II.

for Charlotte

1.

Ostrich feathers and their phony Egyptians

lazing in the sun. The lien of thought like

wet grain: all mold and postulation 

counterbalances a body’s ownership, its weightlessness

in the energetic alchemy of things. Saying,

being, what does anybody know about it.

Stiffening on a cool fall day, the moon unpredictable 

from here, the shadow of trees on the hospital wall

for the first noticed time. Where the sun is says

part of the message for where it was going, in the 

otherwise straight line that is the elliptical rondo of 

all things. Even the Fool, in his guise of Strength, the sun

becomes fixed, phoenix, a sort of communion.

Any approach is this angle. Prayers slanting in,

an old tube radio in Roxbury mutters something 

about a woman on a horse though it sounds like 

Puttin’ on the Ritz by Fred Astaire. (Hear: a star.)

2.

Light footsteps, her whispers, Tara’s

knowhow, words valleys, the land in 

their footfall, some other language, a Principal.

Where we threshold in the world, which flower

whichever heathen is Atlas enough, is prophet

to hold up the doorway of consciousness; I

hold up their image to heart-light

my borrowed Kaddish: directions in the liturgy,

organs of the work, light hands thrum the air

like worshippers of Zagreus unhoodwinked by death.

3. 

The torches– no, the torch is, returned, and in reflections

in shallow pools, I have seen it cross the island in

phosphenal revelation. Don’t believe what they say about

mirrors. You couldn’t tell yourself from Caesar in the old ones,

and that too is something. Are we anyone enough. 

Compare answers. Daena. The word for it is in Avestan. 

Means the basis for the music. Becomes Den in Middle Persian:

the music becomes that person, our anyone,

get it? It’s your soundest understanding

something you can hear however far from your body.

4.

There’s a hut at the edge of the Estate

and a woman of the wood, full of telling

like balsam passes through a burning hand, 

you realize you are in the hut together.

Now what. Someone throws the glare of a flashlight

off the window. I can’t see a damn thing.

One of the village boys drops his half eaten

potato behind a tree

for good measure.

5.

Those winds with Aeneas, “Earth, air, and sea whenever they list

blaw out.” that brought Virgil through his whole ungrateful 

book, thwarted whatever he was talking about.

Those gods in rags we call friction. Talking,

talking about nothing enough to keep away

nihil after Gibraltar our intellectual bluff.

The wind wearing away the rocks, the waves, whatevers.

And that other tribology of rubbing the body awake

moisture and mixture proves each others lives. 

It’s all in Da Vinci’s notebooks, in a sonnet after 

the Viola Organista. (Between the Bridge and the Steam Cannon.)

Our glorious sacred stuff that changes the song 

from nature and the voyage of the soul to its gentle

stirrers, beautiful ladles to gladden our lives.

Reminders they sell disguised as back scratchers

and worry stones. A garage full of touching equipment

bending and screwing, Hoffman with his tool–box 

writing our great love affair with matter.

6.

I’m telling a story only I forgot to mention

how they tricked Solomon into swimming with Sandpaper

Sharks, Mr. Olympic swimmer and the chief

gave him the painting of a horse in vietnamese eggshell

if I know anything

it means there is no fragment no figment

      and he wrote the same

play over and over again afterwards, same curves

he heard, voluptuous voices, all legs and treachery 

scoundrels and heroines

the names changed, but the play’s the same

from Rebecca to Joan of Arc to any Hagar

all the mysterious rôles of singularity, single

voice in the telephone whoever you are

what’s the plot to do with the facts.

You’re calling to save me, I know,

I’ve been following your voices

and those ladies who think pools are for walking

you’re not one of them are you? It doesn’t matter

I know you, I can hear you singing, or is it breathing

the trees squeak like doors here, and I hear a man

doesn’t he know you’re on the phone? He should be

drawing squiggly pictures of you not showing off

but it doesn’t matter, we know where the real images

hide: now listen, whoever you are, if that guy doesn’t

shut up I’m going to walk right through this tree

you understand, and I’m going to do it anyway, because

you say so, and I know the plot, I wrote it! it’s a drama

with the heroine, I’ll follow you in there.

7.

The exegesis of matter with a view toward becoming.

You know, that voyage through the desert, small towns

watering holes and what you see you see forever, until they

zap you into the sky, hoofbeat on cloud-cover, impatient

horsewomen, and you, slumped over, staring at the floor:

trace the shadows, lightning negatives of what’s around.

What picture’s in the curves? What did the neigh say?