Done.
I am yours
so
to speak:
he for she.
Two for one.
The fiction
of being here
or anywhere
that cloud there
it rains
in the mountains
Puella, cui multum et nimium dedi,
Redde mi meam laetitiam et meum mundum,
Quem tibi amore meo perdidi;
Redde mi milia basiorum quae tibi dedi,
Et dabo tibi flores in nocte florentes.
now east now west
the road has a mind of its own
and my feet obey
the rest of me stays
behind treelike
above
the sky grows gentle
MY HEART OPENS
the road goes on
as if not knowing
which way is best
There is no call to life
that does not come with the warning
you will never return
and, if you do, no one
will believe you were ever gone.
Your stories will become lies
even to yourself, yet
you will go on binding
your soul with whatever
spells will serve the truth.
Go then. Straight North.
Take the form of wolf or bear
sky or rain
until you take human shape again
and hear that call:
Come to where the heart is free
where all is all
and truth is song,
It is spring
And memories
Too hard to bear
Become something other
Than what has been
They grow
like seeds
out of the darkness
Into proofs
Of love
Where once there was
Just thought
swept through time
like leaves
there now is song
May every bird
With a broken wing
Find refuge here
and sing
for our delight.
Out of ocean's stream
Comes mind
Form and flower
Comes this body
The soft full curve
Of your breast rising
Like the moon
Comes joy
Comes our story
And knowledge
Of its end:
It opens wholly
Into the pluraplenty
And the leaping beat
of the poluploisboios sea.
Who is this girl who loves old men
and sings to those whose song will end?
All that she says is strangely true;
To her belong all the mystic blues.
Tears in her eyes become the sun;
Her home is where all rivers run.
It's she who dances on your bed
Though others give you up for dead.
This silence wants not your word
unless it be like wind to flower
raising its hallelujah to the bloom
of sky, unknowing as morning
kisses are to lovers not knowing
what else to say or do but sigh:
if you speak, I will surely die.
Mind like wind
Wanders, not knowing
Where it goes, though
It has its reasons
And tells this story:
O how the night mocks me!
Where are thy stars
that make the darkness
whole and all things right?
The light peels
like an orange or pear
And in that fragrant dark
you undress
Revealing nothing
that is not soul.
I bite,
then swallow you whole.
They came
in twos your eyes
your hands your breasts
your touch
In the end
there was only us.
I couldn’t help staring
at these old man’s hands
my father’s hands
now mine now yours
“Not yet,” you say --
I take his in mine
We stand like trees
In winter and I
Remember the spring
That was and he
The one
That never will be.
What's real is the ache
I feel when you say goodbye
and break the night
What's true is the fall
I take when the sky opens
and you fly through
Yet there is the kiss
You gave to me tonight
When I asked the question
So much is real,
So much is true,
So sweet your lips
O what’s the use?
Poets sing in the voice of birds
and write all upon the wind
and like the birds of summers gone
they rise like death like spring.
O do not tell me you understand
and feel that lift of wing
unless you too will speak a word
that makes this old heart ring.
Just so a bell from winter's keep
does wake me from my owl-like sleep:
So fair a word, so fair a face
all wind and wing, all hawk and ache.
So falls your word upon my tongue
all breasts and skin, all bird and song.
And you will say what lovers say when lovers lie:
just so the moon outshines the night, the sun beguiled.
Fires burn less fiercely than do these thoughts
that would make war upon the very thing
that makes them right.
It is mind that creates the night
so this lust for life
this change from dark to light
may go on and die.
It is against this my thoughts rebel
and doing so celebrate
the very thing I would destroy.
Desire is but the burning of the night.
It burns through soul and
makes this world a place of fright.
The poet stokes the fire with his words.
His breath upon the embers glows.
This autumn rain comes
on me strange
as you and I lie
beneath the ledge
hold hands and kiss
and say goodbye
When shall I see you again
In Winter when I am dead
or Spring when you flower
or Summer when you rise
with the waves upon the beach
and make love
to every passing eye
No, it will be as today
the rain drop drops
like leaves like tears
that hold our love
and all that's lost
I shall come
as surely as winter
and die a thousand deaths
You too will come
and lie upon these
fallen leaves
and give me up
again.
You shall come
as you always do
dressed in pearls
and make it rain.
I am going out to look again
At what I thought I knew
And just might find
A sudden place
that I can bring you to --
A place so near
Yet strangely far
As I this day from you.
Before turning out
the light, I woke
to find you
gone, the bed
tightly drawn,
your comb clean
as your get-a-way:
it was as if you
were never there –
in the morning
you just smiled
as you always do
at my strange dreams
but this time
you said goodbye.
If the earth
were to revolve
around the sun
we would see
it is the earth
that turns away
and brings on the night
If the moon were
itself to revolve
in time with earth
we would see its face
forever veiled in darkness
as our own
If I were to see
myself in your eyes
I would see the dark-
ness there as my own
but now it would be you
and not the night I loved
Where are the words
to say what can not be said
the words behind the words
like life before it happens
like love before it is
like thought before it is
everything
Omnia ex nihilo fiunt
the words behind the words
unspoken unheard
like rain
in a cloudless sky
like thunder rolling
soundlessly through air
your mouth your tongue
your teeth your lips
you breathe that air --
Speak for your life!
just so yours words
become wind
endlessly echoing
through every day and night
like drops in a cave
you laugh and cry
you understand nothing
and everything
You say everything
and nothing.
