Saugus, Embassy of the Second Muse

He has come out of a dread silence and given himself a name;
Saugus, he says. He bleats like a tethered goat to come out of that
coming, to be away, dense spiral to the core of self, to the
mountain call, bird arc across such slopes of pale imaginings.
Saugus, he says: I am that part of you cries not for the love but
intimacy of words, light touch of skin we dread and seek, owning
up of self as if in another. I am that part of you named endless
searcher, thirsty one, guzzler, sufferer, warred on, the starved and
the wasted, that part of you you can’t turn over by yourself. I
have the
secrets you do not know you know. I am lodged in a far corner of
mind, some fallow place at reins’ end, waiting to be routed out,
turned up, to green a page again. Has it taken you so long to find
me, or do you ignore me and try it on your own? You cannot
avoid documented lightning, shock of metaphor, God on one
knee, Saugus. I am not a stranger. I breathe with you, find shelter
and warmth when you do, know the single star haunting the edge
of your horizon, know best of all the magic when
the sound is right, Oh, Thomas! when the sound is the music of
one word upon another, and it tears two parts of soul to four
because nothing like it has been heard before, when the word
dances on its consonants, slides on soft vowels, when the spine
knows the word is known by every ganglia, thong and sinew of
the body. The coring.

I am Saugus and you waste me away, cast me aside. I who carry
all sounds of memory, cast me aside at breast-panning, when you
lose the music down in some phantom crotch, when a sweet ass
ties your brain in knots. Now, just now, Thomas, feel the core
wind in. Feel the word rock in you. Find the word rock. Chip at
it. Let the chisel fly, the sparks dance out globally, the word
broken away from the granite source in you. Don’t you know me,
Thomas? I am the gate tender. I am the one who lets you find the
word rock. I am the keyman. I let you into that vast field of
yourself where the rock grows. I am Saugus, and I tend that field
where the rock lies in the sacred cairn. We meet so infrequently. I
keep myself here waiting on you, the gate eager to rise, the field
waiting to know your tread, the rock waiting to be beat upon by
the hammer of your desire. I am lonely when you wander. It is
dark and fearful without you. And yet I can make you cry when I
am lonely. You don’t believe me yet… I am Saugus who makes
you cry.

You can’t tease me, please me, appease me. Just use me. I am
servant of servants. I am Id’s Id’s Id, ego sans ego sans ego. I am
to be used, exploited, submitted. And I guard that huge rock in
you, tend it, know what filled it dense as hardpan that time in
Boxford field and you hurt all over; dense as the frozen earth
DeMatteo dug fox holes with C-3 and it finally blew off the back
of his head and Colonel Mason said, “Shit!”; dense as Vinegar
Hill or Indian Rock or that rock wall outside Schenectady and
you stopped to change a tire at her waving and she slid down that
wall at her back motioning to you her bodily gratitude. Dense is
that word rock, full of all your lore and legend bricked with every
movement you’ve ever known, all sights and sounds and music of
the words; that special place where the thing rings in you, that
place of core vibration.

Jesus, Thomas, take my hand again! Walk in the field with me.
We belong together, you and I. Dispel me of doom. Let the
music of words come, let them dance first in your eye, roll on
your tongue, live to die on the page. Let them vibrate on your
spine, get kissed of your skin, shoot out of here in flight of geese,
and mournful sound of heading home when there is no home,
steaming freight train whistle calling you from a circle of blue
nights, self shout at the moon still shining on a hill East of
Cleveland, South of Yang-du, East again a long stretch from the
Chugach given you in a word picture, West of a cliff near Kerry
and rain moved as a god laughing at the rootstock of your silence,
Celtic mummery, God buried in stone. If you can’t come with
me, Thomas, you are the loser, lonely, forsaken. I can take you
back to all the hard places, to the adjectives and verb ends; to the
quadrangle in Japan in 1951 and the cool wind coming through
Camp Drake and the voice of death talking in it and calling out all
your comrades’ names and it didn’t talk your name and you still
felt sad and knew you were the only ear. In three weeks they were
gone, all gone, and their voices went into ground, and all their
words, and they built on the word rock and now they still dance
sadly… such words that make you cry with music still in them,
and they come long and slowly out of another time funnel, like
Billy Pigg cursing as he rolled over in your arms and Captain Kay
saying, “I just want to go home to Memphis for a little while and
tell Merle and Andy I love them. Just for an hour or so.”

Ah, Thomas, come home again. Come home again.