Forgetting to Forget (cf. Hy Sobiloff)

The child is a conduit for sensibles,
The manifesto of their truth, which flutters
On their utterance (the plumb of our oblivion
Is ignorance, whose syllabary, sunk in time,
Has dankened with distension).

So our ambulance will carry us away
Beyond eternity and into momentary flowers,
So our walls dissolve in pleasant, sunlit hours

Whose only burden is the sky,
Whose only dolor is its sigh,

Which falls upon the inner sense, tumbling
Through experience,

Through crawling, tickling, trickling, buzzing
Fuzz...

RE: Unfinished History (Archibald Macleish)

I am the quicker in thee, in my strength for love surpassing
The passion of rendez-vous, out-pacing “I do”, and the vaulted
Roof (though those loves, in their way, are passionate and serious
Too). “Our bed has been made in many houses and evenings”,
The idle drifter, spread full on the uneven, billowing
Promises of time, who brings spring rains, who brings the harvest
Winds, lumbering the sailors to the port and sprucing up the leaves
Of blushing trees. Truly time was our nest and from it we looked
Far into the horizon, beckoning bright stars and bringing the moon
Into our sinuous cocoon, when we embraced the other’s face, and kissed,
And knew our grace. But I fear this slackening of seasons, sometimes
The vertigo of color leaves one dizzy, faint, and you expect the dark

-- If only I could hold you in that hour. But I am afraid
In my heart, of the moment colors fade,
And slacken like a flower.

What Lacks

What lacks is the closure of bodies to touch, tracing a hand that is held
Close to the heart while lips depart on the shoulder’s sail.

But it is all the same, the alone to the alone stirs and beats
Among the ceiling’s dreams.

Maybe it is a fart or loud breathing.

But there must be times of touch when the heart slivers on blue and quickens in
Adrenaline, when the body melts into gold…

This purifying erection, this fountain of light, this dazzling jewel: the dream
I would like to see, the thought I hope to live, the image in whose shadow
Fantasies are cradled. As I hold the concept so I would touch and feel
The thing it represents, so I would know the symbol
That the letters spell, and weaving words into a name

I would call you back; I would call you.

Ennaratio in Psalmis

Father of Mountains,
Can you hear me?
Religion is to call
Again and again the voice that does not answer

Unless it is a garland
Lassoing the wind, tasseled to the end
Of a big stick

(Religion is the man who stoops
To the swollen blue).

Good Neighbors

It all becomes familiar
With time: the rows of houses stacked
One on another like burnt
Toast, the music that leaks
Into the halls, and the friendly
Calls, the impenetrable meaning in their
Drawl, in the voices that wrap them
With the mystery of walls.

They're Leaving

They’re leaving for another of yellow and gelding green
By the bird of sonic distancing. And I? I shall
Turn the wheels of the circling streets, I shall try to meet
Others, others’ destinies and destinations, eyes
And lips and thoughts; only the thread of sound can floss
The boundaries of the far away, its circuits and fades, but absence is a pulse
Like the heart, unnoticed and smart.

Contain Yourselves

Things refuse to be seen simply as they are seen!
They contort themselves
Into the forms
Of imagination, they curve
Not as planned --

Or they expand.

The hand distorts them. How can I see
And yet still fail to trace the scene?
Why do faces only fit in words? I need

Another way of touching, another route
Into appearances, agreement of sensation must be
Folded over back into itself and gutted inside out.

Le Temps Perdu

How do you slow down time?
Time does not move. Hence
It is unstoppable. But time
Has no capacity -- it is the perception
Alights on every hour,
And busies itself with the nectar
Of feeling
And something additional.

So perception is quick
Or slow, and thought
Reels the tug of its own
Demise.

But what is the still frame?

Even a picture blurs with the shadows of the sun.
(Movement is the shade of being.)

Memories

Memories are not
Creature of able minds:

They slither. They flock.
They fly. Fleeing

(These are the capable
Gender of time),

Imprinting and subtracting

(These are the counters of truth,
Scrupulously reckoning the real)

Past but not forgotten, keeping the store
Whose stock is the wealth of the poor,
Whose soul is the meaning of time,
Whose secrets are vouchsafed forever

To many,
To few,

To the none.

The Will of the Lord

The will of the Lord is in the puddles.
They are definite: destined,
Since first time spirited the earth,
Dots of innumerable color and position,
The fiery arc of the immutable, bow
Of glistering promise: each compact:
A breeze will rouse them.

What are these myriads of fortune?