Ancient of Days, old friend, no one believes you’ ll come back.
No one believes in his own life anymore.
The moon, like a dead heart, cold and unstartable, hangs by a thread
At the earth’ s edge,
Unfaithful at last, splotching the ferns and the pink shrubs.
In the other world, children undo the knots in their tally strings.
They sing songs, and their fingers blear.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears...
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.
What came wafting
down the ditch
by the marsh grass waving
opened a hole
in the day through which,
like a puff of breath,
a ghost fountained up
rising in soft slo-mo,
lost, desolate, no place
left to go.
Dear bloody
Beirut and its internet cafes
were still smoking
from last night's
"little bombing."
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
Little did I dream, England, that you bore me
Under the Cotswold hills beside the water meadows,
To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders
And your enfolding seas.
I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service,
Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty,
As through a child's face one may see the clear spirit
Miraculously shining.
Life in
unbridled
collapse, Let tuneful praise ascend
Not a single line
out of step with my band, aboard
the riverboat
when the sun
shown red
and especially dark upon my room
The small white mutt of my
Unsure Self trails the masterless
Dog of the Dying World,
watching him
lope the endless block
of yards he knew before his
birth‚... I imitate his muffled bark
& snuffling breath, as round
& round
we trot as one
through rustling browns
of the dying world.
For it's come to me
now that a dog sniffing round
for the perfect smell, & a place
to pee
in the chilly breeze,
is the Rudiment of Life.
Pass by the showy rose,
blabbing open,
suckling a shiny beetle;
pass by the changeless diamond
that falls asleep in shadow —
this love is a lichen,
alga and fungus made one fleck,
feeding on what it feeds,
growing slightly faster than stone
into a patch of gray lace,
a double thumbprint,
its bloom distinguishable, with practice,
from its dormant phase,
crocheting its singular habit
over time, a faithful stain
bound to its home,
etching on the unmoved rock
the only rune it knows.
1
The long incision. The incipient voyage from aortic arch to thoracic inlet. Small-particled is the corpuscled city. (Bustling opuscula.) A city of animal electricity. A lowing cycling mass. Calm the cowed heart. Still the browbeating heart. Cool the controversial hearthstone. Let the blade intervene where the divine intersects bovinity.
2
