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.
Apr 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
292.
That was good kyning they’ll never say of me
I lost Caesar on the way to France
a slim-hipped nation on a crowded bus
Europe is always on the march I want
to sit still
buying a dictionary brought me closer
to girls
I was so young I believed in what I
read in what I said
even if I didn’t believe a word of
what it said
I was a boy with a penknife looking
for the bark of a tree
to carve my name in and find out who
I was
the trees were quick in those days
and I was slow
so I remembered music Mahler mostly
and pretended it was you talking to
just me.
293.
So much for me, life begins when you
forget
and live by feeling through the world
of will
that angry place of plastic and
aluminum
commonest elements made hard and not
to eat
so feeling is your blade young man
keep silence till you get to say it
spoken silence is the richest meat
and nourishes the clarity inside
all those layers of you till I get to
me
and always always the other way round
Leipzig the fugue trapped in the
organ
I opened the creaking door and let it
out.
Apr 2, 2015 | Uncategorized
289.
Nothing is likely to end
the rose of Sharon is just now blossoming
should I hand over to it this work of
saying
she is easier to read but harder to
understand
all touch dissolves in color
color crystalizes into sound
a sound you mistake for a word
rain on marble steps slippery as
poetry
but it isn’t raining it isn’t
anywhere
the word you think you heard unlocks
your memory
everything you remember escapes and
runs away
leaving you free alone with your own
meaning.
291.
Successiveness dissolves in klang
all the notes played at once of what
will be a song
use the simplest word for it
a word though now sick with
commercial implication
song as commodity is the root of war
copyright is blasphemy
all of these words are yours to begin
with
I just got in the way on their way to you
shall we end at the Milvian Bridge
where they began to confuse Christ
with Caesar
o throw that denarius away his face
is in the sky
no his face is your face when you
wake up.
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