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