Shane McCrae
Two POEMS
The Devil has a poem on his mind
AFTER PETER DOIG’S UNTITLED (PARAMIN)
The devil slips into the painting from
Blue devil, from behind a tree. The devil
Invisible until he fills your eye, all
Hungering, satisfaction, and more hun-
gering. The devil has a poem on his mind
He’s searching for it, smiling, shirtless, wearing knee-
Length shorts, tan shorts or off-white shorts. The tree
He steps from, you had thought he stood behind
Erases that part of his arm
You, who see only what’s in front
Of the tree, that part behind the tree, that part
Lives only in your mind. The devil wants
The poem more than his arm, and if he sees the poem
In your heart, he will eat your heart
Materialism
The thing is, death is, I’ve been dying since
November 1857, or
Maybe since August 1854
Or when? Most of us dead don’t know when death begins
None of us dead know when death ends. We dead
Know place, we know location, where the soul is
-n’t. We each day know better what a hole is We know the living drive the shovel through your head
To dig your grave, they drive it through your heart
And the earth spilling from the blade, it fell
Each clod on the coffin lid, a muffled bell
A stunted warning rung from habit or for art
But the sound scared a signal from my brain
The last. It for an instant rose, then sank in
An unresponsive dark. Unless I’m thinking
Now. If that’s what I’m doing now and it’s the same
Thing thinking was before, then this, then this, then
This is the last, this the last signal, each
Word the last signal in a row now stretch
-ing forward to some nowhere, the first signal lost in
The nowhere I emerged from into death
In 1841, or ’65
But yes, you asked about the soul. Forgive
Me. I’ll tell you. I know I’m dust by now and teeth
But I still feel like I’m trapped underground
In darkness, in a space too small for me
Though I am dust and teeth a century
In the earth. And if I were a coin the earth would bend
Around my body. If I were a bullet
The earth would bend. I am a rotted bag
The soul is wind and leaves what it made big
Empty. If you weren’t dead I’d say you’ve got to kill it
Shane McCrae’s most recent book is Cain Named the Animal, a finalist for the Forward Prize. He has received a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Michael Marks Award, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.