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August 2002
1 August 2002
Here's wishing
you a joyful Lammas!
Tempted Into
Being Here
Numerous times,
while your bare meaning trembles
an instinct away
from the sigh that will prize
its design from
its hiding place, pleasure it senseless,
then see it returned
to our ears and our eyes
as a borderline-palpable
presence, I’ve seen you
turn pale as
high moonlight and shiver yourself
into flood-tides
of silence and drown there the meaning
that strains to
reach forward. An undersea shelf
beyond which
no return is recorded is where you
wait peering about
for the sign that will claim
the deep presence
of mind you are hiding and bear it
home safely.
The waves in this passage all flame
to a music-drenched
shoreline, repeating such blessed
song-syllables
over and over again
that I listen
alight. Silver wonder, in essence
a fey spectral
being, in substance the bane
of your own wayward
body, rise now and be spoken
and sung by the
glad multisensory ghost
who attends you
so faithfully. Strong words have broken
their backs on
the grains of this crystalline coast,
but soft words
lie peaceful and easy and drift up
like still-living
leaves from the roots of a tree
far beyond the
sea-shelf in the depths of the blissful
communion we
two shall endeavor to be
with the far
unrecorded fey music of oceans
of moonlight at
flood through our hearing and sight
till we reach—past
the wild lunar height of emotion
sung into the
shallows of visible light—
aye, much further,
well into embodied disaster
turned stellar
transparency: still in live skin,
but now peerless
in magic. The waters rise faster—
the wind sighs—what
grace have we just tempted in?
***
2 August 2002
Please attend
ever, ever so closely.
Hanging Man
Meadows
Drenched in
a wave of clear moonlight and sighing
delightedly all
through those watery rays,
its skeletal hand
well extended, a shining
amusement dispelling
the smoking-coal haze
where once were
its eyes, and articulate laughter—
a lyric imbued
with the fragrance of clean
healthy flesh
as it slyly peers into the past where—
Song sways like
a leaf on a limb an unseen
but in multiple
ways most resplendent love-angel
bends gently to
read without plucking away
from the tree,
its foundation. I mean—who is saying—
who brings you
this deeply mysterious lay,
this sublime celebration
of strange wisdom granted
by corpselight
through moonglow in meadows where leaves
come to quiver
with meaning? Console and enchant your
last sadness away
from the reason it grieves
and read down
through the babble of words you will hear there
the vision all
round you: How sighing, its air
of delight.
Read much further—see ever so clearly
the shining one
trapped in a body of care
and frustration—inverted
and singing. His hand is
uplifted; his
brow is a beacon of pale
blue-white flame.
High above him, live magical wands in
their myriads
conjure a breath of storm-gale—
and he breathes
it and flies like a bird till he lands in
our pathway, a
smiling reminder of why
we set out on
this venture. Too rapt to be frightened,
you’ve met the
wild glow of your own ghostly eye
and heard lyrical
secrets pour forth in a stream of
for once unforgettable
words as they find
their true home
in the meadow of Moon where the dreamer
you just saw
revived is now in his right mind.
…
Will you have
been a glad revenant later—
next moment from
now—when you turn back and view
your long progress
toward this old tree? So much waiting
for certainty,
knowing it’s always been true….
***
4 August 2002
The story is
long, long, long by now
and not about
to end.
Wherever It
Takes Us There
Aye, you have
chosen a kind, long unfolding
deliverance—gold-glittered
silver-edged webs
of uniquely spun
silk, flowing ribbons whose old, still
immaculate lengths
open though the sea ebbs
as the Moon sets
at daybreak and sighs—you have chosen
my readership,
knowing my mind is a sail
behind which
ghostly voices whose sleeplessness rose with
the Sun that
is burning a hole through the tale
you’ve been telling
me still haunt the life of this journey.
Why, I can’t
say, though I know how I called
with a will I
had not quite destroyed—slow self-murder
my overt obsession;
my true meaning bald
as a sparrow’s
egg under an infinite winding-
sheet spun out
of smooth future moonlight and plied
nigh as tightly
as your and my sooth-saying, binding
agreement with
night and the Moon and the tide
that is turning
to now—we are one in the blessing
unfolding, unfurling
the sail of its will
to be wayward.
