Apr 9, 2015 | Uncategorized
for
Susan Rogers
the ship all the hard-
won inches of her
to be a
boat
a boat from someone’s
hands uprisen,
low-gunwaled,
prompt to the water,
swift,
a
wherry
she calls it, one woman
can scull this thing along
I call a ship
because it leaps
along the river soon,
soon, she hopes, so many
hours hundreded away
to knit this wood together
to be a boat.
Her ark
against the dangerous
mainland,
where
we abide
bound by gravity
full of fear about that lucid
luminous water all
round us, all we have left
of the first America,
before we did to the land
whatever she flees from
into the beauty
that is always moving,
that touches everything it passes,
waits now for the slim
vessel that will know it well,
this hand-made animal she weaves.
Apr 8, 2015 | Uncategorized
302.
You want to translate Homer I want to
write him
all new all over again all shining
and no war
no more war and the pale cheeks of
men
pierced by no bronze prong and no
fire
walks up and down the corpse and the
hymn
that grieves for Linos turns into the
Ode to Joy
a cliché has no memory it plugs a
leak
even Homer nods well I can snore as
well
and pour the beauty of Helen and
Diomedes and Kassandra
back into the ordinary dance of day
and we will know each other in that
company
proud abashed a little silly full of
soul.
Apr 7, 2015 | Uncategorized
300.
Something like a breeze through
people green as trees
this is your moment mother
before the flowers come and go
a life of gentlest waiting
like the hibiscus for its bee
a bird will do, anything I can say
you to
and love a little while, the mild
adultery of objects fondled then set
free
there is some moment in the stillest
things
we learned in the sacred tedium of
Sunday Mass
eloquent silences between the words
when the priest stopped mumbling and
held Something in his hands.
301.
But God is more personal than sex
when the outside and the inside are
the same
a horse you never heard of comes
rushing from the mountains
the comfort of enough against the ecstasy
of more
o horse you cry I will not ride today
but he thinks otherwise and there you
are aloft
the two of you above the hills beast
and human
who knows which is which a fable no
one ever tells
vanishing in blue distances song
fading
nobody knows nobody knows I hear the
dearest voice
laughing at the effort I put into
doing nothing
a snowstorm of images around a
freezing child.
Apr 6, 2015 | Uncategorized
296.
Religion is to dance as prison to the
Constitution
the underside the got-it-wrong the
social trap the money
when all the great ones said go to
yourself in the empty place
quiet room or vacant tree
sit there silent till you know
know enough at least to help and how
and know that we all need you
yes I need you to be, tree behind you
now
you walk around the world
hinting how to take the pain away
we make for each other and ourselves
now put that in your organ and play
on.
297.
I am not the only one who I am
the others need me too
the lighthouse turns out to be the
moon
raspberry bushes replete with thorn
make me doubt the sweet real things
flesh and its discontents, pink
tongues
on suburban buses o I have lived too
much
too little time and bring it all to
you
that word again the queen of
implications
sparrow hawks and midnight hens
you taught me all the names of birds
I’ve had to do my forgetting all
alone.
Apr 5, 2015 | Uncategorized
294.
Old pens old friends the given always
gets
hand it to me we say and hand it
surely is
weather of a distant city breath of
your mouth
transhuman rhapsody suck on your
finger now
o you everything you beast of a
million leaves
make me listen to your touch
also spoke sorrow after joy to mingle
red sky at evening leave your
grieving
all you lost is safe in Amitabha’s
glowing land
it is good to console better to
unmind the sorrow
who are you to lose to feel to grieve
answer me that you Trinity scholar
and rejoice.
295.
I’m translating back into my mother
tongue
what I heard in the high mountains
what I learned under the hill
earth gods and mind lords and me in
between
a haggard buffoon with a bottle of
ink
o sail me to your island ever after
pillow me with stillness till the
fever eases
then I’ll take hold of autumn skies
and bring them onward with a sheen of
rain
to cool the counsel of an angry world
gets hotter by the day as if all
scriptures
give us one mandate to conquer and to
kill.
Recent Comments