A Poem by Lewis Hyde
“Humankind has to seek God in error and
forgetfulness and foolishness.”
-- Meister Eckhart
the crack in the ice where the otters breathe,
the tear that saves a man from power,
the puff of smoke blown down the chimney one morning, and the widower sighs
and gives up his loneliness,
the lines transposed in the will so the widow must scatter coins
from the cliff instead of ashes
and she marries again, for love,
the speechlessness of lovers that forces them to leave it
alone while it sends up its first pale shoot like an onion
sprouting in the pantry, this error is the sign of love.
The leak in the nest, the hole in the coffin,
the crack in the picture plate a young girl fills
with her secret life to survive the grade school,
the retarded twins who wander house to house,
eating, ‘til the neighbors have become neighbors.
The teacher’s failings in which the students ripen,
Luther’s fit in the choir, Darwin’s dyspepsia,
boy children stuttering in the gunshop,
boredom, shyness, bodily discomforts like long rows
of white stones at the edge of the highway,
blown head gaskets, darkened choir lofts,
stolen kisses, this error is the sign of love.
The nickel in the butter churn, the farthing in the cake,
the first reggae rhythms like seasonal cracks
in a government building,
the rain-damaged instrument that taught us
the melodies of black emotion and red and yellow emotion,
the bubble of erotic energy escaped from a marriage
and a week later the wife dreams of a tiger,
the bee that flies into the guitar and hangs transfixed
in the sound of sound ‘til all his wetness leaves him
and he rides that high wind to the Galapagos,
this error is the sign of love.
The fault in the sea floor where the fish linger and mate,
the birthmark that sets the girl apart
and years later she alone of the sisters finds her calling,
Whitman’s idiot brother whom he fed like the rest of us,
those few seconds Bréton fell asleep and dreamed
of a pit of sand with the water starting to flow,
the earth’s wobbling axis uncoiling seasons--
seed that need six months of drought,
flowers shaped for the tongues of moths,
summertime and death’s polarized light caught
beneath the surface of Florentine oils, this error is the sign of love.
The beggar buried in the cathedral,
the wisdom-hole in the façade of the library,
the hail storm in a South Dakota town
that started the Farmers’ Cooperative in 1933,
the Sargasso Sea that gives false hope to sailors
and they sail one day and find a new world,
the picnic basket that slips overboard and
leads to the invention of the lobster trap,
the one slack line in a poem where the listener relaxes
and suddenly the poem is in your heart like a
fruit wasp in an apple, this error is the sign of love!
