Caul for my comfort
or do I mean a different word,
morning means confusing
what I dream with what there is,

Caul to wrap round,
or call out to thee?

because all the old words
are still living in the night.

2.
Now silenced by sun.
Who are we today,
brave pilgrim,
on time’s turnpike
asphalt softened from summer heat?
I mean wake up in me
natural as a ball of twine,
uttering secrets orderly
one tug at a time.

3.
These days I miss the sea
though the river brings some of it to me,
fjord that it is, firth our word?
But only with the whole
sea can I or music be
continuous. Otherwise
it’s just one song after another,
wren at the window
last night you heard.

4.
Ah you, the diamond of my days,
you are where you are
when nothing is where it is.
You tilt the light so I can see,
you coax wildlife to give
singing lessons to the lifelong child,
bluejay jive and chipmunk chatter,
speaking strictly, like a flower.

5.
But do not name it
so early in the day.
Let it be music
if it must, rivers of,
sensuous legato
rifling the silences,
is that an oboe
or a little girl crying
softly over a torn dress?
Should I waste the music
trying to find out what it means?

6.
Suppose a spoon.
It does what nothing
else quite can do:
lift a little liquid
to your lips. We must
have spoon nature
in us, since we give
a little taste of us
to you and you, only a little
and hope you like the taste.

7.
Anyhow, that’s what the music said
while I listened to the loud piano,
sound is such a paradox,
it comes so far to touch the skin,
child Mozart memorizing
Palestrina, some such story,
stories too are music, come
from far away to touch us as they can.

                                                          27 July 2020

We breathe more
going up.
The steps creak
louder going down
as if all the air
that lifted us
were gone now
and we sink
weightily, body
alone, unthinkingly
from step to step—
Virgil says it’s easy
to go down.

But sometimes
as I climb at night
I linger on each step
to think the thought
that lives right there,
only there, at that
particular ascension,
that shelf of history,
every step its own
chronicle, theorem.
I stand there, stunned
by what is suddenly clear,
what is utterly there,
then hoist myself
out of that thinking
then rise to what waits
eight oaken inches
closer to the stars.

On one step
I stop and think
of who I am—
but ‘am’ is a house
with many floors—
am I what I look like
as I do a certain thing
or am I what I think
in doing it? Am I
even doing it, or does
the task itself draw me
into the vacuum of itself
to be done, so that I
have no more agency
than a feather floating
on the wind?
So many feathers these days
on the deck, the old
steps outside, the hawk
attacking mourning doves
again, soft birds
that come to be fed
so it’s my fault when
the Cooper’s hawk comes
down and kills them.
And is that too what I am?

Why are there steps
and how many are there,
I count all the time
and the number keeps changing,
how many steps to get where I am,
and know the place
and go on from there?
And why are there numbers
anyway, chalk marks
on the cave wall,
up the stone hill, no,
the wooden hill to Bedfordshire
they used to say
night time, beddy-bye
where Great-great-grandfather John
was a priest and knew
a winding path to Sophocles—
I knew Greek once too,
that was a gorgeous step,
a long swoon of scholarship
a warm unending autumn afternoon,
but I digress— you’d think
that would be hard to do
on a single flight of stairs
but no, distraction beckons everywhere,
and maybe wandering aimless
is the real road to Jerusalem,
pilgrim quest, top of the stairs,
al som de l’escalina, said Dante
who knew who waited for him
up there. And for me?

Take one more step,
who knows what I’ll see from there,
the groaning elevator of my attention
yearns to rise. O an elevator
would be a precious tool
to bypass thinking
into pure Arrival,
up there, where the angels
wait to stage the night’s dream.
Though I suppose dreaming
counts as thinking too,
wouldn’t you?

And sometimes even
while I linger on a step
(speaking of thinking)
I’ll think: why not stay here?
This present place,
this exiguous plateau
is new-found-land enough for me.
Stay here and be at home
halfway to nowhere,
but home, home, no more
climbing, no more going down.
Standing there upright
somehow feels like lying down,
peaceful, a long soft exhalation,
all vigilance relaxed.
Then before I know it
a foot lifts by itself
and heaves me to the next step,
bare tundra and a sense of loss.
My body has its own ideas
so who am I after all?

                        23-24 July 2020

Help the opal
find its wheel,
help the chimney
find the sky,
a jewel has meaning
but not always one
the books explain,
find its meaning
by wearing it— with care
because who knows
where the smoke goes.
A thing knows its own mind–
do you know yours?
That is the question
every door asks
as you go through.
Or even just wait outside,
patient, waiting
for me to open it and say
you are the diamond,
please come in.

