Terror drips into the wells...

Terror drips into the wells of the Muse, freezing over
Her clear springs, burning the hyacinth, exhausting the poppies too
That grew around. How the tint of green gives way to brown,
As the undulating folds of life quiver, gasp, and faint: it is the light
Once illumined my way that grows faint, the spring dribbling out
That dries, while a parching slakes the pulverizing ground. How odd,
This summer-winter scorching ice and freezing flames: it is not love
That stamps the threshold of my heart, but World's sterile touch
Grown real. How I withdraw, how tendrils extending
Out from an inner light curl and withdraw like fingers brushing
Unexpectedly a sanguine stove, and roots that dwelt in air – the airy realms
Divorced from, prior to the images here sealed upon my mind
By chisel of the ears, lightning's eyes, nostrils reeking and the double
Impact on my skin and tongue of touch – now macerated on the razor of the real,
How these roots split and vanish like a mist. Oh that language were an island
On the tongue, a touch of possibilities conjured and recalled, a doorway, not a hall.

Thanksgiving

My stomach
Is heavy, pregnant with the Muse,
Roiling in the lower gut, which,
‘Sorbing up the booze
Retains the lighter chunks of food –

The heavier will always drop, as Nature
Drags the denser weight,
By force of deep, electric plates,
And as these lines fall on the page.

Is love, then, Nature that I write?
In all events the errors right
Themselves and words slump into place
Like leaves,
The body’s spirit baring trees.

Ministrel

Because it will be in the way that I loved you –
What I mean is eyes like two clouds
Settling over a ploughed heart – cleft in twain –
In vain! Because you have left me, and your beauty
Glowed like two clouds strung with pearls,

I came to the weather-vane and I called for rain
To refresh the crops, up-turn the globules of the earth,
Let the heat respire from the soil, and to clean me,
Bring me a shower of fresh juice, scrubbing
The dirt and the dust, the accumulation of sweat that is the price
Of mastery over the earth. But the shallow azure
Grinned and refused the depth of his thunderheads.

So I played the harp, each a bronze string
On studded silver, and from the bow a Naiad’s head
Projected, lips hallowed in the vowel of song,
Crying still for her lost love, for the drowned boy
And the narcissus bloom. Sing a song of our love,
Muse, sing all the flowers strewn, not yet wilted,
At the softness of my feet. But the song

Is not the flight of a sparrow, and I have no wings.
Galatea has left me, but where the horizon parted
To let her slip into absence, that is where the wilting sea
Renews its treacherous oaths, where I gazed at a parting fidelity,
Apart and alone, and thought, “This is the beauty of life.”

The Orphans' Gift

I

The chamber's full of shadow, one vaguely hears two infants' sad and gentle murmurs. Their foreheads slope yet, weighed down in a dream, under the long, blank curtains that shiver and swell. Outside the birds huddle together in the cold, and their wings are going numb beneath the sky's grey pitch; the New Year, with her wintry entourage, leaving the folds of her snowy robe to drag, smiles ice and chants the Northern Wind.

II

But the children, under the floating curtain, mutter softly as you might on a silent night. They listen, pensively, as if to a far-off murmur...

They often wince at a clear, golden voice, of matinal timber, ringing once again its metallic refrain through the glassy sphere...

And the room is frozen...

You see them, lying on the floor, scattered across the beds, the veils of grief: winter's sour wind, lamenting up to the threshold, sighs upon the lodging with a morose breath! You feel, amidst it all, that something is missing...

Is there a mother in the house, with a mother's tender smile and ecstatic eyes? Then she forgot, last night, alone and bereaved, to urge a flame upon the the arrested cinders, and to tuck the children into their sheets and eder-down, before leaving them and calling, 'Goodnight'. And couldn't she foresee the morning's cold, or shut the door to winter's wind? The mother dreams of warm covers, the nest of cotton where the children, covered, as beautiful birds balanced on the limbs of trees, sleep the gentle sleep of snow-white dreams...

And there – it's like a nest without feathers, no heat, where the nestlings are cold, can't sleep, are scared; a nest that winter's kiss must have frozen...

III

You knew it in your hearts, these infants have no mother, no more mother in this house, and the father's well off too. So an old servant keeps them. The little ones are all alone in the icy house, orphans four years old, and now in their minds a laughing memory awakens by degrees...

Like a rosary wracked with prayers. Oh what a beautiful morning, this dawn of gifts! Each, during the night, had dreamt of his own in some strange dream of toys, gold-wreathed candies, sparkling gems, all twirling about and dancing their sonorous dance, then hiding under the curtains, then turning up once more! So they awake the next morning, jump out of bed, lips curled up in a grin, batting their eyes...

And off they go, all bouncing ringlets and eyes a-glow, as if at holiday, their little, naked feet brushing the ground, then gently knock on their parents' door...

And they enter...

Then all their pleading...

And still in gowns, kisses sought again, this joy allowed.

IV

Oh, so charming, those words repeated how often!

