Planets

When I heard the learn’ d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’ d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’ d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man;
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline

The Poets light but Lamps —
Themselves — go out —
The Wicks they stimulate
If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns —
Each Age a Lens
Disseminating their
Circumference —

Don’ t worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

New Year’ s Day —
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.

Goes out,
comes back —
the love life of a cat.

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars —
planets, that is — the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous,... stupendous
Evening strains to be time’ s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being as unbound, her dapple is at an end, as-
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steepèd and páshed – quite

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Drunker than Voyager I
but not as Voyager 2 I rode my blue
bike back through the darkness
to my lonely geode cave of light
awaiting nothing under the punctured
dome. I had achieved escape
velocity drinking clear liquid starlight
at the Thunderbird with a fingerless
Russian hedge fund inspector and one
who called himself The Champ. All
night I felt fine crystals cutting
my lips like rising up through
a hailstorm. And the great vacuum
cleaner that cannot be filled moved
through my chest, gathering

The night reduced to a siren, a sigh:

Beautiful boy on the treadmill

Glimpsed sweating through sweating glass —

My new moon.

Sylvia’ s moon: a smiling skull

Snagged in witchy branches; fossil

Brushed free of blackest earth.

My last moon: an orange ball at rest, for an instant,

On the grey lake.

Wish list: dining set and dresser,

Boombox, thin black tie, boy-

Friend à la Madonna’ s “True Blue”

La la la la la la la

Your moon (tonight): a clouded X-ray.

I stand at a corner and stare up,