We pry open its
head to peer in
cut out its heart
sever its sex
to dissect to possess
The mute carter sings
by night of such things
along the way
His cart is full
his cart is empty
one and the same
Tomb of Aimé Césaire
I mourned a person who turned out
not to be dead
Of that what is to be said
Surgical noise of the city
Sentence and song under earth
I wept for something lost
a dawn or a dusk or a thought
a thing that couldn’t be bought
Sun throat cut
Woman removing a glove
And the body at once naked
and veiled
waiting and waiting for what
Coma Berenices above the bay
sea wrack beneath
Speech of the bone
and of the polychrome wing
speech of the leaf descending
and of the rubble in a ruined field
Words have their lives apart
I mourned a person who turned out
not to have died
between a feral sky
and a flooded shore where
a wave was frozen in mid-air
Sounds for Times Bones
(among the dancers)
Such as we are, entering
Such as we are, in place, moving in place
Such as we are, departing
As we were as we are
As a leaking roof floods the stage
we become swimmers, waders
As the power fails
we sing Dancing in the Dark
In the dark
a rabbit leaps out of a hat,
a top hat,
clowns emerge from a tiny car,
countless clowns
numerous as stars
in the cartoon sky,
the invisible night sky
In the dark
the past crosses the stage
sipping from an emerald cup
and the night sun dances,
the day moon dances,
star throwers dance
in the ancient stone
Stones in the stream
roll drunkenly,
beheaded Orpheus, Orpheus unsexed
sings in the stream,
Osiris in the Atef crown
gathers up his limbs
Mosquitoes dance
The Man with Two Bodies, the Bearded Lady . . .
The King of Pentacles
and the Queen of Wands . . .
The Joker dances,
the Hanged Man,
the Knight and the Page
The Book of Hours dances in solitude,
so, and the green of serpentine,
the cliff swallow, the adamant child,
the echoing crowds
amid the burning buildings
in the streets and public squares
And at a certain moment, so,
the Ice Queen begins to dance
frozen in place
each stare, each gesture precise,
never a smile
She is the Queen of Ice
there where past and present
become perfectly aligned
as if beyond time
And she sings
“To begin is to begin to end”
And so time dances,
the body of time,
the bones sculpted by time
wobble and dance
and time’s eyes watch,
watch as the seas rise,
laugh as the seas rise,
and the speakers are silent
though the words speak themselves
and the net of nerves
trembles, dances
as it did and as it will,
and the syllables
dance in The Devil’s Dictionary,
the naked letters dance
They cannot know what tale they tell
in the dark, entering
such as they are, departing,
moving, moving through a place
that is moving, the players,
the few and the many,
feeling their way
Storm
Basho by my bedside
these many years
Little wonder
the roof is leaking
(for R.H.)
Unter den Linden
A visitor passing
gazes at the silence
between the cordate leaves
of the lime trees
along that avenue where once
And then among the leaves
wind-scorched, tremorous
a swell of bird song
saying nothing at all
to the visitor passing
(Berlin June 2012)
In Memory of Ivan Tcherepnin
So many sounds flower but they are not flowers.
They are mangled girders in a field,
a field of flowers, echo of hooves,
heavy-metal of tanks,
music’s lost memory.
In the enveloping mist
our shoes squealing
upon the paving stones
while winding through
your Paris streets,
which one of us said,
The absolute
secret of art
lies in the tongue
of a shoe?
Who said, The true
secret of art
resides in the gaze
of a cat,
and that’s that?
Which one of us asked,
Is this the buried sound
of the future-past?
Do electrons still sing
when no one is listening?
(A little stoned perhaps?)
We spoke of corpses
waving batons, hierophants
professing poems,
as the mist cloaked our words
and mid-summer night
measure by measure
finally arrived.
Ivan Alexandrovich,
is it only the fugitive things
that ravel the cells
and ring through the air,
le va et le vient as you put it,
the slow rise of a half-step,
followed by falling semi-tones,
in a day of one birth and one death?
So many sounds flower but they are not flowers.
They are street calls and cries
and the promises of bone,
and the bright sightless eye
at the flower’s brief heart.