But how it has changed, this oft-home: a great, clear fire was fizzling out the chimney, the whole old room was brightened; and the rosy glow, leaving the hearth, used to frolick on the varnished chairs...

The armoir was locked, locked, the great armoir! They often watched its brown and blackened door...

Locked!...

How strange!...

They'd dreamt so often of the mysteries sleeping between its wooden flanks, and believed that they heard, from behind the braying lock, a far-off sound, a vague and happy whsiper.

The parents' bedrooms well empty now: no rosy reflection glistens under their door; not a parent, hearth, or hidden key anywhere, no kisses, no gentle secrets! Oh, how sad the New Year is for them! And so, pensively, while from their big, blue eyes a small tear falls in silence, they mutter, "When is mother coming back?"

V

Now the little ones are sleeping sadly: you would say, to see them, that they were crying in their sleep, so swollen are their eyes, so wracked their breath! Such small children with such tender hearts!

But the angel of cradles is coming to shut their eyes and put a happy dream in dreadful sleep, a dream so happy that their half-closed lips, smiling, will seem to murmur something...

They are going to dream, leaning on their small, curved arms, the gentle vision's gesture, that they lift up their foreheads, and gaze ahead...

They will believe that they were tucked into a rosy paradise...

In the hearth full of flickering light the fire sings a joyous song...

By the window you see, below, a pretty azure; nature wakes herself, drunk on rays...

The earth, half-naked, happy to revive, trembles with joy at the kisses of the sun...

And everything is rose and heat in the old home; the somber vestments no longer heap the ground, the wind beneath the threshold has died down...

One would say that a fairy came by!...

The children, in utter joy, release new cries...

There, near the mother's bed, under a beautiful, pink arc of light, there beneath the full covers, something is shining...

Silvery medallions, white and black, mother of pearl and jade, scintillating brilliance – little black gifts, glass crowns, with three words inscribed in gold: "For our mom!"

Fragment

It's GONE, not that it
Could
Have
Stayed; inimical, you see,
The times
Have changed, people
Change, kaput.

We Return

If we take How as the question
When "I" becomes the object of our inquiry rather than the subject from which it proceeds
But when we recognize too that this "I" is neither object nor subject
When we recognize that "I" is not constituted sufficiently as either object or subject
Then a new understanding of How becomes possible
Not as the elaboration of the ways in which each "I" accomplishes itself
But as the very possibility of such an elaboration, inscribed:
Transparency – when the thing is the word, not because the word represents,
But because we recognize the word *as* a thing;
Transparency – the fountain of truth, whose clearing
Depends on the forest, depends on our thirst, but is itself new,
Not because it is a "new possibility" or "another perspective"
But because the limits of all perspective have been disclosed,
Because perspective itself has been "put in perspective"
So that the song of transparency is transparent song,
Daughter of Time, Art, Being, Historicity:
Of Time because she is time made palpable in its transparency as the message that conveys it
Which is the Art
Which Art is itself the realization of the highest mode of Being,
When Being becomes Being for itself and by itself
(Because Being knows itself)
And of Historicity because it partakes of the Now,
Of *this* Now, and not of any other, supposed or past.

Lethe is the River of Remorse

Lover, why do you wrong me by lying
In another's bed? Have I betrayed you
With some word that pricks the eyes
To bleeding, so that you would kneel before
A stranger's couch? Will he
Coax you with blandishments
Foreign to our joy, my verses
In barbaric modes, beset
By the bag-pipe, German horns, echoing
A once sweet love?
But she too suffered the wilderness,
By the reflecting pools with a sincere heart, she called
Three times on an alien crag, a song she had surely learned
From some muse.
Oh muses, maidens tripled thrice
And daughters of a double thought, sorrow's bite or the milk
Of wrath, whose pitied fame inspires song, breathe life
Again into these sobs, unclog
These veins choked up with grief,
So that I might arrest my sighs
And get a little sleep.

Animal Rights

There will be tigers with sharp claws and savage teeth;
They will eat you, men, unless you jab them with a spear
Or throw your javelin with the skillful aim of piercing their ribs
And furrows of darkened stripes. See how they advance,
Fire in the eyes, as when a lion by the light of thunder
Menaces the folds, picking many of our soldiers
– Best of men! – off as a tasty morsel, bringing back
Bloody bits of flesh for their swelling cubs. So do not weary,
Do not think of sleep or even the charms of a graceful spouse,
Though she extend a belly warm for hungry seed, but combat
The invasion of these beasts, as if they were to burn our homes,
Enslave our young to penury and shame, and rape our wives.

Like It Is

But everything can be endured, since what does not
Will perish: learn philosophy, my son, the art
Of bowing to necessity. Possessions
Are as worthless next to friends, as friends
Before your love, and love is little
Besides work, since labor conquers all.
Excepting these worn syllogisms, I have in store
Many precepts of old, that men have heard before
And will repeat when you are gone: eternity exists
After all, only in literature, and poems tell lies.