Weightless

I don't love you the way I used,
Even though I'm afraid to put this on paper,
That old superstition that the thing once said
Is real. Not that I lack hope: she is warm
And tender as my heart, but fragile too,
A dove, fluttering behind the rib-cage,
Neither at rest nor in flight -- only restless,
Only, she stirs. Rather the weight in my stomach,
That iron boding ill that trembles on the balance,
Makes me sink, and I falter in the scale
Of the tilting land or an abyss of sky.

After a We(a)k Long Thesis

An Episode

Then he came to the land of Nana (na,
Na!) and beached his ruddy ship.
Of the customs of the Nanas, their
Religion (dread idols), culture
(Zulu tents), peccadillo markets I
Cannot speak. My task: not what to say
But how. He rebuilt the rudder, rigged
Up the hull, and launched his skiff
Into the rolling waves, receding
From all their terrestrial signs.

Yes / No

'Not' was the word of the day,
With all its negative capabilities
And intimations of failure:
Either you know or you don't
No, and space began to close
Its vast extent, folding back
Into an original body, the point
Of singularity, my primal node.

The Sunflower

As the sun the offending flower,
Who lavished of his brilliance grew bright
And winsome fanned fresh colors,
Coquetry of splendid petals,
At the lazy bea, in hope of seed,
Forsaking her creator for a buzz, the lucent
All, who, burnt by rage, then hid
Behind a shadow's furtive night,
And watched as, in blind agony,
She froze, her radiant stigma clothed,
Too shamed to bear the heavens' sight,
In pity at a form once dazzled
And bedazzling, whom with dainty
Tendrils he would kiss, first creeping
To the sloping axis' edge to peep
At sleeping frailty, finally in flagrant
Surge to fill a pliant globe
With triumph's day did too – so I
Yielding, also pitiful, bemused,
In this embrace of song, forgive you.

Variations (With One Brief Exception)

I

Into the cave, high by the magpies, notes
Like the cliffs by the sea and rising
Into the air, the cave and the air, through
Notations and dusk, and a chipped mask.

II

Time passes, and they forget
That fire is the origin of all,
Particularly sound, that fire first
Boiled the earth
And sent up the lava in steam
Which coalesced into sound again,
Rigid, unyielding, iron's violent sin,
That reigns over the earth.

III

Not that I won't be scarlet in the morning,
For mornings are stained with the dead men's blood,
And the women's, with the whites of their infants' eyes
Floating along like egg-shells in a silence that courses
Between stripped branches and downtrodden leaves.

IV

Then there was war, which was lonely, gunshots
Ringing of a midnight, and Phoebe blushed;
The fields were strewn with bodies, young men
Next to their fathers, arms cross-wise
Over arms, the golden wheat blanched
Red, like the stain of beef on a sesame bun.

V

We came to the sun, sailing in a rig
For six days, and on the seventh day,
Light, light everywhere, fluorescent
Spindles churning out the fabric of light,
Cables of pure light hanging across cables
Of thick light, and white sparks sagging
Through the pockets of the patchwork,
Like children in the cradle of the dawn.

(VI)

Less and less the more I read I like
The way the book sails
Between two ports,
Irrelevance and awe. As if to say:
"There's a pleasing draught in mystery
Unveiled." But stripping a bust
Is shameful:
Even marbles blush.

VI

This mask, as the years envelop it,
Grows paler and more gaunt, but there are traces
Of charcoal under the chin, a spot of pitch on the tip
Of the nose, and weeds invest it
With shadows, while the shallows
Scuttle between its teeth.

Lines Written to Dvorak's "Carnival Overture", Op. 92

They return, triumphant in arms, balancing their broadswords
And shakos, raising spears high in the clash
Of their calls, "Hoho! Hoiho!" Around them crowd, in wonder,
Youths with faces of gold, maidens
Of glittering eyes, while thatched roofs
And thick fields glisten with sun.