2.
But of course that is not
the end of it. The diamond
has no door or only one
the soul alone can enter,
whatever the soul is
or means. The mystery deepens.
The diamond gleams in the sun
but deep down in it
I saw as a child
a pure and radiant blue.
Study your mother’s engagement ring—
it gives the first faint glimmer
of what you will become.

3.
I use this word ‘you’ a lot,
it is small as an opal,
precious as diamond.
But don’t get me wrong—
the beauty of you
and the beauty of me
is that we can be anyone at all,
depending. Depending
on whether you are listening
or speaking, the words
around you like emeralds,
pearls, carnelians all strung
together coherently,
a necklace. Put it on,
wear it to know what they mean.

4.
I [verb] you.
This is the greatest
vector language knows.
Wind in the trees—
see what I mean?

5.
So we are beasts of burden
who carry words to their intended,
and somehow they sustain us
on the way, some of us
even grow fat from carrying
so many words so far,
so far. I really do wish you were near.

6.
In India they let cows
walk on the highway
right amidst the cars
and trucks and bikes and horses.
Sometimes they loop flowers
on the cow’s neck. Sometimes
I feel like a cow in traffic
dazed with other people’s
strengths and speeds but there
I am, four feet to the asphalt,
lurching slow forward.
Towards what? Not the slaughterhouse–
this is India remember, ahimsa,
no, towards somewhere
what I am or what I give
is needed, honored even
in a half-unconscious way.
I mean towards you, ready or not.

7.
O the glint of one
sun on so many windshields!
Head for the lake or the river
to see the single sun again
smile up at you from calm water
and your own face in it,
your mother found at last.

                                             23 July 2020

A man
upright
before
a finely scratched
red enamel metal door
as of a car. Or van.

Our hero
in this song,
no dogs, no ravening.

Song without anger
but joggers a-plenty
and plenty of wheels.

His mother
comes to visit
every now and then—

who’s telling this story?
“My mother is younger
than I am,” he explains,
“there are so many miracles
in this neighborhood.”

She smiles to hear him say so
and agrees when she comes by,
always some new suitor flustered
by her side, puzzling out
how this man could be this
young girl’s child—
If they behave themselves
they’ll finally find out.
We were puzzled too,
we looked it, so he smiled
and said “My mother
is my other
and from this other
all wisdom flows—
I catch it as I can.”

The main thing is
everybody is alive
at the end of the story—
it has to be that way,
only a story is allowed to end.

2.
The shiny door behind him
reflects the landscape he faces—
fences and fields and trees on a ridge,
what might be a cow way over there
or a boulder left by a glacier,
hard to tell, life
takes odd forms in these places,
these planets.
We could ask him to decide
what that pale lumpy object is
but we have more important
issues to address—
you don’t waste a hero’s
time with ontology.

What is the order of the day
we ask, what’s new, what’s next?
He rolls his eyes,
almost girlish,
and answers what we didn’t ask,
“The clouds bring rain,
but what does the rain bring?”

Don’t know, we say,
we are not skilled
as you in consequences,
what does it bring?

“Brings you you yourselves—
you’re twice alive
when your skin is wet—get
born every day!”

What would we do without such advice?
Dry crackers in dry fingers—
“Quiet your brain
and pray for rain!”

3.
It has to be long,
like a road,
has to be wide
like a door,
has to be deep
as a mirror,
shallow as the sea,
must be you,
like me.

That’s what the leaflet read
we found on the front seat
when he went for a walk in the field,
never out of sight.
We could watch him walking
as if following a pattern
he could read in the grain,
young corn, barely up to this thigh.

We put the leaflet back,
began to wonder whether
we should be here at all,
so many words to listen to,
so many religions
and no horsemen coming over the hill.

Look in the back
one of us said and we did,
empty save for a paper cup
with coffee in it still warm
but no one dared to take a sip
though even we knew
wisdom takes the oddest forms.

4.
He came back soon,
the man,
offered to drive us into town.
But we all came from different places
and didn’t know what town he meant
and didn’t dare ask—
we are not brave,
we people of the word,
we know the awesome power
of what can be said.

So we said we’d make our own way home,
studying the wildlife on the way,
the guerison of local flora,
church bells and factory whistles
will guide us more or less
but thank you for offering
we said. “I hope,” he said,
“you’ll meet my mother on the way.”

7 July 2020

Imagine a string of beads
rosary or necklace
beads of pearl or sandalwood or jade
and then be one of them a while
and take your ease,
sleep even, safe in continuity.

It’s the kind of advice
the mirror gives
when you wake too early,
sun still tangled in the trees
or is it raining.

Be kind to yourself
is what it’s trying to say
but neither it nor you
know how. Guesswork abounds.
Take a walk, a drink, a week off.
The smile is always ready to come back.

