And is thisYarrow?This the stream
Of which my fancy cherished,
So faithfully, a waking dream?
An image that hath perished!
O that some Minstrel's harp were near,
To utter notes of gladness,
And chase this silence from the air,
That fills my heart with sadness!
Two flags nuzzle each other in the desultory gust
because they are
fleeing the trees, who are cruel to one another,
shading their neighbors to death
a mixed bag
advocating small business in a loose confederation.
The flags don’ t give any shade at all.
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ ve trod the links with many a man,
And played him club for club;
’ Tis scarce a year since I began
And I am still a dub.
But this I’ ve noticed as we strayed
Along the bunkered way,
No one with me has ever played
As he did yesterday.
I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer
to fit my own dimension. Your loneliness
is a letter I read and put away, a daily reminder
in the cry of the magpie that I am
still capable of inflicting pain
at this distance.
Like a painting, our talk is dense with description,
half-truths, landscapes, phrases layered
with a patina over time. When she came into my life
I didn’t hesitate.
Sometimes in our sleep we touch
The body of another woman
And we wake up
And we know the first nights
With summer visitors
In the three storied house of our childhood.
Whatever we remember,
The darkest hair being brushed
In front of the darkest mirror
In the darkest room.
Petrarch dreams of pebbles
on the tongue, he loves me
at a distance, black polished stone
skipping the lake that swallows
worn-down words, a kind of drown
and drench and quench and very kind
to what I would've said. Light marries
water and what else (unfit
for drinking purposes), light lavishes
my skin on intermittent sun. (I am weather
and unreasonable, out of all
season. Petrarch loves my lies
You are Jehovah, and I am a wanderer.
Who should have mercy on a wanderer
if not Jehovah? You create and I decay.
Who should have mercy on the decayed
if not the creator? You are the Judge
and I the guilty Who should have mercy
on the guilty if not the Judge? You are All
and I am a particle. Who should have mercy
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.
with the medicinal poppies of June
nor with Celan’ s bloom-fest of dredged stone,
not with history’ s choo-choo train of corpses,
not with Nottingham’ s Robin Hood
nor Antwerp’ s Diamondland.