But from the tower where thunder-clouds circle, whose high spires
Rival the mountains by casting sleek shadows over the farms
And broad pastures, the crowd is nothing more than diminishing
Buzz, a vision of dusty pollen pervading the breeze. Here
Air is peaceful, and the sunlight trickles a trade
Of birdsong and murmuring shades. As pastors consider afar
The slouching of cumulous sterns, giving countenance to the grim dead,
So in the free heights the spreading checkerboard of dim life
Resolves into an ordered sway, necessity's slow dance. But for the waltz

Of plunging hail! Because the weather always returns to the earth,
And since lightning's the crack between peace and war,
When the thunderheads bellow and rain drenches all,
And the winds freeze a long swathe as far as the fathomless sea,
Then even the farmer yearns to take arms: the elements drive men mad,
So they burnish bronze and sharpen the heirloom, a century's rust,
To a new and glorious shine. "Soon," they say, "You will plunge
Again in the breasts of those subdued, soon rivulets will pour
From your victims into cataracts of the groaning storm." Plants
Meanwhile, take heart, who by water extract soiled secrets, and learn
How to rival the hunger of aphids and ants in their bloom.

Canticle for Leibowitz

Life is heartless, even though it has a heart that beats
Me raw, both because Diana slips beneath the surface
Of my eyes and since Tithonus' consort throws her lances
At their swollen lids. What's more, in summer there are rains,
And winter frosts; it hails, my limbs in lightning sear
And soaked I raise to zealous God. Oh lofty thunderer,
You genesis of life and pain, attend my canticle of rattling chains!

Seeds

Life is heartless, even though it has a heart that beats
Me frail, both because the moon sets and the sunrise
Glitters when dawn grows pale; maidens of ivory,
Why do you blush when it grows cold?
The rains are bitter and the frosts taste
Something less than sweet. My hands burn, then
These palpitations grow. Thrum of thunder,
Sleet, and hail: life is a three-fold canticle;
I drag my chains, shiver, hum.

What we do...

What we do: fires in the spaces of the night,
A diamond infinitely precious transgressing the void,
With no one to see except the reader
Squinting at the pages in between the line.

Complacencies of the Peignoir

The thought of breakfast,
Eggs and green tea, and this music:
Overtones of tin in mouthfulls
Hot and fully clothed, while day
Inflates like a balloon,
And the baboons,
For purely formal reasons,
Croon. How far can I carry crime?
– I think, and squeeze a lime
Into my drink.

Differance

Oh but the night has clothed me, Neptune, and the art
Is different from before, for the roiling currents
Run where the tunny-fish swim, and the moonlight
Glances the abyss where I have fallen, and I drown.

Once there was a wind that could help me, a golden breeze
Overlaid in monuments bejeweled and silver anklets,
The balance of pure light split
Into Edenic forms. If she kissed me then it was with eyes
Of sapphire and a nose relic of the fall, whose heat
Kept me from December and made the forests blaze:

Those forests, god of salt and sand, were rills for the nymphs,
Treasury of fallen limbs and broken teeth, probosci
Of granite and the ox-eyed lune, Luna who prophesied dawn,
Luna who wrapped me in twilight's crown.

So I ride over these streams on a wooden horse, bent to capture
Tigris, the prow that will sink the inevitable past, an occident
Of waving boughs by the murmuring sky.

A Disagreement

The philosophers had a conference.
There was an argument.
Some said, "Time is like a wheel:
Her revolutions
Fall by hoisting the lowest
Under the height
Whose eternal apex
Sings." "Nay, a pendulum," the others
Replied, "That rises, falls, and swings."

Necessity

I

They will bite us and the blood
Will spurt or leak?
But there is a sound in death,
For it is not restless:
The rest filters into the white
Noise, silent as a pearl;
There are pebbles on the beaches by the stainless
Sand.

II

Oh lover, give me a hand, zirconic
Balconies by conic
Trees, the bearers of purple fruit
And news, await! – This is the gospel
Of blossomings and springs,
When the whirling caucus of the winds
Subsides before a Zephyr's might,
While the geneses of cherries
Blush above the green.

Not "Oh Cimbrian Skies"

No excesses, not
"Oh Cimbrian skies!";
Something slender
To tickle your ears,
Like a wind-polished
Feather scraping the space
Between your tender buttons
Or the cheeks that blush
Above your thighs. Naked
Words, unworn by common
Speech I cast aside,
Because this labor
Also has its charms,
And I would like to ride
On asphalt thronged
With busy feet.

