Readingwriting

Readingwriting

The end of the breath each stairway to hell

and a fast car every moon I ever said

shakes free from this new one the long stair down

to heaven shells upon shells poco a poco step by step

in the round of named things infinitely plant edges

step on the center there is no essence to the moon, Madame

so why do we give it so often what are we doing what yearns 

for completion what do you think the sun was looking for?

*

I can’t stop hearing Cassandra, don’t you know what’s in the horse

or was her speech normal as daylight while the weird spell

covered Troy. What Dante calls ‘the abstract,’ the thing in itself

never teaches us until it does, an obvious theology

armor clashing in the whiteness of my wall

the words respond to an appeal from somewhere else

and imagine for us what she means to say: real monks study trees

themselves spoken principles of the mind left unsaid.

*

Deductive mind and that’s all there is the pen acts back

reasoning in the soft earth of us some great work

to run across the beach at midnight our strange hasty writing

who writes it who reads these scared of the dark postulates

implanted in visionary outward mind, imagos on the beach

who could deduce themselves but god lost in the composition

readingwriting; no one around but Ibn Arabi’s angry peacocks

while the only visible exit I was folds quietly into the sky.

A Commentary

By tree I meant fire

its long arms bent down

to me. I mean me

bent down over the lake

–all this damn explication

moon-business, me-ing, not being

the light. In wait for the Lady.

I bent down.

First mistake.

Then believing the

showy extravagance of being seen,

even worse. Light with its drama

of things as they are.

Well they ain’t.

A tree spends its whole life

thinking it’s a man.

Waits and waits

because it’s seen and

never knew what it saw

was the beloved’s offering;

the imago, coy image the light gave 

to remember me by, voluptuous silence

of another tree, its leaves sealed off

behind the clouds.

But not clouds,

and not me. 

Who?

Just wait and it pulls,

and one day I’ll come home

the way all images come home

I bend down into the water

and my face comes off in your hands.

The Maze of the Horizon

There’s a long line and they wait to send something to get what they need

a long line of words the horizon shuffling about at the doctor’s door

who watches all long lines from anywhere until they supply their cure

turning on themselves note the sense call back an order it must have known

the girls push their wheel barrows when do we ever get to know

under the shadow of the margin trace the furrows back to sin and then light

the long teleology of lives rays from the line of lines that washes itself

Dido is Hannibal my father had wet hands elephants on the alps

it’s hard to see much when you’re busy doing

order of the spell we’re in can’t see how we’re spelled

waiting to learn the present tense the humble means of chaos

when you kiss me like Mary with your Aramaic lips O hosanna

here’s a long bold line that toils and flowers from the center

I can hear the horse in the chair the snipe sing in solid plaster

put your foot through the wall and feel its wet unmade continuo

of course the margin starts anywhere moveable evil idem-itas identity sameness

the trick is to think back and back and suddenly the maze is over

fish falling from the light and no other god around my dear

just a panther circling in the dark we are ever closing in on rest

fervid center of bone closer becomes thick green its vapors  I near in delusions

Kant you rat I neared the line came in the thick with delusions and I let go the rope

who will post bond for one no man can imprison sd Tyana go your way

they replied  you cannot be ruled by me he dealt from the heart cld juke like Spinoza

but that was much later they ring the gong and maybe it’s later again

they ring the gong maybe it’s now he’s coming the scribe starts a fresh line

the bronze waves of gongs roll back and make to shatter the margin

as if the margin had never been o read from the silence my friend

we’ll know what to do looking back we’ll ride the beast that is itself the end

start there and see that means ride in the sun somber music springing in your wake.