The sea to be learned here distresses
me painfully,
though I will follow it still,
comprehending
one blown silver ribbon, one thread of
the night’s lettered
tracks as it flows on and on
till we dream
ourselves perfectly, endlessly dead to
the world we
will waken to realize—gone,
as it never was—fading,
like daylight at nightfall—
now silver, fine-gold-glittered,
written in sighs—
and delivered
intact and forever. The brightness
it brings me—the
hue of your own ocean-eyes—
and the kind
mirror-edges embedded within it—
breathe faster;
I’ll fly with a will to your call.
Sailor, the cold
ocean-plain is the skin of
live mystery.
Song is the way of it all,
and beneath it—joined
hearts soar and dive in a current
of salt warm
as tears on a quivering sheet.
Night traces there
the strange course of our journey
in words that
encircle but never repeat
where they’ve
been—not precisely. I sought to deliver
a pain of high
grace; now you read as it sings.
Love the strange
power that drives us, forever
we’ll sail the
wherever its winding-sheet clings.
***
5 August 2002
The other night
the shivers were on my left side, not the usual right.
Oh—it is you,
I thought.
So She Whispers
Now
By grace of
the Moon, you know you see me
leaning to cast
these words your way—
welcome their
every flash and fleeting,
beckoning trace—no
part will stay
unaltered, but
some will shine tomorrow
bright as a thousand
stars while more
inclined to fall
down as driven hollow
ecstasy pains
itself to roar
an order of silence
so distressing,
I shall be pleased
to cry behind
its echoing.
I will never lessen
any of my fierce
cast of mind—
neither allow
myself to lean too
far—but to dream
I surely will.
Listen and feel
such ancient meanings
meet you:
The lost-found road downhill
winds further,
much further through that hollow—
not hill, but
mountain—down and in.
Find there the
source of all this calling,
moonlight its
sole and scarless skin,
and I in its
limpid glance. How Night Mare
knows you by
name you’ve dreamt before—
now shall transpire—all
sighing, heightened
language—the whole
of moonlit lore.
***
6 August 2002
Tongue of No
Lies
Holy ecstatic
one—‘Aye’ of distressing
embellishment—excess—your
word on my tongue
an intently delirious
lacework of less than
it will be next
evening’s sweet need—it has clung
with a will to
possess me as fast as its dripping,
mind-ravishing
music can speed. All my spine
is alight.
I am trying to sing you. You slip from
my reach, but
I feel I can almost divine—
with a temporal
breath and a mortal confusion
waylaying my
wits—your desire and a way
to fulfill it.
My Shining One, weep into music
toward me—against
me—a storm at peace-play
as the chimes
I hear coming together from ever
so far sift and
filter the glow of the air
you are breathing.
It needs me—I know we will weather
the mists of
the in-between grey of despair—
and we have;
we are gently subsiding while they are
becoming transparent
till—breathed, we are here:
Dream me awake
and attentive, the prayed and
completely extended
Aye-word shining clear
through increasingly
eerie unfoldings of meaning
forever—forever
its light on your tongue
a fine slipstream
that flows through the last rays of evening
to meet the Moon
rising to hear its name sung
by us both in
bright unison. Mother of Ashes,
I called her.
You viewed me through tears and I knew
I could answer
myself in good faith. Little flashes
of oncoming lightning—a
sky smiling through
like a pool between
lashes, the near world beyond us,
a secret word
hidden within the one told—
I sang to enchant
you; you whispered, you wanted….
I’ll not now
release the complexly deep hold
I’ve attained
on your quicksilver nature, your ready
astonishment—knowing
me well, you best gleam
where you’ve seen
me most often. I woke up in bed with
a Night Mare—myself.
I will not again dream
she was lying
forlorn and neglected. You never
need fear I will
drown out your song with sad cries—
but with silent,
delighted ones—here ever rivers
of brilliance
slide down the long tongue of no lies.
