You had an expecting though you shrugged your chin
And the eyes themselves sly beheld the pose
But a few hairs with stripes commingled and the lobe
Still winked. The ear in spite of shade was waiting to contain
A mixture of the moving light: the hair that bent around and back gave dark
To bright.

Is it going to be their spring?
You think spring is tubers coming up like cream
Which is not wrong and doesn't squint either
-- I would accept what I understand as true, except that the bulbs
Are sometimes more colorful, and sometimes dull
But there are I suppose the birds.

I’m going to write you my last song.
So many things have changed since I last…

But that’s how the time bends: as the sky
Would have curved -- down,
And the streets were something seen.

I stayed up late, which was an ordinary
Event, and I kept you in my thoughts or I tried
While the seconds brought the seconds
And each thing became what it was.

You should try to watch the slanting shades,
Draw pictures and numbers: it would be a tracing of things,
The reproduction of space, perfection of the hand.
Keep images on cards, and deal an ace.

But is this what I tell you? You are my
God of the Israelites, you want
A proper name, were under the eyes
As long as the eyelids hid their gel.

And now I am to praise you. Then I would say
Gold wheat and I would say sweet pears --
How can I thank this impossible bounty?
Why did you make us eat?

But like that you are no matter. Do I mock
You who are a tender -- who are a lightning,
Harsh? If only things didn’t slip
Nor even as a water cling.

Believe the world is:
Believe the thing.

I’d like to find a notebook a poem
On one page and a proof on another diagrammed
In between the tint of eye or a shaded lip Kant
In the margins and beneath a recipe a key a letter a picture
Of an atom (this would be a gallery of thoughts)
And an incomplete sequence of numbers…

Let us give glory for life
(In prayers we will commune)
And thank the grass and the air.
With whom?

The eye has not seen
What has not appeared
Like lightning what
Cannot flash in thought.
Thank this nothing,
Greatness, raise
The offering of time
-- And praise.

Let Me Say A Word To Myself

Would you have said something else?
Yes that it was night and how the fan inhaled
And the sprinkler sighed and I was sad.
Why were you sad? I felt the bone come to the time it snaps
And the poem did not fit in the lines and chastity averted her eyes.
“It would have been better, my brother…” But you can’t say that,
Only water's solvent sloping in itself could breathe
-- But it would have to be as cold as ice and final, like the sun.

No, I didn’t want this, and I’m angry at the sin.