Think about the skin on your back,
how little you know it
how sensitive it is,
a feather will fuss it;
this combination in you
(in me) of ignorance
and sensitivity defines
the ongoing music of our race,
swelling, dwelling, quelling,
telling—you know the song.

A glass bead rolls along the table top—
does that feel truer?
Are you you when you’re asleep?
That’s what poor mothers wonder
when the brat is finally snoring
gently, gentle smile or no
expression at all.
How brave to be a mother!
The only real heroes that we have.

But I am wandering
from my rosary,
distracted by the truth,
that cry in the night,
that flesh in the forest
I’m forcing myself to go on,
aren’t you, into the all
too well known—to be
conquistador of the obvious!
And then the real magic starts.

I am one of a hundred of us
lined up, linked in time,
each one of us reciting
the same story in different words.
Or the same words
and meaning different things,
how can I be sure, I hear only
myself and the woman next to me.

They’ll finger us out
in a hundred years
but by then we’ll be doing something else,
in Devon maybe by the coast
or leaning on a silver
plow in Gulistan.

9 July 2020

The sky suspended from a wall
but each leaf on the tree a road.

We came through that town on the way
but now we can’t find it again,

the merry streets, the wine-red neon lights,
bare knees, gruff Teslas of the newly rich.

And now where are we?
A planetary distance from a distant star?

Don’t be romantic, you know
full well where the water flows

and where the fox buries his catch
and why the marmot whistles,

don’t pretend to be
even more ignorant than you are,

than me. The leaf
is laughing now, truly

one of our jobs is to amuse
an audience less mobile than ourselves,

assuming we know how to move.
Move them to tears too

with long poems with startling cadenzas.
But no, we lull.

We play Bach like Chopin
on our soft pianos,

we neglect the ides, forget to lay
healing marigolds at the Virgin’s feet,

we oarless rowers on a becalmed lagoon.
What did you just call me?

What did your phone call mean,
I was afraid to answer,

tell me now in a simple way
so even I can understand.

Some unknown romantic
planted this very tree—

Valéry says it was Chateaubriand
who once rode past this very house

on his exile’s way to Albany—
but our trees are all our own.

Soupault proved words are magnetic,
it takes all our wit to pry them apart

and make them say what we want
not what they actually mean.

So many Frenchmen in one morning,
this comes of hunkering down

to dream at the side of the road
pretending we’re not lost.

2.
When the wolf howled we woke up.
The moon had that sneery look he has

when people down here go astray—
he never loses his way: the sun sees to that.

So we waited for the sun and feared the wolf
and all the other perils that came to mind

the countryside is full of threatening.
The city too—remember cities?

Crowded places full of cruel authorities
but music too. Remember music?

Marching bands with angular trombones!!
Fat tenors with high C’s! Lewd saxophones!

We shiver now and listen to the cornfield,
the wind is busy whistling in there,

not whistling, really, just breathing soft
but our ears expect a person everywhere,

behind every sound a human presence,
hallelujah! the thing that thinks in us.

But what about now, so dark, so streeted
with going now standing still. Make believe

you’re not afraid the Boy Scout said,
the one who led us yesterday and here we are.

But where, where? Ubi sumus Domine
the priest cried out, we thought it wise

to have one of them with us, a rabbi too
for laughs, and a lama to try to wake us

really, he has his work cut out for him
as the carpenter remarked, a tool-less youth

sobbing for his missing saw. Night wears on,
wears us down until we forget the wolf

and stumble our pebbly way back to sleep.
Morning will take care of us, or else.

I dreamt a childhood chemistry set
on Christmas morning, she dreamed a horse,

he dreamed a barbecue in Buffalo,
we have so many hungers, someone else

mainly, and you dreamed a creamy shore
of the bluest north Atlantic, the wind helped.

And sure enough the morning came,
the sun a bronze coin slipped in the slot

to start the whole machine again,
bonjour maîtresse, French at it again,

will we never wake up from philosophy?
soft gleam on asphalt, road paved at least,

lace up your sneakers and trot forward,
may our bravery last as long as light!

one cried, we doubted but obeyed, reduced
to a murmuring chorus with no soloist in sight—

remember music? I asked you that before
but got no answer. Should I go on waiting?

Be careful—language is the best way to wait.
And what’s for breakfast anyhow?

8 July 2020

1.
Nothing says itself back.
The mirror is bottomless,
even the big tree outside
is silent. I dreamt
nibbling the leaf, dreamt
old satchels stuffed for departure.
Where are my socks
when there is nowhere to go?