***
7 August 2002
Last night I got up in the dark to go to the bathroom and on my way back to bed I somehow launched myself at the edge of the doorway and cracked my head against it so hard it left me literally stunned: For several seconds, I did not know where I was or what had just happened. Still miserably astonished, I crept to my bed and lay down, where I then fainted. On reviving, I pressed my hand to the place just over my left eyebrow where I struck, and it was oozing wet. I am so squeamish that the thought of blood nearly made me faint again, especially as I could not forget what head wounds are famous for. Somehow, I fought off my dizziness and cautiously returned to the bathroom for a wet towel and got into bed again. Why, I kept asking myself, why did I think that wall was going to move aside when it has stood in the same place for all the years I have lived here? I am not usually self-destructive! And HOW did I hit the wall so hard, so hard it felt as though someone had slammed me with a tire iron?
Finally, I got it: I am thinking of joining a local Buddhist group. It is Tibetan, the teacher being connected with the Sakya lineage. I have misgivings, though, because conversations with other present and prospective members have left me with the impression that they have no idea what makes Vajrayana different. Last night, before working, I had vividly imagined a meeting in which each of us told what had brought us there. When it was my turn, I had said, I am here to get my head split open.
I did, too, a little sooner than expected. I have a little split, a little streak-of-lightning crack that runs vertically into my eyebrow. It shows a bit of dried blood, but you know, when I finally had the nerve to look at the towel I wiped it with, there was not a stain to be seen. It had been oozing clear fluid. It should have been the size of my fist by morning, but apart from the little scratch, it is almost invisible. Fainting and having extremely low blood pressure for a long time after it happened, as well as the shallow break in the skin, probably kept it from swelling.
So: little
enough damage was done, and I have gained a story. But let us just
remember next time that poets speak in metaphors and need not be taken so
literally!
I AM Becoming
Still
Heavy as stone,
but as teeming as whirlwinds
set serially in
a tightly-spun coil—
I am falling while
dreaming a snowscape of sterling
perfection beneath
swirls of moonlight that roil
almost nigh to
my hand as I rush. Heavy-lidded
while wakeful
within—mind a hairsbreadth apart
from bright visions
of nothing like slumber—a riddled
and ridden I
AM finds a live darkness-art
in a stone at
the pit of a well: Split asunder
by forces from
elsewhere so far and so strange
I am suddenly
mortally hushed as I plunder
the silence there
seeking to steal and derange
my regard, I
illuminate back, You who flicker
in air never
candled nor lanterned before
will be merrily
now light-molested. The click of
a further and
older vague self-swinging door
bids us turn
till it stares us both wide in our faces.
Aye—we surge
forward. No mists shroud this hall.
Dreamt-of melodious
airs fill this place of—
diminishment.
Yearning possesses us: Call
and be answered,
my undertone voice hears yours whisper.
Mists are known
spiderwebs left in our way
to remind us
of times between hangings—but this is
a clarity too
preternatural. Fey
and experienced
traveler, counsel the joy of
your breath’s
every passage: Divine unto me,
your imagined
companion, the strength I feel roiling
beneath the calm
face of the well where I see
a profound wisdom
rise and flow over the surface
that mirrors the
Moon overhead. Whirlwinds form
in your eyes.
I am silently dizzy, but words are
about to possess
me—a perfect snowstorm
we will capture
six-angled and frozen forever
in fields softly
bright where we sparkle like dew
on a web.
Dream this light into breathing together
with me, you
are whispering: We will breathe through
to the stone
in the depths of the well and far past it,
the wild ocean-sky
of our minds cast before
and all round
us till our and the stone’s heart are fast and
enchantedly beating
in time with the lore
of all timelessness.
Music and moonrise with silence
of far profound
worlds in each pure undertone—
thus you become.
I have stolen a smile from
dread Night Mare
herself to elicit the moan
of astonishing
insight that will have escaped you
next moment—nay;
last. Did you capture it? Soon
further whirlwinds
will surely beset us. Salvation
at storm, drifts
of snow underwater—one Moon
in my vision forever—your
soul-haunted beauty:
Who are you really?
