More Observations From the Garden

The garden keeps itself from the winter:
In the garden it is perpetually
Spring and the coriander remains green
Because it has nowhere to go and the pink buds
So pubescent and raw
Are like scars by the scalpel of time
Sown into the earth's scalp
That rupture quiet leaves leaving
A harmony. Wounds heal: the earth knits
Her memories into the needle-
Work of the past and is still
As she always was --
While underneath the insects cut
Into miniscule thousands buzz.

In the Play of Light

Now moving into the garden where pools
And the little thrush wetting its wings
In the rippling water while sounds of the street
Fly over the walls and the bees sprouting color
From flower to flower is still
As the air: one image into a bubble
Contained in the matrix of bubbles reflecting
The froth of a whiteness
Boiling over, bubble
Of the world in the bubble that watches
The little bird tinkling its leaves.

Imagine That (A Musical Interlude)

What was unwritten slithering onto
The page like a friar’s fat
Thumb tracing the lines
Of the syllables unspoken
But heard silently in the mind
Like an argument for
The existence of God or
His image…Psst, brother
Are we still going to go
Through with it? --
Go through with what? --
With the question? -- I will allow
No questions… And the man
Walked up the hill with a
Cane, it was made of
Birch, and he leaned his weight
Onto it and it rested on
The ground and the ground rested
On the earth and the earth
Was on the Earth below
The stars to the right of
The sun and the moon
Winked and the birds were nodding their
Heads in agreement
Or they were puzzled or cocked
To one side like someone
Listening intently
For a sound or a song…
I will be getting along
To bed now. Where will you sleep?
Under the hills…There is a tapping
Tap that comes --
Like the rain there is a tapping
Tap that drops and crawls across
The earth -- like a snake,
It is like the presence of a snake
Leaving slime, this tapping is like
The residue of a trail
That is traced, he traces it
Across the moon…All things
Are connected. -- What?
-- In principle; they call it
Fate: when I was born,
There was no early
Or late and this is capital,
This is the capital of the
World. The world
Is like a sign hanging over
A garden; it swings
In the breeze. We swing
In the breeze. Please.

Definite Descriptions

Spreading out white like wings (Doves
Circling the sky or falcons,
Imagine the swooping
Of birds) in a fan-tail whooshing round
-- Its own -- a rotation of plastic
Circularity belongs
To the little table-lamp,
A globe in the glow of something
Very powerful and small.

Traveler's Guide

There they are, the tree-sliths,
The horny-toads,
In the furrows and groves
Of the ceiling.

It is a long way
Up, and the requisite stuff
Is missing, I mean,
The supplies,
So it will be a tough
Climb.

And when we get to the top?
Of course there are the trees,
Raised pillars to the sky;
There is room to worship there,
And expect to get lost

In the intricacies, the details
Which are ravenous for travelers

-- And I have often mistaken a traveler
For a detail,
Another furrow in the furrowing folds.

Diamond G

Why is it that,
At the center of the sky, I see
A blinking eye, turning
On the lashes of the land?

I see, but does the eye
See me? I know
I cannot touch...

(But feel it,
What travels from a long way's
Away I can feel: its gaze, the rays
That pull me to it like a fastened
Rein or gripping hand)

Because I do not understand
What it could feel like,
What it sees, because
I cannot feel it feeling me

Do I even know it's there?
When I grasp at nothing,
Still I reach at least the air.

Ideal Sciences

In the crystal regions they sit,
The Muses, plying their arts.

There is one for the practise
Of melody: she takes fine threads
And strings them together,
Binding them to patterns
Mirroring her skill,
Which were in the thread
All along -- she claims,
And the tapestries show:

The obscure earth illumined by astral
Aspects of the stars,
Constellate in a glow's
Eternity, moving by a necessary
Law, the same that guides
Her hand -- and other things
Of which we may not speak.

The Greeks have called her
Euterpe, whom I am liable to change
For Polyhymnia, Urania or Erato,
Even the dream desired
Like heaven, seen
As the boundaries of a bridge,
And like a bridge, as that which spans
Both time and a place, pressing
With its progress beyond
All progress to a region
Past its motion and a moment
Whose geometry is heard
In what only symbols can see...

No more of this, for sacredness
Is out of bounds:
We never hold the symbol
In the thought, and when we see,
We see particularity --

It is to this our study points
Though it is not itself a point.

Definition of the Sacred

I need air, wide spaces
That put everything
In their places,
And yet where
There is no place
That keeps each thing
Especially,
Holding it to its greedy
Heart in lanky paws,
Covering and coveting
The essence of nature
With grease, familiarity’s
Creed, like a passage
In which every word
Holds its piece,
As habit is not
The necessity of silence
In a necessary place.

Foundations

The tower is crumbling, fire
Eats at the wood of its base, conglomerating
In storms as if birds by the roaring ocean,
Pelicans perched on the leavening tide,
Flocked in clouds round carrion,
Of fish-heads -- cawed and dived;

It licks its base
Like chops, it climbs
Over its basis;

The ruddy foundations
Slump and the structure
Commences to shake,
Belching bloody
Ballyhoos
Of blackened soot,
And snakes

Its erection
From side to side,
All set to
Crack, twist, sunder,

Then collapse.

The Pain Pretenders and the Bent Sticks

Imagine a possible world where you
Were walking by and saw them
Flagellating in angst,
Turning about their houses, screaming,
All out of shape in a red sky that looked
Angrily ready to counter all senses
And erase the mind's fabric because
There are glowering purples that drift,
Air is humming with frightening static --
And perhaps this is why the people seem
To burn and the sticks reflexively turn
Perpendicular...

Why?

Well it all has to do with knowledge,
My friend: The screaming natives
Who are not just that way
Proclaim it, the bent sticks straightly
Reveal it because, for example, kid,
Nothing is crooked here.

Artistic Moment

A place is divided, uncertain, hazy:
A place contains room, a room,
A set of rooms. You walk through
A hallway between the rooms, hallways
Are always connected to hallways,
Anticipating their division into rooms, cont-
Aining them in uncertain ways, hidden behind h-
Azy walls.

You see how things deteriorate? There is no way
To follow the rules -- and you were going to discover
These rules, you path-finder, rule-maker,
Ruler and paver! -- But

It is exactly like (exactly, likely)
Searching for water
In a hot place:

You should know what clusters around
The water, where the desert divides into mountains
And trees, what store-houses emergent
From the carcass of the land yield fruit:

Is this something like picking your way through a
…?

In this way nothing is being said, nothing at all

Of which we cannot speak.

A Piety

Silence is the piety of thought
Emerging from the music of the mind
And dripping with the surface of ideas.
-- Alencia Lysander

From silence
It emerges, dripping with the facts
Of its occasion, impelled
Ever upwards
By desire
Urging at the surface
Of ideas

And then

When it has burst asunder under
The weight of an impulsion
Melting into air, it spills again
Across the surface,
Sinks back down
Into its depths,
And ripples with the signs
Of speechless speech.

Silence

Silence is the piety of thought: from silence
It emerges, the facts of its occasion
Dripping down the sides, impelled
Ever upwards by desire
Urging at the surface:
Will, the buoyancy of thought.
And then,
When it has burst asunder under
The weight of its own impulsion,
Melting into the air,
Spreading across the surface,
It sinks back down
Into the depths
That answer every word.