HEART THREAD 167 & 168

167.
Open the door and let your neighbor
out
always somewhere waiting to be else
you know your dove by how the tail is
shaped
what will heather do when weather
changes
or rabbit in high grass or the four
rivers of Kailasa
where the wing begins to wonder the
chicks fly
thus go I clutching to the shoulders
of the world
around me wrack of history walk on
clean feet
feeding ourselves on what no man
knows and all women do
each polis had its cult and we
have none
the Reformation broke all that away
and ‘-ation’ made nonsense of what
was left.
168.
Be suspicious of Greek models we are
not Greeks
have no polis have no common practice
to the gods
education is sick with Hellenic
fundamentalism
Greek can be as bad as Bible for the
soul
yet the poetry of both perdures
illuminates
Dante is close because each walks the
woods alone
the matter world of things receding
tailor sitting on his table stitching
what we all must wear
the technology of magic haunts us now
to walk invisible in Google goggles
isolate
how soon Ariel goes into Caliban
when once before the magus left the
island to the sea.  

HEART THREAD 165 & 166

165.
Or morning only comes when something
breaks
how to tell your mother you’re gay
the stains your pleasures leave on
you
the roof cracks the birds fly out
it was no house after all it was the
woods
only halfway through the catalogue of
sins
remember never to confess unless
confessing is a pleasure too
girl fell off the lighthouse made her
lover fall
both drowned our coasts unguarded
deep-rooted on a shelf of rock below
the sea
some sins will never wash away
one slight twist it comes off in your
hand.
166.
A wave is pure motion in substance
with no substance of its own
a brilliant shadow of a man at sea
left in a terra cotta lekythos takes
two to hold it up
ten to drink it dry not ten of our
kind ten of theirs
let Ovid tell the story his own way
forget the Greeks
they are not in your blood your
bloody veil
Mavors inside me made me leap three
times
over the solstice fire into the sea
of Seven Oxen
I swam to Venus though I cannot swim
walked gingerly on my friend’s
adventure
at the intersection of now and then a
yellow flag

come not aboard this plague ship of
love’s sicknesses.

HEART THREAD 163 & 164

163.
Hard to read the numbers in this
light
go by the feel of the machine road
through water
voices in the street fear of
believing
whatever they say must be wrong way
round
nobody out there speaks our language
urgent children touching in the dark
who are those who move around inside
me
she walks by with a woodpecker on her
back
to prove that language is a function
of the skin
because language is all boundary
a walled garden and a maze at the
middle
and a mirror globe at the center with
roses all round it. 
                                                           
           
164.
Collecting stamps and never sending
mail
nobody writes letters anymore
people are afraid of words in the
hand
let Bach tell me six times what to do
next
translate into something we can keep
inside
inside us or in our household god domovoi
Lisa’s plump white arms in Ivan’s
dying brain
we have to know though where
everything belongs
o Egypt I am weak the rolled-up
carpet weighs too much
all the streets led up to the castle where
no one lives
you have to keep it all inside la
musique
and when the morning finally comes
the string will break.  

HEART THREAD 161 & 162

161.
I had a dream you told me you had a
dream about me
part of me on the other hand already
is a dream
how many do I have to be to be one
it is a question of what kind of blue
a flower
what kind of kind
when there was nothing but sea there
still was me
I am plenty of you
an unfamiliar bird just now Berlioz
must have been like that
little histories of what never
happened
country A beats country B but war
beats both of them
who are you crying to on your hilltop
the wind knows how to take your
breath away.
162.
Far pillboxes over the heel of her
island
sideways to wind sucks my breath away
all the familiars sieve through the
mind
into the dark of other people’s
memories
what I lose you find a carousel of naughty
children
seacoast is never far from mind it is
made of it
ocean our first brain
resemblance is a wilted flower
no one told me anything but you
the stone that sealed him in he
carries in his hand
every funeral seems to be my own
all religions are none I thought he
said.

HEART THREAD 159 & 160

159.
Binary as if a double star you are
two houses and two voices to proclaim
absolute and relative are the same
two doors to every thought like
Boston homes
the law makes difference the will
makes same
watch the sun rise little by little
the light says yes
the wind is always coming from the
night
the dark breathes for us
lost in childhood with a single book
greatness means to have no private
life
sun up now and here the great one
comes
all work is play at best.
160.
Ate roses from the rocks along the
shore
one day she’ll come walking over the
sea
to restore us to our original forms
we mild impersonators of another
story
cantilena of the obvious desperate for
theophany
pick the ocean up and do what with it
one crow before anybody
I don’t send news to the tailor how I
wear my clothes
but I tell every sailor where to
steer his craft
helmsman of absence monsignor of milk
scared except to be at home and there
too
we have come to the midpoint of time.