Diamonds

Diamonds

“I mean just what I say. You must
walk on as if I were an open door, and go right through me.”

“But that will hurt you.”

“Not in the least. It will hurt
you, though.”

“I don’t mind that, if you tell me
to do it.”

“Do it,” said North Wind.

 

(George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind)

I.

Awake in the
night, in a nightgown

no candle

& the
boards of your house so thin.

You hear the
horse

on the other
side, awake like you

He’s Diamond
too.

The North Wind
is trying to greet you

You lie afraid

& she
greets you:

Diamonds.
Your answers won’t

wait long, not
boy,

not horse:
The North Wind sets

your course

II. North Wind

Aren’t you a
pretty boy?

Aren’t your
walls so thin?

 

Are you warm
in a pile of hay with the covers all up to your chin?

 

The night is
joy,

the
nightgown joy,

 

 

convolvulus:
the huge pale trumpets up the garden wall.

 

The North
Wind comes

to pierce
and carry you:

 

you’ll learn
to go down in tunnels of star & wind.

 

You pretty
boy,

& here
is a horse with your name.

 

Aren’t you a
pretty boy

with tunnels
under your dreaming?

III.

She is tall.
Her house is tall.

She finds milk
bottles

to tap with her
tiny hammer,

top up with
chill.

She rubs
herself, sable,

on the thin
board of stable

& bedroom.

She spoons up
coals.

She wears
little lace flies all over her clothes.

IV. Boy Diamond

Horse Diamond
gets up

& an
earthquake

shakes my loft.

I know windows

are to look out.

The North Wind
has

a tall house
with the clouds inside it—

I know windows
are to go out

& the night
is a course

softer than
house or horses.

V.

The North Wind
brings a dream:

the moon, &
bees. She works

a poet—blows
the mist

out of him. Ten
thousand

things in her
bosom. Wings

on wings. Watch
out—the Wind,

my Diamonds,
she’s stiffening.

VI. Horse Diamond

A rumbling
& a rocking

hay and
straw

and ends

and oats

 

there’s
nothing to kick about

a good old
horse

a wind
inside of a

window
dancing

 

let Diamond
guide Diamond

who is a
mountain

& a good
old horse

 



VIII.

Have you seen
your friend again? And did she speak?

Blue as the
heart, her eyes—against the door,

not moving or
speaking. Diamonds, beware

the hole at the
back of your bed—

the hold
between you—

all you care
for. Through her

like a door—it
hurts you—cold,

swallowed up in
white.

 

No creature
can know another

without the
help of a body.

ix. North Wind

Everything,
dreaming and all,

            every
old home under a cloud,

of opal, of
mother-of-pearl, grows

            dense
with nothing but duty—

ripples in
ripe corn, my lonely—

            I
have made room for you

here in my
hair.

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