You pray for rain.
You saw ugliness within
and without
but found beauty
in the curve
of your line
in that space
that words make.
It was another sort
of prayer and another
sort of grace.
Before the fall
I stood like a tree
Catching every breath
Of wind in my limbs
Like some sweet girl
Who laughs and jumps
Into her daddy’s arms.
That was before . . .
Then the big wind --
I held my ground
bending lifting
nothing . . .
nothing at all.
Then I broke
roots torn up
falling Into the night
of constellations
Bursting through
Leaves, the light
Scattering the sound
of a voice that cried
daddy, daddy
I thought you
would never die.
That voice, shattered
Into a million shards
Of light, suddenly
Caught my fall
and held my head
in her arms, singing
Where O Where Has
My Sweet Daddy Gone.
Gone to ground.
Gone home.
βιός τῷ τόξῳ ὄνομα βίος ἔργον δὲ θάνατος. (Heraclitus, frag. 48)
The name of the bow (biós) is life (bíos), but its work is death.
the music of the bow
a song without sound
the silence of the storm
Who but a god
Could look at you
Sweetly laughing
And not die
For a kiss, dying
Again and again
Like gods of spring
that never truly
Die, your lips
Like night
hold back the day
And close my eyes . . .
Awake! Awake!
You are no god
To kiss and tell
Of life and death.
What choice there is
is but a noose
wound up with hair.
Above the ground
our feet swing free
now here, now there.
It is like prayer
that lifts the sky
then dissolves in air.
Let me be clear!
Is there something else
you hold as dear?
Almost human
but for wolf breath
and raven wing
and the thunder
in the throat
and this wild wind
that drives me
deep into the night
this hunger for life
for death, for spring
to come again
in what once was
a human heart.
Gone.
The way of memory.
Gone the way
Of rain
And song
and fire.
Gone into trees,
earth and sky.
Gone beyond
The going, no longer
Gone, no longer lost.
A bear walks in winter
Every growl commanding
The moon to rise, the sun
To dim, holds back
The spring, its claws
marking the trees
With fire, a song
More ancient than man.
Mind is alive
with the same
force that drives
the stars to seek
their own demise
so mind creates
the light that guides
our steps at night
yet yearns
for that very dark
ness that alone endures
and alone
makes all things right.
Burn, burn
with the beauty
of the night.
Mind runs like water
over rock and root
and seeks to fall
to the stars below.
On a walk through the field we come out below the pond
And see a bird floating as if on its own reflection
It is still early though the light seems of an evening
When first I found rest in the quiet of your eyes.
The loneliest thought
Is not knowing you are there
and care for me.
It is like rain that falls
but does not reach
the ground.
Yea but for love
you would not be here at all:
I keep you close.
In deepest winter
clouds gather along the ridge.
It is all souls' night.
Those who help not
those in need
who come their way
Are worthless
as those who stay inside
and fear the rain.
It is what is:
No more to ask
No more to give.
Rain cleans all bones the same.
But for night
When eyes are blind
When you and I
Think as one
And touch as though
Were earth and sky
(So turn around
In mind and space
Our sighs in time)
Love would break
Like light the day
Those it would unite.
so close your eyes
and let the dark
ness be thy sight
and If you die
there's none to say
I lied.
For Ber
like laughter or
like light to those
who know themselves
to be like trees
that root themselves
in common ground
though mind apart
for he is free
to give himself
so generously
not another word
why even that
why not silence a blank page
cause one is also other
a phantom that can not be driven off
that lurks and lures and loves to be what it is not
the mirror holds no image yet
the other there waiting patient suffering
creates itself even in darkness
for the darkness is
we stride ever through
And if we turn within
"For Christ's sake, not another
There is a girl
so fell and free
she wants for love
like a memory
her hair like night
covers all the ground
and leaves behind
no trace of me.
Like a woman
who does not know
she is beautiful
turns to a mirror
and looks and looks
but does not find
what is not there
and does not know
the mirror clings
to her form
and ravishes her,
body and soul
so too the sun
burns and brings
all to life,
mere shadows
on the ground.
The night leaps up
And paints the sky
Just so a kiss
Draws a lover’s sigh.
You love so much
You long to die
Your eyes are stars
Your soul is fire.
What will you do
What will you do
You have to live
And do and do
O you O you
What will you do
No one comes
To rescue you
So too so too
They'll come for you
They'll talk you up
And do and do
No one knows
No no one knows
Just what it's like
To be like you
O you O you
What will you do
There's no one there
To be there for you.
Even if it is true that who we think we are is but a narrative the brain constructs, even if consciousness itself is every bit as much a construction as that narrative (as is that very light by which we see itself but neural machination), even if consciousness, I say, is an illusion, it is not nothing. Whatever consciousness is, it possesses quality and all the activity of the brain goes to create and maintain that quality. The quality of consciousness is our reality; it is what makes life worth living or not. You know it well. It is the rhythm of the sea, always at one with itself though wave after wave breaks upon the shore. We are forever returning to that sea
I turn to you to find the light
and like a tree that grasps the earth
these arms embrace the wind
like you my heart
as earth through darkness sweeps
around the sun I turn
and turn to you
and kiss the night.
I know the dying
And the dying
sigh
Like the light these eyes
Like these eyes
the night
So still the rhythm
of a heart
that's torn
Forlorn forgotten
Longed for
adored.