The Jumblies
I
The Key to the City
All middle age invisible to us, all age
passed close enough behind to seize our napehairs
and whisper in a voice all thatch and smoke
some village-elder warning, some rasped-out
Remember me... Mute and grey in her city
uniform (stitch-lettered JUVENILE), the matron
just pointed us to our lockers, and went out.
‘What an old bag!’ ‘Got a butt on you, honey?’ ‘Listen,
The Key to the Kingdom
It's not exile, homes and families behind
us, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
from the crumbling empires round us,
without stamps or Eurovision entries.
No-one does it with a rough guide in a week.
You inhabit it
or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe
you blink and you seem to surprise them,
The King and Seer
The King asks, “Tell me, what is the highest meaning of the holiest truths?”
The Seer answers, “Emptiness, without holiness.”
The King is a restless seeker.
The Seer is a ruler and thief.
I am seriously watching how trees are always missing some leaves.
They sweep the air looking for them. Nothing distracts them. Nothing.
Where leaves are missing between the branches, beautiful sun porches,
which disappear when the tree reaches them.
“Who are you?” the King asks.
“It is not like that,” the Seer says.
The King of Owls
They say I am excitable! How could
I not scream? The Swiss monk’ s tonsure
spun till it blurred yet his eyes were still.
I snapped my gaiter, hard, to stuff back
my mirth. Lords, he then began to speak.
Indus catarum, he said, presenting the game of cards
in which the state of the world is excellent described
and figured. He decked his mouth
as they do, a solemn stitch, and left cards
in my hands. I cast them down.
What need have I for amusement?
My brain’ s a park. Yet your company
The Kingfisher
In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud
they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming
beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening
of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed
by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled
the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.
The Kiss
By freezing passion at its blossoming
perhaps Rodin knew he challenged
Sophocles who said as lover you want
ice to be ice yet not melt
in your hands. How stone,
implying permanence, might let us believe,
a moment, the seated figures are beyond the leaf
that cannot keep from letting go the branch,
beyond even stupidly purpling grapes
that do not understand the process
by which they darken; darken nevertheless.
The Labor of Stagger Lee: Boar
pigs prey to piggishnesses. get ate from the rooter to the tooter.
I’ m a hog for you baby, I can’ t get enough go the wolfish crooner.
the gust buffeted porker roll in the hay or laid down
in twig rapine. let me in, let me in.
The Labyrinth
Torn turned and tattered
Bowed burned and battered
I took untensed time by the teeth
And bade it bear me banking
Out over the walled welter
cities and the sea
Through the lightsmocked birdpocked cloudcocked sky
To leave me light on a lilting planetesimal.
The Lake
Day and night, the lake dreams of sky.
A privacy as old as the mountains
And her up there, stuck among peaks. The whole eye
Fastened on hawk, gatherings of cloud or stars,
So little trespass. An airplane once
Crossed her brow; she searched but could not find
A face. Having lived with such strict beauty
She comes to know how the sun is nothing
But itself and the path it throws; the moon