Stationary faces are formed of
Sintered talk of crows
That hammer the morning
In the second city. We walk
Across the street to the sound
Of a death-march; it is to silence them
Since their alarming lack of joy
Would pile on the forlorn
Another dozen stations, it's
More than waiting: surrendering, helping,
Keeping a finger on the minute hand
Still dewed in crimson from worrying the mask.
And immediately immersed in folk
Harvested threes, unlike plastic,
It condenses and meanders along
A string of black buttons
To pool eloquently in a straight
Riff, "They said it may pour later,"
Belied by the discolored carpet tiles
On the eighth floor where whoever
Had gripped the stem stole the faggot
And fell onto a track to their desk.
Where street vendors
Release their pigeons, and dust
Has its time in among the follicles.
We keep one side to the light and one
We keep neglected lest the ghosts realise
That beyond the dark tree
Lies just a convenience store.
With yoghurt wands.
Extend the nub of truth til it splits
And sends us reeling backward
Stepping gingerly among the tidal flats'
Unannealed efflorescences
So that simple irritation over a lost file
Becomes an excuse for dispute.
They mostly evade that urge desire,
Since desire keeps its hand on the tap,
And thus establish[es] a schedule
A series of waves concurs the mass
And speed of runoff in the road
That lies between the haven of ideas
And the pillarbox. And the busdriver
With his headset and keychain
Says jack about an odor of tobacco
But twists the wheel and recommends
Readiness before departure.
Images of modern times are found
In the most prosaic cinema.
The knotted gloom of Prague
In Mission Impossible and
The serenity of Mission
Impossible Two; are awe and doubt
But two halves of one sphere,
One rosy glow, one sad dawn in a tree
By the harbor I have not seen
Since the arrival of my glad daughter?
Bare midway up the first flight
On an iron bannister clings a mantis
Pale, green on the red-brown lead,
It turns its curious head as I climb
To Norway. These long steps give
Time its tempo, the self possession,
Avuncular health the clay
Of which its matter's wrought,
Its pith resolves in thirty-eight steps
Through two rotations, along
The landing, and before the washing machine
Hosts a separation of keys,
A handling of the lock, door, briefcase,
Shoes, slippers, coat, and wallet,
Ravishes itself and finds queer
That its emptiness is false
As, contracting, it expels salts.
Are endured but with courage
With arms raised and, running
Among the separate pieces of the crowd,
A mute trajectory traced among balls
Solid or striped, inquisitive.
A black background and tracers
Reaching their mark, fear
On the ground, quite naked
From the waist down. All there is.
Separates the heavens, and below
Discomfited knots of people stare
At the sky and sigh like angels
Weep to know their duty is but one
Temperamental prize; no longer finer
Than crystal sugar, and equally
Harsh since those golden motes
Obliterated every one but you.
Yet near the upper dawn
Where cirrus paves the downs
And Icarus' beats still shine
In the runnels at your feet,
There is but one bright agent,
Yet a speck in the heart of terra,
A mote in your eye that shifts
As you sleep and, waking,
Find grown to an image all awake
But recumbent, nuzzling the sheet.
Ranks upon ranks of shapes
That embody disaster, release
Variously into pools their aims,
Presage disaster. And you ask
What hybrid awe prevents
Independence, except that it desires
Its own, true self to triumph.
A hubris that walks on clotted feet
So pitiable as to cause verdure.
That the center of things was found
Shunning the engine of growth and admirers,
hiding in a lunch-time speech which always ended
With this mise-en-scene: grandpa's
Quite enormous vehicle has caused
The driver of a sports car to crash
And founder in the road. That outburst
Reveals a vagrant mind among
The society of men, that
Trembles to imagine discovery
And meanders off into a haze of simple
Activities: fishing, horticulture, the raising
Of beautiful children whose hands
He could fill with blessings. By and by his wife
Would make notions, take plastic, stuffed it
With a screwdriver into sheaths
Fashioned from off-cuts and sews
Into figures that neighborhood kids
Could take to bed. What started
As a gradual escape from grace
Became a voyage of discovery
Beyond the verges of the known universe.
A hood upon his head was black
And from it led a string of red
And silver intestinal matter, offal
From the belly of a cat who
Often thought to eat him
But now saw nothing pass
The trasheap and its blank
Accusing stare.
"What did we catch," asked he
Whose other hand fixed upon the knob,
Gave it a twist and a tug
And left its messenger slone;
A solitary magpie alone in the gloom.
