Donald Mangum
Manifestations in the Eternal Struggle between Darkness and Light
“Damn the dark, damn the light.”
—Stevie Nicks, “The Chain”
i
this hideous blue sky full
of nothing this light a white
veil glare screening green
humming world breathing
sex and God
shineth neither in light nor summer
but in shadows cold
gray nights deep strains in minor
keys and dear loss
dark spirit reflections of clouds at night
crawling over a frozen pond
and wind
carries the voice of the Lord
holy moan and cry inside
a cheap roadside room oh why
oh God only in stains
hast Thou shown Thy strange
light
ii
where were you when the word turned world
in time heat and the great swelling
into nothing
darkness still only
pre-atomic swarm and darkness
swelling into darkness and receding
from no center encircling
equally every point
opaqueness containing
and filling itself and then darkness
giving way
and the spectral quiver of waves
through nothing quantum ghosts
photons flung through blooming
fields of chance now
light
iii
then the strange tree its blood
running in intricate branches
moss waving
like spirits shadow and light
wind blowing light
and shadow a voice
in the wind and scent
of jasmine and moss
rattle of limbs
white snake’s eyes blue
and soft
as your skin smooth
her pale voice reaches
milky and close and far of knowing
of dark and light
fall and rise
you hold the fruit naked
serpent curling in and out of the world
a dream
a ghost singing the river
singing voice of moving water
air moves in jasmine waves
and from her coils her arms reach
fingers brush
your hand throat breast
her voice in parts coming like thought
gray sounds dissonant
contrapuntal coiling in on themselves
in overwhelming beauty the fruit’s flesh
yielding lambent air
full of jasmine
clouds training virga and you
drunk now on the blood of the tree
and on the strange light
iv
atchafalaya
under a canopy of water tupelo and bald cypress
under a flickering sky
air dense with heat and vapors
sulfurous mud smells of biologic gases
and liver-sweet odor of decay
great chirping racket of rampant life
a cottonmouth slithers between cypress knees
pop-eye mullet jump slap down jump
silver slivers erupting out of tannic murk
light hangs onto air
dark rises from the water
a man paddles his dug-out
borne by the swamp light and silent as a leaf
a woman forward cradling the still child
still swaddled in skins her husband’s
dulcet incantations sung as if through him
or else sourceless
as wind the breath of the swamp itself
supplications begging blessing light
leaps from cloud to cloud
shadow shapes move in the treetops (demons lurk in the treetops
say the fathers)
timeless pause in the fading of the day
chirr of crickets vibrant drone
guttural booming of frogs
the swamp receives the child
near a stand
of cattails a wood stork
rises beating air crying
protest then sails overhead
cruciform against the sky
vanishing the river sings the dark
light of night