The answer: I call.
I shall never
cease calling—while never not using
my darkness-art
wiles to provoke your long fall.
***
8 August 2002
Sung Thoughts
of the River-Like Mind
Deeper and
deeper the cold hairline crack I
have striven against
as I’ve shouldered it wide—
I am trying to
see you; the pain in my back is
half-blinding
me. Why am I holed up inside
an outmoded idea?
I’ve no recollection
how this was
supposed to sing on to an end
wild and noble.
Weren’t we the arcane resurrection
of beings who’ve
never not chosen to lend
trained and focused
attention to unearthly music,
helping its boundless
devices unreel
at a speed they
are wont then to enter and lose half
their wits to,
a poignant emergency? Feel
why I ask this
out loud. Are you real within questions?
Where is the
speed of this cold voice’s range?
Deep as the dream
that still leaves us both restless,
wide as the shores
of a river so strange
in its manifold
powers, an ocean within it
sways every wild
way and lies drowsy and spent
before finding
its outlines—a second, a minute,
an hour in its
mind is the timeless extent
of all music
performed of itself for an eon.
Lonely one, look
as its live wavelets flare:
Where do they
flicker most hugely? If we are
among them—WE
ARE—we are beauty most rare
by sheer virtue
of having been known to its power
without having
sought or desired that degree
of enlightenment.
Flame in clear water—snow-shower
as well—is there
some other person to be
than the one
I have called and shall not now cease needing,
a singular everywhere-nowhere
by turns
who in wisdom
is boundlessly free? Can you dream that
our song disappears
where a bright river burns
on funeral pyre
of its own hopeless making,
its body turned
steam that dissolves into tears,
each an ocean
that was—now a downfall of flakes of
fine snow that
have entered far songs’ atmospheres
and come shimmering
home to our hands crystal silver,
all six-angled
moonlight that sighs as it flows
into rivers and
streams, all of elsewhere the lilt of
its lesson?
The heart of the both of us knows
only silence outlasts
so much restless devising
of serial words,
but it too shines with song.
Rendered liquid
and crystalline sound, it comes rising
again like the
stars beneath which we belong
in this half-mortal,
half-earthly, half-waking body
of vivid sense-dreams
that were Night Mare’s before
they were openly
ours. We are wild, noble thoughts in
a river-like mind—all
clear channel, no shore….
***
10 August 2002
I Alone
Am Not This Night
Snow is falling—ever
deeper
silence needs
me. Snow is all
I seem to feel.
I want a sweeping
dream to seal
the secret hall
through which
the weeping leaks that moans my
private name.
It sighs, Come home.
Aching, keening
face that knows my
weakness, watch
me seethe and foam
upon still water’s
spirit-riddled
midnight mirror-lens.
My eye
is deep and frightened.
You are little
flakes of waiting
silver sky
a solitude away—a
lonely
moment held in
hopeless thrall—
a field of whitened
rain—a snowy
willingness to
freeze and fall
forever through
a faintly twisting
hollow rush of
pale insight.
Silence settles
down. I listen.
I am not alone
this night.
***
11 August 2002
The Recurring
Visit
Won’t you very
slowly whisper,
filling these
my folded hands
with meanings
glowing gold in listed
silver streams
of soft demands—
all answers I
am wont to give you—
drawn out gently
and at length?
Aye—your level
breath brings shivers,
overwelling tears,
and strength—
a silent sequence
filled with riddled
moments’ silken
ribbon-light,
its lettered stitches
beads of crystal
trembled into
milky-bright
Moon-ordered lines
whose tender blessings
pour through these
my open hands.
Shine to me,
invited guest whose
stealing Aye
so understands.
***
12 August 2002
Shall We Listen?
Shall We Hear?
Only bewildering
tears in a fragile
but peaceful array,
a pale series of streaks
gliding down
a blank pane—they all weave solemn magic,
but each of them
hides vastly more than it speaks
to us openly.
Daybreak, I whisper, where are you?
