Sunday, July 30, 2017

Lila’s Birthday Book


1.
Sunset and shadow rays
as Hopkins saw, clothed
in clouds to the East.

Sun and leaf-light,
vegetable shadows
through which the nervous animals
cross between fields.

2.
There is no Sabbath,
but a silence worshipped
by work; purple rays,
her earth she sings
none may enter Lala Land
but open to find your
flag already waving there.

3.
(The Vegetable seeks
the Angel Animal.
The Animal seeks
the Angel Man.
Man the

4.
Earth that rises as the 
sun sets. Vegetable,
Animal, Human. I put
my finger to the gears
and lick the soft greasy 
soul. Horse-lather,
sea-foam, milk-weed.

Birds calling from your shore.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

After an Image in the Voynich Manuscript





The women as if in a mikvah have come to cleanse themselves in the green pool
in the Voynich ms.

The women as if Danaids carry water from the pool in their sieves.

Through her destruction of the sons of Egypt, for which she was wisened
by this wasting away,

through the terrible count that has no point
she makes herself whole:

the numbers of the Tetractys come and cleanse themselves in the green water
in the images of women,
one and two and three.

They have to do with the nine Muses
some Greeks imagined are calmed Maenads:

allow numbers refreshment in the water
of memory from which I have fashioned my mind.

There is no biological analogy.
The patterns come to us. The flower arrives,

you can see it in the water, but it isn’t wet.

Friday, July 7, 2017

TAROT BY DANTE XII


THE MOON

The face of the moon sleeps within the full of the moon,
which is a mask of the sun, you know.

Fifteen golden yods
hang from the unseen branches rhythmic winds
fill upwards and downwards. A golden stream comes from the faraway
mountains and The Lobster alone can receive it, by the shore where

to the right of the stream a golden coyote, and to the left a brown dog.

A dog gobbles up one’s monadic existence, Nerval said.

Unclean because renders the good of faith unclean. Yeah, 
me and my friends don’t like dogs.

*

We can see The Lobster in its proper place
uncolonized by men.

The Lobster behind the dog’s back
turns to the golden stream
the moon dreams.

The dog turns to the face
that hides the whole of the moon
that hides…

The golden coyote closes its eyes

and bares its teeth at the dog.