And Knows Not Me

When the wind knocked, I latched my bolts
And wrapped myself in a tepid blaze;
As the leaves began to slither through the autumn gails
I snagged them with the fork-toothed rake,
And harvested accumulations
Of their airy weight
In rows of slumping plastic bags,
Then made them burn.
Fire is the element of fall;
It mixes boiling light
With forking pitch. The pitch
Becomes the clouds, which gather in the fundament
And frown,
And foam with subtle voice.
Season of harvests, hear my own:
You brought me nothing new, but something frail and cold
That aches.

A Man For All Seasons

(10/8/2005)
On these days I would speak with you,
When the sky hangs like a hump
Covered in spindly fur, coarse
By the edges of my dark skin, and the rain
Casts about me a cloak,
Wearing the points of my brain
Into the rock where I live until lightning
Glimmers in the corner of my eye.

***

These days I would like to talk to you,
When the sky hangs like a hump
Covered in spindly fur, coarse
By the edges of my dark skin, and the rain
Casts about me like a coat, wearing the points
Of my brain like the rock
Where I dwell until lightning
Glimmers in the corner of my eye.

In music so in love...

In music, so in love: when the flutist, moved
By moving through a rapid line, gives force
To sound, as if the notes would shriek
Upon the heights and burn the sky, then plunge
With force into a sweeping churn
Of cataracts bedazzled in an eclipsed sun,
His breath becomes a wheeze, his music's
Silver soul goes stale and stirs an acrid wind
That wails at wilting ears; but when --
Just as the placid lake that cooks beneath a serene
Sun, exhaling breezes, weaves gentle
Tendrils in an ordered dance to tickle
Lopping moss -- he breathes into his wand
And coaxes from it changing airs, then
His audience delights, the second slips
Into the song and glides on
Through the tender night.

Propertius 1.11 (Trans.)

While you recline near the path through Herculean
Shores, does any care bid one who wonders
At the plains of liquid laid beneath Thesprotus' reign,
And proximate to nobles of Misenus spend her nights
With reverence for us? Or is there any room
For the remnants of love? Perhaps someone, nameless
In my mind, with fabricated flames has snatched you
From our songs? I wish a tiny bark, entrusted
With minute oars, delayed you in the Lucrine's flow,
Or that a pool might grasp you, trapped in Teuthrus'
Slender waves, then lightly cede by one and for another
Hand – since you are now free to hear the susurrous
Beseechments of a rival, set beside him softly
On a tacit shore, as often it befalls to girls displaced
From their custodians, and nor do those perjurers heed
Our common gods. I beg this not because you are
Unknown to me through a researched esteem, but since
In this place every love feels fear. So please forgive
Our little books if they have borne you harsh
Whatevers, since my fear's to fault. Do I guard
My mother more, now? Without you have I any care
For life at all? You are alone my house, my family, Cynthia,
All my joy; if I come to my friends with gladness or in grief
Be what I will, I claim that Cynthia's to blame. So leave
Corrupt Baiae as soon as you can, for those shores
Bring divorce to many, and are enemies of all chaste girls;
Let those waters perish for their crimes against the heart.

Missive

To P.K.

I've been flagrant before, but now I will burn
More strongly, so that, through the spectacle
Of silent night, a single flame may rise
And lick the constellations, a sure sign sent
In triumph, meant to bend the obstinate
Mother of all who bar our love. Eros
And desired, if you see me flash in heaven
Like a star with the chariot's speed or bolting
Cranes' who swallow the leagues with their wings,
Return to me a missive written in your own
Hand, but signed from the well of my heart.

And then in the forest of three days there was silence. On the fourth the boy emerged, bearing a sword, wearing a scrappy tunic, then searched three more for a fire. "I have slain a dragon, but found there no fire," he said, "Only a golden ring." He slept under the elms and had a dream:

Pears swinging like bells, chimes
Tinkling beneath Aurora's hand,
Music of the austral wind
That stirs in the dark leaves.