2.
We kept getting closer and closer
to saying something but we couldn’t
make it come. Silent as skin,
as closets at midnight,
ceiling staring at me when I woke.

3.
Listening is dangerous,
we were brave though,
thoughtless brave, and kept
trying to hear. Dangerous
since no one knows what
word will come, or where
on earth it’s coming from.
We waited and listened
and heard each other’s breath.
Maybe that is articulate enough,
dangerous enough and we woke.

4.
Came back to weather.
The listening game is over
(they call it sleep)
and now the speaking starts,
everybody talking all at once,
all hearing and no listening
like sunshine on a quiet lawn.
Where are the birds today?
They used to help me make
sense of what I did and didn’t hear.

5.
I could get religion,
worrying like this.
But the sky is blue,
not a cloud in it.
It is so hard sometimes
to escape from dreams—
that’s what the day is for,
for us pilgrims from the dark.

5 July 2020

Numerous vastnesses
but then
a question of belonging—
who owns these dreams?
Is it some fin de siècle
philosophe in some
pale primitive Pageant?
Things linger to be told.

2.
I ask because I am asked.
“All my iniquities
array themselves before me,
choose me, choose me,
they cry, each
claiming to be the sin
for which this life is punishment.
Though it so seems life’s reward.”
In eternity the numbers take sides.
“I still remember the man I thought was me.”

3.
Carry on. Anachronism
is our friend.
Give Caesar a steel cuirass,
change history by forgetting,
Get things wrong!
Our only safeguard in this Chronocracy!
Rule time or succumb to it.

3 July 2020

As not be me, as linger
in the bushes, the somewhere
of an Irish dream, allow me,
macushla, the wind lifts,
we slept aneath the fairy tree
and got our words awrong
but from the missing
the little children play,
my Jewish uncle frowned
in the sweetest way.

2.
Wait, we haven’t come to the theme yet,
you’ll hear it soon enough,
may even recognize it
before I do, I so want
to get away from me
with only words to carry me
out of range, over the hills
and far away, to the land
where pomegranates grow
and each one opens to a feast of color,
rubies that cry Eat me,
tart white fiber of civilization,
no, when you and I were young
there was magic in every tree
and so we learned to find it
in everything that grows,
every random chip of wood,
nothing flees from us now
that once did us seek,
Slavic trumpets and Saxony’s trombones,
what shall the pose sound in,
we know that we come back to live.

3.
At last not me. Rimbaud’s I
showed us the way but would we follow?                                     Thirteen decades passed

and we’re still in the classroom

watching the clock. What else
could set us free?

4.
Nibble at it till the grand theme appears,
the new one the variations discover
lurking in the memory of what we’ve heard.
Did you hear anything?
A glass breaking?
A woodpecker at the house wall?
A wafture of leaf rustle through God’s window
into the sweltering earth?
The glory in the meekest things
takes us by the hand
leads us up the Abbey’s aisle
to our crowning. This
is the actual. We have come so far
to be beyond ourselves.
The organ plays, the sleek equerries
jostle for our attention,
we have enough for everyone!
I am we now, lost in a multitude!
Paradise found!

5.
More people now
than ever before.
Where did all our
souls come from,
and what were they doing
before being summoned to this place?
I promised music
and offered only questions,
werewolf riddles,
semiquavers of doubt.
But here we all are–
you want music, boychik?
open your glorious new ears.
So this is the latest variation,
the coma,
the world as it seems to be,
a picture hung up on the wall
of your grandmother’s house,
tattered a bit and much faded
but we are in there, somewhere,
she keeps the back room
too dark for us to see.

6.
(aria)

Seated one day by the pine tree
I was weary and ill at ease
and my fingers wandered idly
over the rugose bark.
I know not what I was thinking
or what I was dreaming of
when my fingers encountered
something carved into the wood.
I sprang up to examine
and was shocked to discover
right there in the bark
my own name
spelled with the letters
of someone else’s.
O wise tree, kind and full of memory,
if ever thou shouldst tumble
in a tempest
I will build my skiff from thee
and sail to the truthful realm
your living form reminds me of.
But do not fall, stand there
for centuries so other dreamers
can find their names in thee.

7.
Is that enough, a century ago
that would have been a song.
But now the cities are full of doubt
and country people sing no more.
If there were a church
I might go to it
but as it is
there is only you,
thank God, always you.

8.
Amaze me, walk through the door
again, just like the first time,
rustle of silk makes me turn my head
and there you are.
You are the spring wind,
the summer’s vast field of wheat,
the autumn gloaming,
the intimate inwardness of winter,
all these, all these,
and you are all the songs
my father sang when I was young,
my mother’s smiling silences.

                                                                   29 June 2020

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