When I was a page to the Duke of Norfolk

 

o Norfolk is a lovely shore

but my duke did not live there

we all have sinned

John Brown’s Stabat Mater

this choice collection

of the unchosen

I spill before you

morning has a name for that

what is man that calling animal

we hail with someone else’s silence

o who owns that

old miser Time

hear me ticking as I talk

what did we say

that brought us here

motive power of the word

o woe

Lightning flash in a sinner’s eye?

o go

she said

and I was gone

but we seem to gleam with truth

when things stop hurting

you know you’re in trouble

obsolete brand names

antique signboards stored

museum of the breath

the breath knows

more than mind can hold

sword fight heard on radio

long ago and even longer

a clash of what we are to think

steel

Damascus road

mud river

source of the Delaware

beasts prance in Rain

come dance with me

and teach me how

at ‘The Pinner’ in Wakefield

danger

never lose her

a wife is all you ever mean

Gloucester Cathedral roof in late snow

then through the Somerset levels

digging down to find the sea

imagine a chair

simple wooden sturdy yellow maybe

set it in a meadow

in the middle

now queen it there

come  teach my flocks

Esso billboard on 9W

forest of Broceliande

marshes of Brooklyn my home

gone places

mind things

the voice of lost things

louder than death

certain evidence of a mind at peace

vexilla of the Legion

prong of onward

Caesar’s last campaign at us

when we were Gaul

Gael

stumbled naked into battle

with gold rings round our necks

see here is one

the museum says,

its words on a piece of paper

shaping what we see

with our own eyes

the nameless picture on the wall

suddenly a  Botticelli

the Virgin Mother with I swear Saint Luke

self-portrait of an archangel or, or,

that fish we toasted on that fire  by the lake

he made while we were fishing

no other such was ever eaten

over the field of rye just barely sprouting

long shadow of a Russian maiden

stretches towards evening

dinner, opera house, drive home

just a few snowflakes

here and there through streetlight flicker

I want this to be music

but who is she?

logjam on the river

embroiled by eddy

do you feel lonely when I talk

do you shiver a little

look left and right and wonder

who I’m really talking to?

I saw your eyes tender pale and wary

a waitress moves table to table

a glass carafe in either hand

decaffeinated and pure coffee

(from Ethiopia to begin with,

Rimbaud sent it home, after

the Greeks had called it molu,

favorite of much-traveled gods)

sound of her filling an almost empty cup

and smiles all round, mystery of supply

manna

came down from Heaven

polyphony

19 vocal lines interweaving

how many?

words lost into music

bloodless opera

children in the street

uncommon in these programmed days

schoolyard polyphonic

stranding at the gates

at the foot of the cross

grieving women

my first job was consolation—

have I succeeded

mere words dry tears?

our obligation is to console one another

enduring pain is science too

try to taste time as it passes

as it slips down

bridge to elsewhere

cross it to find out

each glance a giving

each glimpse a song

but where is music?

I was fatter once

and then ggrew lean

how thin the bone that bears

all the doings of the day!

I wrote this in Latin

so I would not forget

climb the stairs to sleep

the words are up there waiting

alternate sources of energy:

stare into the cup

watch the little river carefully

all the water passes

but the river is still here

simpleminded with amazement

everything astonishes

the cat just seems to be asleep

the rock wall talks

trunk of a tree that fell

in a blizzard five years ago

still jammed among the rapids’ stones

everything trying to go home

year after year the ink flows by

this is an opera after all

love scene below the tower

a duel in moonlight

to which the duelists

strangely do not come,

only their seconds (bass,

baritone) are left

to fret so tunefully

anxious audience

where is the sword?

but at the coronation scene

a dove flies down

a voice is heard from heaven

rich patrons chatter in their boxes

the king drowses in his gilded loge

wakes at the final chorus

What has happened?

he asks his page

Nothing, Sire, we all are saved.

                                         12 April 2019

                                 printed originally in The Doris magazine