Haydn wrote a symphony a day
for a hundred days
but the days weren’t all together,
depending on the weather,
sometimes it takes a year
to reach tomorrow.
The last ones are the days
I like best, say 98 to 104,
but who am I? And who was
Haydn anyhow, father of many?
3 August 2020
Did Audubon do animals?
I want to see his wombat,
echidna, hippopotamus.
Mozart wrote secret
music for the birds—we all
know that, and Beethoven
gave intelligence to thunder.
So who will sanctify by art
the woodchuck at our fence,
the streak of sunlight
running down our door?
Everything is trying to get in!
O a girl is a gospel of oyster shells,
a boy is a minor felony, grow up,
grow up and be God at least
the way everything else is,
permanent, mysterious and true.
3.VIII.20
And is the beautiful blue sky
somebody’s lie too,
some raptor of feelings
hunting your heart?
Think not. Color
may be the only truth.
Pay your taxes and decide
what the wind is telling you,
the green wind of August
that hides in the sky.
In your next life
you’ll be an admiral—now
calm down and let me rest.
3 August 2020
It said nothing
then it spoke.
The silence and the saying
sounded same
but the difference was
I understood.
2.
The calendar shifted
to keep up with the sun,
her balance act of day and night.
Old Lammas slipped
a dozen dawns down
and now we know a new one
come over the hill,
naked in cornfields, raft
of cloud overhead,
angels of air looking
emptily meaningfully down,
soon the harvest begins.
3.
There are still errors
left for me to make—
times and titles,
answering the wrong questions,
writing the wrong book.
4.
The world as is
wants to be loved.
Doesn’t mind
a little flirtation
with the Pleistocene
but come back soon.
Now is now. Now
is when you count.
5.
So it’s wonderful on summer days
the way plump clouds come up
slow over the trees and speak.
It’s quiet enough to write down
what they say. Just pay attention
to the vowels and the consonants
will take care of themselves.
6.
So let the vowels lead you
all the way,
the enormous vowel of the sea
will bear you on,
we know that from today’s birthday,
Melville, master of energetic
triumphant loneliness.
7.
But in Xhosa there are 18
consonants, mouth sounds
maybe like what we make
when talking to horses or to poultry
or try to write down as tsk-tsk or tut-tut,
sounds waiting to be used,
always something new from Africa
the Romans said, remember?
Remember Rome, the Christians
in the Colosseum, the old emperor
studying Etruscan, Princess Julia
naughty in the Arches, remember
the sounds of ghosts, goats,
flute players, the river slipping by,
let the vowels help you remember.
8.
Who are we anyway
if the calendar can change?
The little boy asked that
standing in the surf
with his little tin shovel in hand,
as if eager for the sand.
Who are we even
when the wind dies down
or when the crows in the corn
look at us but don’t call out?
Or when the cars pass up the road
too fast for us to see who’s driving,
who are we when the night falls down—
why do they say it falls?
The little boy lets one question
distract him from another.
Good little boy. Now he bends
and starts building his castle.
9.
Lammas is Saturday this year,
no mowing, please.
Just bend down and kiss the grass
given to us by the Lord of Time,
let it grow wild the whole afternoon,
wait and eat your breakfast in the dark.
10.
Clouds mostly teach silence
but sometimes they roar,
chide the delinquent
messengers we are.
Their silence means to make us speak–
that in a way is the whole story.
If you doubt me, ask any stone.
1 August 2020
Paul Blackburn, in memoriam
Trying to keep up with the alphabet
but there are so many letters
running before me,
deer through the cornfield,
blackbirds over the roof
too quick to count,
your breath beside me.
Letters, letters all,
God’s cursive scribbled on the sky,
2.
and when we shake hands
does every finger consent
to this mild argument,
the book of peace
opened to the chapter called now?
3.
The letters,
not just the ancient
ox-house-camel procession
from Egypt into the Holy Land
but all of them, every mark
shouting from the stone,
long before the privilege of print.
The law runs this way:
once you learn to read,
everything is a book.