"We had to get him," to the magistrate,
"For he gave us pause, and while we paused,
Fascinated our children." And then,
"But he is surely very bad,"
And "He may be one of them
Who make the world unclear
By being simple and void of fear."
The magistrate blushed, and coughed
Some seven times, then held between his fingers
The measure of a pen. "Be done,"
He mimicked, loud and sere,
"Do all." And though was spoke
no word more, the magpie
Shuddered on the pebbled floor
And closed its eye once more.
Inside a glass, that's not
Distorted, a mere sound made light.
To know that world's a haven
And a creature both, requires others' sight,
Garnered from the dregs of fear
In the fabric of your soul;
Deeply drink for where in the glass
They cling, we can know not.
Changes hands. He dwells
Amid sounds that confuse his matted heart
And sights that perplex and constrain,
Who has nothing to give but his attention.
He lives in the heart of his house,
Beset by the anvil cries of his kids
Who receives the attentions of the world.
And where the one seeks courage
The other stands, wondering how
He'd even started and gives thanks
With one hand closed into a fist
Borne behind his back, and the other
Making signs his children read
As blessings but are really just
Gestures meant to distract our attention
While he studies how the timid
Among us raise themselves each dawn
Or put to sleep their wandering hearts.
If its burden were to steep
Into the pile where little ones
Move about on all fours, now dewed
With the rushing tide and moist
And black. Collect the shards
Which, as they pass before your body,
Glisten in the light from the window,
Its panes crossed by tracks of wire,
Aim down to a receptacle for them.
Boats dangle their tethers in the swell
That slaps their slimy bottoms
And reaches the beach yawning
For the same, old, yellow sand.
Voices without invest this pearly orchard
With as, of sleep, refine my hand.
And Germany, and France, and the arms
Of England are peered at as cockles
Clasping the rock, bouey, keel, or pile.
Lives a sand crab, all feet and wires,
A snicket of leaf in its tines,
A crimp of grass in its wing.
On the subject of crow no thoughts paused
As they waded through the tender
Stalks, forgot all thoughts but wood and sheaves
But hastened e'er the lawn
As daylight struck above its wall.
That lifts the stick above the drum,
That quells the sound of rain,
That brings you to me; we speak
That tomorrow we may speak again.
Another time it was more difficult still
That it were a mere look, a recognition
That I was sitting down and working
While you passed by harnessing
That redundant grief of duty and hope,
Which had your attention. We made it.
Didn't we? Unsuffused, opaque
And sere as the glaze on Christmas cake.
But when you asked about that company
We knew it was of us you spoke,
And sins long past nigh forgot.
Your friends would of it a courtroom,
I, for mine, a lower place suitable to chat
For there is where the action's at.
Lives a moment that lives
And breathes from more than force
Of habit, but lifts its face
On slender neck and waits.
Any time that longs for release
Under relentless pressure
Is but a symbol, a mere twist
Of the stopper on wills, heavy heart
That pumps, alone, on one's breast
But cannot break itself apart;
But can maintain its pace
So long as wise and gentle time,
Mindful of itself, is counting every crease
before fate should lay its fingers on
And, grudging, bid release.
The day to nightmares, blind illegals
Consuming as ants the stuff of dreams
And their memory, the last crust of which
Is drowned in temptations as long-drawn
As a sweep of morning's hardy lashes,
Which leave their tracks in its glaze
And send on to its fate that thing
Heaving and grumbling in the dust.
No crowd too large and no point too remote
Has a sweetness such as that
Ornamented staple under whose
Influence, primed, we hearken
At the mute herald and his knotted hands
That would clasp the sticks, but should not keep
Time with the last echoes of their march.
The summer's gone and duty fried
Like loach upon a grill; we near
Its odor. Hungry, we sigh,
Replete, we ask what is that smell
And traipse foot and foot ere it.
Arrived, we'd see a meal, and wonder
Whose hand and art had been so good.
Walks upon the hill while in the dale
Winds of hunger whistle in the trees:
The strawman walks upon the hillside.
The stars hold men who walk,
They walk upon the air and in the lees
Of the moon, but the sunlight sings:
The stars hold men who walk.
The house holds men who walk
Upon the carpet, rushes, boards
Of timber fine as a word:
The house holds men who walk.
As she walks she dreams
That she walks in the eye
Of the sun that follows her tidy path
As she mounts the hills of the moon.
That pile up around me like
Mirrors that reflect only you.
