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
They are so beautiful, and so very young
they seem almost to glitter with perfection,
these creatures that I briefly move among.
I never get to stay with them for long,
but even so, I view them with affection:
they are so beautiful, and so very young.
Poised or clumsy, placid or high-strung,
they're expert in the art ofintrospection,
these creatures that I briefly move among —
That city will be no more, no halos
of spring mornings when green hills
tremble in the midst and rise
like barrage balloons —
and May won’ t cross its streets
with shrieking birds and summer’ s promises.
No breathless spells,
no chilly ecstasies of spring water.
It doesn't
matter
to me
if
poems mean
nothing:
there's no
floor
to the
universe
and yet
one
walks the
floor.
What could have been the big to-do
that caused him to push me aside
on that platform? Was a woman who knew
there must be some good even inside
an ass like him on board that train?
Charity? Frances? His last chance
in a ratty string of last chances? Jane?
Surely in all of us is some good.
Better love thy neighbor, buddy,
lest she shove back. Maybe I should.
It's probably just a cruddy
downtown interview leading to
some cheap-tie, careerist, dull
cul-de-sac he's speeding to.
All night long I hear the sleepers toss
Between the darkened window and the wall.
The madman’ s whimper and the lover’ s voice,
The worker’ s whisper and the sick child’ s call —
Knowing them all
I’ d walk a mile, maybe, hearing some cat
Crying its guts out, to throttle it by hand,
Such simple love I had. I wished I might —
Or God might — answer each call in person and
Each poor demand.
