that she had not wanted to leave the ship,
but wished to stay on it. The snow was wild.

Forkel 27

Inside it, though, you could see

this woman was wearing a little piece of
gold on her nose, which was a sign there was
gold
on that land