Dawn of fresh
nightfall, I mean—‘day’ is when
we see furthest
and fastest, and that is at star-rise.
Flickering blue-white
horizon, all ken
very slightly
beyond us at present, do listen
and need us to
hear your down-feathered reply.
Enter the atmosphere
breathing us. Whisper
inside us.
Pronounce us—The ghosts you and I
celebrate in
our wildest processions of joyful
and eloquent tears
have transpired as free words
in an inland sea-sky.
As they reach for their voices—
and ours—shall
we touch through the textures of birds’
dripping silk-layered
feathers in rain, magic pouring
like myriad lenses
that magnify song?
Shall we now
sing? Have we heard the Moon soaring
on high from
within? Shall we hear very long?
***
13 August 2002
The Heartbeat
in the Wings
Only cold rain
and slowly beating
star-points of
light a sky away
that shine all
unseen remind me—meeting
hours rise to
greet us while we stray
through desolate
precincts song-devoid in
spite of the
tunes that ghostly ply
their windings
entirely undestroyed, an
endless occasion
rendered shy
yet fiercely determined.
Rising weather,
storm that will
clear the clouds above
and find us our
starry eyes and never
let us forget
again the love
of song that
is song itself’s best lesson,
where will we
stand when all we see
is one shadow
we cast together, blessed
rain in its darkened
eye, a free
yet no more far-flying
feather-guest whose
eyes are like
beacon-fires within
that silken electric
sky, its message
merely the rain
that soaks the skin
releasing deep
shivers, bringing song to
brave its escape?
It comes to play
between us:
How coldly you belong to
me, that we only
meet this way.
***
14 August 2002
The Danced
and Sidelong Way
Will you have
led me dancing down a
lily-white way
of snowy tears,
leaning against
the ghostly sound of
nobody’s sigh
whose soul appears
a blank lunar
specter grinning oddly,
canting its head,
reciting lines
once heard in
a swoon while out of body
voices engaged
in strange designs
of patterned embraces,
limbs akimbo
where they were
not but used to be—
eyes that shone
lidless, cold and grim with
knowledge of
every place in me
where prearranged
meetings come to grief and—
out of such chaos,
Night Mare speaks
in literate fashion.
Read the leaf she
carries behind
her eyes: It leaks
with spring run-off
snow, a thaw where lasting
dance-combinations
form and thrive.
Down that bright
way I’m flowing fast and
happy. The ghost
is still alive—
though still
a distorted figure, more a
chance cast of
glimmers than a ray
of steady alignment,
we know lore is
best recognized
when met this way.
***
15 August 2002
Countersigns
We have been
climbing such a steeply
canted design
of mountain sky
behind ragged
peaks that I am weakly
staggering now.
The pale reply
that seeps down
to meet me when I whisper,
Where are you?
wets my face and hands
and then dances
on. I twine and twist my
fingers like
braided ribbon-strands—
and then tiny
letters stitched in silver
stand out in
clear relief upon
a live page of
cloudy white. I fill my
eyes with the
magic dreams they’ve drawn
from sources that
wake in me to know the
call and response
they’ve longed to hear
out loud can
at last surround them. Only
moments to free
the frozen tear
and read its
pale track, a trickled answer
borne from a
mountain peak on high
a dance-step away—an
ended trance of
waiting—a waking
state of shy
bewilderment—then
full recognition:
Moonlight on
snow, a pulse that shines
through transparent
bliss, he means me risen
night rich with
sacred countersigns.
***
16 August 2002
In the Aura
of Danced-by-Song
Aye, you beheld
me wildly turning,
weaving in space
a veil of lawn
so light yet
so tightly spun it circled
round and I disappeared.
Till dawn
arrests your
long lonely fall and finds you
under that cloudy
canopy
where I am a
dancer drowned in winding-
sheets like the
waves of mystery
that take me
within strange music’s compass-
wheel till I
spin too dizzy—and—
direct me the
way to go, kind someone
lending a pale
and trembling hand
where undersea
breathers dream a bright and
silkening air
and cast its song
round all their
wild limbs—I might be frightened,
frightening—aye,
I might ere long
arrive at the
turning-point where music
fills empty space
till space alone
fills all my
deep sight, my mind a lunar
ecstasy making
magic moan
for nobody else
to hear—but who are
you now to doubt,
who hear these wails?