Once you learn language,
everything speaks.
4.
So learning a finite language
(Gaelic, Zulu, Thai) means learning
to leave things out, how
not to hear certain sounds,
means casting out meaning
from most of what you hear or see,
and narrow-squinting on some few.
5.
So every given language
is a subtraction from the whole
of what is being said?
Sounds like that. Means
run faster, ride the horses
of sounds, surf the waves of sight,
always more to be said.
6.
Are we there yet?
is what every breeze says,
Yes, yes cries every leaf
until it falls.
That’s the song I heard
written on the lawn.
7.
It began again
with the horns of Zeus
the god came riding
to your house, knocked
on your door, you watched
from the window.
And then what did we do?
He called out to us his law:
Death is not an option,
then Everything means
and then rode on. Leaving
all the rest of the letters,
uncountably many, all of them
needing to be spoken
alone and in concert,
all round us the music,
the ancient masters gesturing,
urging us to strive
into the dance, the whirlwind,
the breathless moment of calm
we yearn for and call meaning.
31 July 2020
for Charlotte
I don’t think I’ve ever told you
how much it moves me,
deeply, quietly
that you make the bed every day
so neatly, so if I pass
through the bedroom
anytime thereafter, there it is,
eloquent and civilized,
covers turned down,
pillows luxuriant.
*
Why is marital
so like martial?
We never fight—
discuss sometimes,
but never fight.
Mars must have blessed us
by misspelling.
I love to talk with you.
*
Sometimes
when I’m sitting there
letting thinking
have its own way,
such a child the mind is!
sometimes then you’ll
be translating on the laptop
on the sofa, on the latest
of all your books
and you’ll read out to me
a phrase especially pleasing
or especially puzzling
or both, we love chimeras,
and I will exult at this gift,
this exit visa from my thoughts
into the great world
of language and the other
and your voice, your voice.
31 July 2020
The kind of chaos
that takes care of you.
A cloud does that
in one way, the woman
in white at the Qatar
Bakery does in another.
She gives you sweet buns
with sesame seeds on them,
lets you pay later. Red
letters on the window.
Haven’t you ever wondered
why clouds are mostly white?
2.
There is summer in my hair,
a strange feeling as if
my hair was someone else’s
pure as your face, warm, austere,
symmetrical, in repose.
3.
AFTER
a metaphor borrowed from time
Thus the title and the subtitle
of the book I wrote in sleep–
to analyze who people really are
and what they mean, unknown
to themselves, that is what all
the rest of us are for, to see
you as you cannot see yourself.
So it’s one more commentary
after all on Exodus,
each of us takes a turn
being God, passes by
all the rest of us
who get to see who
and what that Passerby is.
4.
If a whirlwind
stopped moving
but still was
what is it,
what would it say?
5.
Reverence
immense,
due
from all of us
to all of you
who are us too.
6.
And the Bible says so too,
treat everyone like God,
you can’t go wrong.
7.
Now back to the cloud—
this is an opera, after all.
Perfect cumulus
over perfect green
the song sings.
The lawnmower is at lunch,
there is a throbbing in the pit,
the orchestra at bay,
a few violas and one cello
passing the time of day.
8.
What a friend a window is! —
only self-revealing when you choose to look.
And you’ve never seen a window drunk,
and only rarely does a window
look frightened, rarely,
like the eyes of the girl in the bakery
as she looked at me and came to help.
20 July 2020
The truth of the matter
is matter itself
said Goethe in a dream
so I woke and wrote it down.
You need so many lies
to tell the truth.
29.VII.20
Teach the pilgrim
a new dance.
You make the music,
the dance called standing still,
staying right here,
sitting on the lawn
loving the daffodils
till they fade,
then loving
the irises till they wilt
then loving the rose of Sharon
and it’s almost autumn,
slip inside and watch the leaves
strip from the trees and float
past you till the snowflakes
sift down so beautifully,
each one a crystal message,
now the world is white
as a page and you can finally
write down your journey
and be at peace. Sleep now,
this is Jerusalem.
29 July 2020
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