A world we can believe in

Water is always practicing. -- It is not practicing, it’s just sharp
On itself and gravity cuts into it. Anyway it hurries along.
This is its business. The affairs of water carry it through foreign things
And into foreign forms -- but they are not foreign, only stranger
Cousins. How differently they get along, though, both amongst themselves
And with each other. Water always finds a souvenir, its great genius is to mix
All things within itself -- or most, since some are too clever for water,
Wily though it be, and these would keep instead of being kept. Of course, water
Isn’t the only Houdini, but our planet is thankfully too cool to attract
The attention of its denser friends -- not to say they won’t emerge dressed
In many colors and abrim with flame, but where they burrow it is deep
And dark and close, whereas water loves the light because
In part she is a mimic of the sun who loves to look on her
As though his face.

The Others

They seem happy and proud. Are there fruits
That gleam while they rot? Rapture
Wraps the moment in cheap wrappers,
And there are images meant to look
Unreal. I wish they would silence themselves --
Someone could come and claw off the vinyl,
Breaking the glass. Then there would be water
And coffee grinds, and the still air would rush
And never beat. Things as they are, are peace --
Except for the fly and hunger.

Another Day

There was a stream flowing and its waters sound
The way waters should a perfect symbol of eternity
Where they came and clasped their palms and the air was
Stiff, only the constant sound
Which was something real after all reminded them
They were there though they tried to forget since it was not
That they were there but why
They were there -- that they asked
Why they were where they were

(They were there).

You can see their village between two hills.
There are children and women and men.
They play (the children)
If the sun hasn’t turned back over the hill;
The old women come out to wash clothes
And the young women stain their white hands
And no one knows about the men.

Everyone grumbles at cocks.
Sometimes when a young man sees a woman
He tries to impress her --
Women can also say,

"I love you."

It would be simple except that this has gone on.
And people remember.
And people remember what people remembered --
Or what they remember they remembered.

And the day is the same -- a different day --
And the food is the same and the sex is the same -- but the children!
There’s another one each day -- which is acceptable,
Since others disappear, and there are enough names
For them all -- you don’t even need more than seven
Or eight -- it's the place
Takes care of the rest.

That’s the short and long of it:
They have what they need. Or make due.
And if they’re needy, they’re called
‘needy’ -- and sometimes that helps,
-- not always. People

Always look past the hills
And say queer things about the sun.
It worries them -- that regularity.
People always look past the hills
And think of the end of the day

When the sun turns back over the hill.

Humanism

Let people believe in improbable things.
Let them publish books bearing the imprint
Of misplaced thought -- let a feeling
Articulate their words into a shape
That squints at nature's face.

The River As A Symbol

By the Erydani is a stream:
It flows clear from the mountains;
The water is sweet
And the color of the sky.

They come here to sing, after harvest,
In honey strains matching the flow,
And their cords bring them into accord:
The place brings them peace.

There is such a place, and it is still at night,
Bright and strong in the day, resonant
At dawn, and in the dusk subdued --
Duly -- but it keeps itself -- itself preserves --
It is the image of its source.

Look into this mirror: is it not honest and true?
Its nature is its faith, its faith, its virtue,
And in or underneath its virtue is itself --
So from itself it springs.

But this is also the mountain's
Promise -- a covenant of earth and sky.

Why am I unclean? I have not
Purified myself. What
Would make me pure?
Sleep and the vague
Pattern of dreams
Fills me with paintings of non-
Sense, and these colors whet
My limbs for work. Still
I would like the sharpened
Nub and the clean brush
-- The page that is
Frozen snow.

God, deliver me from myself,
Both as I am and as I will be.
Because what I am is a sickness
Which must needs come to term.
Then what would you make me?
Something fresh. I want to be born
Again: this is why we need water,
Which washes away the sin.
But give me no earthly fluid,
Instead, rain upon me your own
Tears. I will drink up this pity,
And when I am quenched I will bathe
Until I am clean in your love.

Things will come in the green hall:
The leopard served me --
I followed him in apron swath;
There were berries and laughing children.

Forget your aprons: the tubes
Already creep, and bananas have settled
On the street. These are old houses.

There is a room facing the sea.
A wind begets the windows
And a flower snows. There is a bed
And a pillow like a child’s head.

These things are real: the constellations
And moving air, the water, the fundament:
“Say it is dark, now -- say it is light.”
Let it turn. Let it turn.

Well, give them something. Could I have been better?
Think of a certain color’s bird. Think of a sound.
I find it difficult to reach past myself. “Kyrie eleison.” Yes:
I must turn back to you, I must say the word again, ‘you’,
While he chants and while they chant.
Is there anything more delicate than an apology?

If I thank you it is for present services rendered, benefits
Of which I am beneficiary -- beneficent -- good acts, good deeds
Whose title is a good return. The language of the law
Is barren and peculiar, the designation of the terms
Elaborate and effete: the contract is its signature,
Replete. “Sign the thought and mark the page,
Cross the lines.” Be sage. This property which I possess
I will not bless. “The offering was cut into
In two, and scattered blood as symbol served,
The smoke its seal: a savor and a sacrifice -- the deal.”

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.

Couplet

What is the power in things?
Who are the elements' kings?

Arche

I would say, “I want to think.”, and you would begin to tell me about grammar. Because I can say one word and then say another. “And this is called thinking?” “You have to listen very carefully for the space between the sounds.” What, then, am I listening to? But I can’t deny that I hear it.

This dizzying freedom in which one has no commitments:

To think is to form a thought:
Molding dough or shaping clay. But a shape --
I’m looking for a shape that responds
And corresponds

To

The reality? The idea? The expression? The question?

You have to think in pieces
And put them together,

You have to collect them

Gradually, the gradual formation, by degrees,
The steps going forward and backward,
The stumbling, half-waltz

And arrange and re-arrange

As if they half would leap together…

Color

“I think you’re like the sun…”
It would mean illumination,
First, and under it all is the darkness,
Except for my eyes, which exist
Between this absence and its light:
The original of time is black.

“This light which illuminates everything
Is itself invisible.” So I cannot see you.
Wouldn’t it have been better to call you
A reflection of that form in which
All vision of the beautiful partakes?
Its image or its prophecy
To which I am delivered?

But if light emerges from the undistinguished shroud
Then why not say you are the revel of this gloom,
The point that points all things,
Shining species of all spectacle,
The glow which is the world’s gleam?

True

There will be something,
And that’s what’s best -- I would say
This (and point to nothing -- though
There will be something).

Think past the words. Think past
The thought to that in which
The thought inheres. “There will be
Something…” Unsaturate
And all-profound,

The most beautiful thing of all
Is the sound.