Out of a veil,
a cloud, a blue-white
mystery, underwater
sails
will see us reach
home, a mountain fastness
rising above
a land of waves
as wide as the
oldest hope of lasting
dawn of sweet
night in ancient caves.
In all otherworldly
dreams before our
sudden alignment,
songs bred dim
attempts at enchantment.
Now an aura-
dance celebrates
us, life and limb.
***
18 August 2002
Future Moonlight
I won’t have
whispered long before your
face will have
shone as pale as night
beneath a high
Moon of deathly mortal
magic where spells
are crooned and tight,
tight strands
of fine silk are brought together,
forming a strong
and supple cord
that softly unfurls
as heaven’s weather
shifts and—a
sigh has been restored,
its letters all
lightly whispered, each as
clear as the
moonlight overhead
and nigh as entrancing.
So you’ll teach me
over again the
lore I wed
in portents and
dreams—and then as now we’ll
reach to a future
moonlight’s glow
to be as we seem
but more profoundly.
Seeming the one
who needs you so
but being a ribbon-haunted
waker
weaving fine
choking strands that sing
so tightly I
scarce can breathe—don’t break the
trance; it still
spells me everything.
***
19 August 2002
Read and Read
Between
Read a silken
ribbon-letter;
learn to hear
its stillness say
it dreams of
weaving downhill weather
out of mountain
clouds that play
round tumbled
granite massing rainy
silver-grey against
a sky
that tempts a
stricken fate of—maybe
better left unspoken.
Fly
on falling winds
toward a future
valley streaming
wild and lush.
Lay your limbs
to rest there. Soothe the
spirit they contain.
The hush
that lingers through
the sough of heavy
leaves surrounds
a green, green bed
of peace—in which
a hell-for-leather
rider waits to
fill your head
with songs of
wildest moonlight, dreams of
strangest inspiration,
true
demonic portents
twisted beastly-
angelwise—and
who are you,
oncoming storm-cloud
weather, stroke of
silver underneath
a Moon
that means new
rain? As-yet-unspoken
love divines us
late and soon;
the valley, underwater,
even
now sings climb
again; the sheer
and snowy wall
of highest heaven
reaches to a
sky so clear,
it knows the
mind that knows our being
most impatient
clouds the way
yet goes on shining.
Ribbon-weaving
flowing stream
and leaves that sway
in breathing winds
that sweep our spirits
bare of all but
silver air,
teach the reader
‘me’ to hear the
singing love
and stillness share.
***
20 August 2002
You Will Have
Waited for Me
We only go
where the faintest of ribbons
of snow blossoms
coldly against a cold stream
that a frozen
Moon holds in suspension. The dripping
of music—the playing
of far-away themes
in acute repetition—its
maddening magic—
it lifts me somehow;
we are not in distress,
though we were.
We are now on the edge of a vatic
idea so bright—I
am rending my dress
of dead long-faded
lawn; I am raising my veil of
white finely-drawn
silk lettered over with stars
to reveal ocean-sky
as an empty song paling
where light rushes
in from the strangest of far-
sighted counter-magicians.
Oh air of triumphant
renown, you are
changing the breath of the Moon
into sentient
sounds that precede its oncoming
appearance in
places that brighten to swoon
to yet-emptier
ways in which faintness yields falling
to music that
names itself—here, in the stream
of high coldness,
a glowing that knows me is calling.
I won’t have
moaned back; I’ll have woken a beam
of most uncanny
light into shifting to face me
a moment too
long. I’ll have died and returned
in the snow-leaking
way of the coldest embraces
that only show
later how deeply they’ve burned.
