The Possessed

The ice let go along the river The bells rang thin across the square A door stood open in a cold house And something old was breathing there No sign, no fire above the rooftops Only a thaw that would not hold Only a fever with no body Passing from the young to old Beneath the plaster, in the candle Behind the icon's tarnished eyes A quiet thing had learned our language And wore our reasons as disguise The town lay grey beneath the birches And called the loosening a spring It did not feel the water blacken It did not hear the low bells ring

I have no name to carve on churches I have no father, no first breath I am the thought you almost spoke aloud I am the quiet after death I do not enter through the doorway I do not knock, I do not plead I am already in the marrow The empty place, the thing you feed No hand has written me No mouth has made me true Say me once beneath your breathing And I will wear the rest of you Each believed the thought his own one Each believed his heart was free None could feel the current pulling None could see the black-iced sea No hand has written me No mouth has made me true I do not need you to believe me I only need to outlast you

Come in from the cold and shut it Bring the small self, leave it here There is a warmth in giving over There is a freedom past the fear Set your name upon the table Set the conscience your mother gave I will melt them in the many I will pour you as a wave The room draws shut around us The candle takes the air We came as many faces We leave as one dark stare And one by one the names went under The doubt, the mirror, the alone We called it freedom in the low room And gave away the only one we'd known The room draws shut around us The candle takes the breath We came as men, we leave as motion We leave as one long death

They brought me every kind of worship The fevered, the beautiful, the young They filled me with their own conviction And drank the silence off my tongue But there is nothing at the centre No god to hate, no love to keep A clean and perfect empty mirror They mistook for something deep I can be anything you long for And so I am not anything at all Confession, cruelty, the same weather The same snow against the wall The fever wanted a believer It found instead my empty face And handed back their own reflection And kept no warmth, no grace

He has remembered his own name A man who leaves us learns to speak Take him to the black place past the birches Bind what cannot be unbound this week He said it was a lie, a fever He said that he would walk away Down to the ice, down to the water Down where the reeds close overhead A hand that shares the cold together Can never rise up from the dead We put him under, still and nameless We made the many into one There is no leaving what we did there There is no undoing what was done And when it ended he was silent And when it ended, so were we No face among us wore a name now No man among us free

One mouth now, and one cold water One will where the many stood No name beneath the frozen surface No hand held back, no hand for good It does not ask us any longer It does not need us to believe We are the current, not the swimmer We are the thing we cannot leave There is no one left to answer There is no face left to name A hundred throats, a single winter A hundred mouths the same

The houses burning by the river The fever loose in every hand The thing that started in one sleeper Now running screaming through the land The drowned, the burned, the hanged, the raving The reeds, the ice, the muddy street The whole possessed and frozen province Running toward the water's teeth Over the bank, over the black edge Down where the current takes them deep No hand to stop, no bell to call them The whole town runs to take the leap

The town went down into the water The reeds closed over every name The black lake took the whole cold fever And gave the province back its shame I stood among the birches, watching I did not run down to the shore I am the one the water spared here And I cannot speak of it once more The fever never had a body And so the fever did not drown It only left the black-iced water Looking for another town The man sat down among the birches The bells were still, the water black And whatever it had been was quiet