*
**
shoreline
*
all our days
* *the green sea
* *a woman lies in the reeds
nobody goes there
hills in shadow
warm parasol
* *all the sandcastles have melted
* *eyelids close
the rays look through them
* *loosely and lovely
waving
* *sallow ocean
a star dissolves
* *buzzing
the copper balls and angels
* *sky cracks
a thread of blood
nobody goes there
* *all our days
* *the sea-winds blow like seraphs
over the bound world
*
*
*
*
jovian
*
(1)
now the flocks of storks
steal the sardines and sticklebacks –
they tilt their throats and gulp them down.
there is a mourning at every table;
all the plates and cups and saucers fall to pieces.
the adults lament, the children wail.
the persons who are male and female both look down from the roofs.
in the morning,
there was a great rushing, a blowing in the hills –
a man of bronze, his feet of tin,
and a garnet crown lifting in the turning day.
*
(2)
the train pulls a long spreading soot.
it draws it down the mountain
through blue tunnels
past the alluvial fan and rhombic cypresses.
all the people are inside in the town.
gooseberries and thorns grow about the sandstone.
beyond the town the siroccos blow over the cream-colored desert.
the minutes disappear, the train speeds.
the sun glides through the sky.
there is one house, and a white sleeping sailboat on a bay.
the land is salt. the telephone poles
are a line of crosses that will never end.
*
(3)
“it was the sea-scorpion,” said the boy and the girl,
pointing, from the roof.
“it hides in the cloudbank, it drifts over the peaks.
there – the wind carries it away to the sea,
the brooding showers and the waves.”
the land finds silence, all is damp –
the sky is gathering its storms.
on the clouds,
pricked flashes catch and strain view
through wondrous air of airs, rarefied.
there is a rushing –
our man is gathering
his armies of the ether:
circumferences of legs,
hands, arms…
pacing, grasping
in the soft seconds –
torrents at the feet,
and the sky’s rolling above.
**
*
*
*
ticking clocks, counting numbers
*
sails run up on the spiny sea.
a gingko has curled… over heat’s pincushion.
where should we row
now the currents have carried us
beyond what we could view?
a man climbs stairs and ladders.
he wears a miter, turns a lock.
our Mother stands –
she leaps into the mumbling forest.
*
*
*
*
ode to the golden age
1.
it was a blank box
and then it was many boxes.
the people held hands and stepped about the fruit tree.
where do we fall
with a swimming head;
I cannot decide –
cannot bear
the weight of these shapes we carry,
the circle where
such goods things fall.
2.
living in smoke,
the building loved us.
I dare say it loved us,
but how were we to know?
I dare say the building was the land,
the land made corners. smoke and fruit,
an open lid: such were the thoughts in head
disparity left us.
in the land were maws
but no foot stumbled.
3.
less going to the palm and fruit-tree,
the sky remains gem-white
the horn’s resounding.
tell the people in the circle
I both wish and don’t to join them.
tell the folks who are so far
how we are departing now,
far and off.
tell them:
interiors breathe
with a great grim smoke –
less going now, the fruit weeps red in hand.
*
*