Till the rising
Moon shines and I rush to attend it
with higher solemnity
day upon day,
I will only by
increments let myself lend my
subliminal magic
to follow its sway
into deepening
crevices, sky-cracks all snowy
with strangest
enchantments—but I will have seen
your sweet face
on the way. When I know where I’m going,
you will be waiting
where we’ve always been.
***
21 August 2002
A Self-Breathing
Other Air
Never you fear—with
green leaves ever shifting,
your own heartbeats
clouding then parting their veils
like the night
skies that dream you, the seas in the distance
divining a forecast
so perfect for sails
it might shiver
you breathless—with all of this motion
and so great
a sentience driving it fast
that it meet
you again and again, the bright ghost of
your own higher
purpose come smiling at last
into all present
ken, not a moment occluded—
with all of this
lunar engagement to lie
in the sweep
of a long tender future’s fey music
where dreams sing
the depth of wise heaven’s dark eye
down to mingle
with mortal awakening—cheer your
yet-possible soul
with the glimpse of a face
that hangs shiningly
high overhead. It can hear you
imagine the plenary
wisdom of space
into shades of
pale silence with night’s overflowing
compassion, pure
moonlight that gleams a long wet
cast of eyes—when
you glance up, you cannot help showing
the Night Mare
you prize you’re not tired of her yet—
you’ve had little
enough but a shadow, a sidelong
design, a curled
leaf where a lunar dew shone
like a heartbeat
hung out in deep space to leak quiet—
but then beat
again—aye and nay, not alone,
neither one nor
the other, but music in glimmers
of pale liquid
magic behind which are red
and green curtains—and
sails—and a soft blue-white dimness
of evening that
wakens the unsettled dead
from their rooftop
domain, their inverted enclosure—
where Night Mare
sighs tenderly, Never you fear.
Now we wax cold
with strange knowing, but slowly
we’ll warm to
the air of this world’s atmosphere.
***
22 August 2002
How Will You
Know It Is You?
Weaving a
room filled with circular blessings
by sheer counter-cursework—aye,
this is the way
I have seized
and shall entertain so much distress in
reverse.
I shall teach it to leak and obey
a sweet aura
of music so silver and gold and
so richly profuse,
it will ribbon its mind
into melting delirium,
sing its own soul as
a series of lunar
desires, and then find
its wild uncanny
likeness laid sidelong before it—
to see it dissolve
in a mist of mild tears.
Around it, a
ring, a bright magical chorus
of shuddering
words; close behind it—he hears
someone whisper
his name. He is shaken, but strong in
his faith.
As he turns to seek out the word-source,
I am danced in
his way, ribbon-woven of song in
a wreathe, with
the track of the iron-shod horse
that is Night
Mare—a world come too close, too fast-breathing,
too blazing of
eye—very plain to be seen
on my brow.
It is shining, but I am still weaving
unsteadily round
in a whirlwind of green
leaves all dewy
with sweat in a room filled with moonlight,
twisting my fingers
where white mists enlace
and our breathings
entrain. Name about to be crooned as—
vanished, with
less than a waking-dream trace!
***
24 August 2002
The circle-dance
is a literal fact.
This is one of
the leaves.
By Mirrored
Moonlight
through circle-danced leaves
How I shall
weave you
into a bright
green
wreathe live
and timeless.
I shall not
steal your
soul from you—oh,
but
wake and unbind
it.
Shaken with
knowing,
soon you will
reel with
proof of the
sweetness
you have provided:
wind-drift still
sighing,
Moon-song-receiving.
***
26 August 2002
Green All
Earth, you
will never
bleed for a moment
but to a place
where
wounded trees
leave me to weather
lately woken
music from grey
and
holy seas
where dreams rediscover
moonlight pale
as
dead sailors’
eyes and
we dissolve
into a bloodstream
green and slowly
leafing, live
woods whose
shadowed halls
lead to a place
where
streams run timeless
into a sea whose
sailor’s chants
sing me awake:
Return to Earth,
the
circle where
wonder-
workers dance
and rain, cloudy
waves,
comes down with
thunder.
There we will
meet and
be revolved—
rain into seas,
high leaves, one
bloodstream
singing green
me,
green you, green
all.