Call
Call it paradise or end-of-days
voiceless either way—the brief
though long-seeming dream
We scan the high plains, Elena,
for the fevered travelers
weary, onyx-eyed
travelers in caravans
bearing guns and gold
bright promises of jade
scented oils and healing herbs
pelts of elk and bear
and—strange to our ears—
the high-pitched, quavering
songs in exotic tongues
perhaps canticles of desire or lamentation
prayers perhaps that
the journey end well
that darkness and light find their balance
in the passage from dark to dark
So the severed words rang out
in the gathering dark
as the figures disappeared
beyond the faint arc
of the indescribable world
Goes on goes gone came the thought:
salt sands boundary stones nebulae
ferrous cliffs bone beds solar discs
And there it ends, Elena,
“a scene or dream with no meaning”
so the silent dream insists
night birds passing
all glimpsed through a clouded lens
Now it is I
who cannot grasp a pen
Encounter
nelle parole
che incontra
non trova
che frammenti
giovanna sandri, from incontro
Together we walked
beneath a field
of stars effaced
in a city
strange to both
We spoke
a third language
not knowing
the other’s first
Our nearness
such as it was
grew thus
in a shared distance
a dome of limbs
net of tongues
We apportioned
each to each
the mild night
the random calls
the thread of thought
Among the shuttered bookstalls
by the embankment
we passed
hand to hand the halves
of broken coins
the one from the future
one the past
and the one
coin unmoored from time
the last
Call the Makers
Call the makers before they’re gone
Tell them
It ain’t worth the candle
ain’t worth a song
Untitled
(Jerusalem April 2013)
A poem (since that’s
what it called itself)
left me behind at the Damascus Gate
It was it said one of a kind
It rained dry rain within this poem
at the gate of stone
and snowed a snow of burning words
with ancient scars at their hearts
The gate opened and the gate came closed
opened and endlessly closed
even through those nightly dreams
when the women of the song approached
one by one
to offer here a silken limb
there a sidelong glance or searing thought
My dictionary held no word for snow
no word for song or stone
My dictionary startled me with its gaze
as the children by the gate
sang in an unknown tongue
of a man so very very old
who once had a farm and a field
in the chalk-colored valley below
a field of olives and date palms and goats
The children chanted ee-aye-ee-aye-o
ee-aye-ee-aye-ee-aye
ee-aye-ee-aye o riven sky
their voices sounding across the valley floor
They sang hello good-by
I left a poem behind at the Damascus Gate
It was it said one of a kind
I swore to return sometime
though I knew it would be gone
Shrine
(Hong Kong)
The plastic
bodhisattvas
outnumbered us
on the climb
to enlightenment
Did
Did she seduce him
with her knowledge of Greece
and each of its islands
Did he seduce her
with compliments
about the taste of her tears
Their discussion
of the Ars amatoria
went very well
Their discussion
of the Ars amatoria
proceeded badly
Their words
grew heated
then chilled
A sudden sound
from outside
startled her
A sudden sound
from outside
excited him
A night bird possibly
with the yellowest of eyes
and slowly rowing wings
Did she say then
only when the two
have become one
do they discover
the absolute
invisibility of the other
even as their throats fill
of the other
Amber-eyed owl
all the while
keeping time
Untitled
(27 vi 2013)
Unwording—
he thought—
the page
swept clean
Prose for Times Bones
We all wanted a song and the song could mean anything . . .
We all wanted a song and the song might mean nothing . . .
Might sound between dream and waking . . .
Might carve a body out of autumn air, the leaves coloring, bowing to time . . .
What do we make of it, the tango of our thoughts over time, the arabesque, the Great Wall and the message wall, the walls being built and the walls falling, the wall of memory with its glimpses and crumbling stones . . .
The fault lines in Prague, the formalities in Tokyo, the Chicago winds, the blistering heat and bone-deep cold, the moments grasped and the moments lost, the several bodies as one and the one as many . . .
Sometimes the streets would be empty . . .
Sometimes crowds would gather along the avenues and in the public squares, and they too would chant and they too would dance, and the walls would open and the moment become clear . . .
And the tale?
Of the shorebirds and the salt breeze? The sound of Miss Jacobi’s tears? And what of those other birds, large and small, flamboyant and plain of feather, gathering at the city gates, the rustle of their wings, was that twenty years ago? Can we imitate again their calls, their darting and gliding, their settling to earth, their love-making and quarrels? Does the kingfisher on a wire tell a tale? Does the osprey’s cry? Do the pigeons in the bell-tower mark time? Do the whisperers still whisper over the years? Sometimes even a kettle will sing and often the waters will dance: the Vltava, the Rhine, the Tiber, the Seine, the Missouri, the Hudson, the Neva and the Wye . . .
These waters that we’ve sat beside; these waters that we’ve crossed. And the machines of industry, the machines of war: their song, their dance? And so, where lies the tale? In the curl of an arm? The arching of a back? A glance? A leap or a turn? A thought carved in air? The emptiness of space itself, shaped only by light? Shaped only by silence? We take a breath, take a step, then another. So the tale. Told. Untold.
A Dream of Sound Inside the Mountain
(after Anish Kapoor)
It is too brief
this life
inside the mountain
where headless horsemen sing
fevered songs
of self and war
When did we first notice
the trees of mottled bone,
when first hear
the c
awing of crows,
contention
of the orchard orioles,
the sleepers’ echoing cries,
rehearsing their final words,
resisting final dreams
(These dreams were mine
and not mine
say the walls of stone,
walls of the poem)
Hedge-crickets sing
and the white whale
its whiteness sings
in the stone dream
and the lost hours have each
their silent song
in the heat of bee time
and the shock of desire
those times when time is not
and the endlessly shifting stones
carelessly speak
and rain floods the rutted roads
It is too long
this spiral life
It is too brief
How the wind and light pass
through our bodies of glass
Perfezione della neve
Teach me the secrets of that
language you speak
I entreated
her
Honor (O.M.)
Honor
the poison
of the almond
Untitled
(15 viii 2013)
While dying
you grew
as translucent
as bone china
and your mind took flight
through space and time
as minds
should always do
Song
Festival night
We climb the candle one last time
The wind from the west
knows us best
We climb the candle
one last time
Blood-streaked horses
flare across the dream
They know us best
who know us least
The waters rise
as high as the flame
They are a test
And this text -
and this text I live in
is a difficult one
she mentioned in the dark
as we spoke
of syllables and suns
and sightless horses on the run
Festival night
We climb
a final time
and if it is a song
it is a song
not to be sung