A Simple Garden Ladder

Summary

From the Lost Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges

Imagine: two men, naked, and a ladder,

Opened to a tall A. No place in particular,

Rather a dark abstraction from place.

The ladder, wood, worn, stands grounded here, sure,

Yet yearns, by pointing, upward. The most

Remarkable the men, who ascend, descend

The steps, slow or leaping, acrobats, no,

Trans-acrobats, more than mere technicians,

Under the bar of the A, with bow, with crawl,

Between legs to enter and issue therefrom,

Or grapple, with the thing itself, hang, twist

Upon it, rack, riddle, and wiTheach

Other as well, wrestle, to wring out breath

Or admission (even sometimes separately

With only, alone, earnest, themselves), sweat

All through this their shining badge. How lit?

Imagine this, then, Robert, and you have

My dream of nights ago. Or some of it:

There were innuendoes, shades and auras.

It stays and stays, as if not yet am I awake.

Who were they? Wild they were. In weak moments

I meditate upon those men, their ladder. Was it

Theirs? Possession by torment? It was, too, a

Tool. Whose, though? Another's they use, uses them?

Jacob and Esau, yes. But Esau saw no ladder.

Nor did they wrestle, only Jacob with

An angel. These took the place of angels,

Trafficked the vertical, heaven to earth

And reverse, yet were most clearly men, sexed,

No denying that. Their parts both were and were

Not part of the dream-dance without music:

Swinging freely in the sourceless light,

Seemed accompaniment, mere, for the moves

Of the whole bodies, and yet seemed also

What the whole bodies moved around

(Or the bodies, to be whole, moved around).

Circle-center to circumference.

But why

Two? I thought of man divided, even

Christ divided. Between here and there

The dark earth we take as lover, falling,

The sky, dark, if differently, if beautiful,

Appalling. But no, none of that will do,

Is too simple: these men of mine hung once

Upside down, feet hooked on upper rungs, hands

Grazing ground, so that direction was lost,

In going up they seemed to be going down,

Sky rode low under the flying earth, or seemed to,

I was as lost as North and South.