***
28 August
Last night
I ran across a beautiful tiny lyric by Heine in a novel I was reading.
Only eight lines long, it somehow created a complete, exquisitely intimate
atmosphere. It made enough of an impression that I told myself it was
a mark to shoot for. I woke up a few hours later with this in my head.
The meter is one I have called my ‘Dream-meter’ ever since I was a teenager
because I dreamed verse in it then.
3:30 am:
Winds blow
down by night and morning.
Trees remember
beaten leaves
forming one great
graveyard-portal,
open dreams a
woman weaves
into one mistaken
mesh of
ruined longing.
Each is frail,
but all together—strong
as flesh, the
most enduring
fragile veil.
Later, still
28 August 2002:
During the
day, I kept thinking about Heine and how I have always kept German romanticism
and German lyric poetry overall in sidelong view but never learned much about
them. Lately they keep cropping up in my path. I decided to find
out more, soon—not least because I am hoping that the lieder tradition will
provide me with the music I am starving for. While still thinking about
it, I put on some songs by Baby Dee (remembering how she said her father
loved lieder), and my flesh began to crawl—first on the right side of my
head, and then all around. Familiar symptom! When I lay down
later for a nap, I was awakened by a dream in which a woman named Lisa called
me on the phone. She said she just wanted to say hello, but she also
mentioned that she and her partner were having an art gallery opening in
the evening. I would not have missed work tonight for all the racket
in the world.
Turning in
a Spiral Wind
All the downward
spiral-circle
motions bounding
through your mind
terminate at
length where lurking
shadows sound
a well-defined
yet timeless tone,
a telling quarter-
quaver—like the
Moon, a curve
of silence taken
past its former
station.
Now a tune, observe
its elegant obsessive
striving
into upward reeling.
Aye,
for all your
deathly dream-midwiving,
such things still
refuse to die—
till, dawning
like a brighter Moon set
vividly beyond
the pale
of silence, music
works to ruin
only its frustrated
wail
and feel its
long surviving ghostly
magic singing,
so much changed.
We were hanging
mortal, woeful—
mind, we are
no more estranged.
***
29 August 2002
Both Night
and Day
Silver, silver
gleaming window-
pane, I know
you wait for me.
I am racing wildly.
Splinter
hiding there,
although you be
complete with
all your sister-razors
now, I feel how
keen you are
to taste me.
Wait—now only blaze like
lightning where
the shudder-star
of coming morning
music pierces
you so lightly,
you scarce bleed.
I am through—I’ve
passed your weirdest
test intact—at
such a speed
you never even
sensed my motion
till the other
side of you
lay streaming
wet with starlight, potent
moonlight, and
my music’s dew
of silver.
Dripping down in splashes
great as tears
from far-away
eye-oceans—aye,
as lightning flashes—
I shall sing
both night and day.
***
30 August 2002
The Hollow
Reed
roots that
cling to worlds unnumbered
Litter falling
down like shining
snow—or ashes
crystal-fraught
because they
have escaped a high and
windswept pyre
where music caught
alight, fed by
a body made of
sea-salt sand
and shoreside reeds,
an animated corpse
that swayed and
sang the while
its deeper needs
remained unmet
until the life of
song inside it
found its star
a great way off
and strained to light its
fingers at that
candled bar
of flame that
quivered up to heaven’s
inmost mind through
wide-flung doors—
aye, the reedy
torch’s severed
life, a wind
of rising roars
and tiny sighs
commingled, rushes
through that
passageway. Below,
I fill my hands.
A silver hush, a
midnight thick
with ash and snow—
and stars—and
far-off lightning, like a
pyre that one
split-second burns—
it calls me in,
that strangely heightened
place where music’s
deep mind learns
the lessons that
will keep it singing
after salt and
sand and all
sad dreams alike
dissolve but clinging
reeds spring up
and ashes fall
and ghostly weary
watchers view the
sky with silent
patience. Hold
this vision till
you warm it through—the
roots of it are
still ice-cold.
littera scripta manet
.
.
.
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