How just wilt be my silence when
You look upon my hair and bone,
Reflect upon my grace and then
subvert my meaning to your own.
Of Morning in Spello
In the night I had been dull
and blind, dreaming of nothing.
Now in the brilliant morning
I emerge upon wonder
And see the far cypresses,
the olive groves and onion
fields, the stones of Umbria.
I am myself an essence,
a green splinter of the sun.
I shall eat a bursting fig.
I shall pass a dead man’s door.
I shall be glad to inhabit
the thin invisible air,
the bright prism of summer.
Prayer to the Mind
O mind, good mind, O blessed mind,
Succeed the body, be so kind.
The Bone Striker[1]
My footprints are those of a beast,
The bear, the buffalo, the wolf.
My voice is that of the whirlwind,
The gathering of a prairie storm.
My song is that of a warrior,
The song of the Bone Striker.
I carry the ball of bone.
I stand my ground and strike,
I stand my ground and strike.
I stand my ground,
I stand my ground.
I boast,
I boast in the presence of my enemy.
I boast in the presence of death.
Face me, for I am the Bone Striker.
Face me.
Face me.
The Wheel
Where wind sifts glitter from the drifts,
And deer regard you without fear
And stand like the stumps about them,
Motionless, tawny with a late gleaming
Of the November sun, cross into wilderness.
And recall imperfectly your severance
From this far, forgotten world,
And contemplate the riddle of your return.
Then enter upon the wheel
With bare recognition and acute respect,
The mere acceptance of the unintelligible.
Forsake the cellular memory of hopelessness.
Move among the spokes and cairns.
Then take your heart away, keeping
The beats of a Creation song, a paean
To the alien, savage swell.
Eclipse
Novosibirsk, 2008
From Mongolia the Ob,
Flowing north to the Arctic,
Slants into the white city
Bearing a traffic I know—
Asian merchants, seal hunters,
Old people of the taiga.
Lord, let us see what is there.
Now summer on the bright beach;
The sky is clear. Everyone
Is high on expectation.
And then the quiet havoc;
The edge of the moon intrudes
Upon an old deity,
Lord, let us see what is there.
And dark streams writhe on the sand.
Primal light itself recedes,
And fear in the ancient guise
Of darkness enters the caves
Of the brain. A ring of fire
Describes a perfect black disc.
Lord, let us see what is there.
The great river roils slowly
In the gleam of dawn or dusk.
For a time, time holds no sway.
Shadows take hold of the light
And pass. The afternoon,
Barely diminished, goes on.
Lord, let us see what is there.
Sobre Mesa
Did you chip the calf, Alfredo?
Sí, I chipped the calf, Jose.
Did you ride with your knees, Alfredo?
With my knees and heart, Jose.
Did your horse sling his head, Alfredo?
Sí, his head was slung low, Jose.
Did he see into the calf’s eyes, Alfredo?
Sí, he saw into the eyes, Jose.
What did he see there, Alfredo?
Nada. There was nothing to see, Jose.
You have a fine cutting horse, Alfredo.
Sí, mine is a fine cutting horse, Jose.
Por favor, have one more, Alfredo.
Sí, gracias, Jose, one more for the ride.
Vision Quest
Four days I lived on tea and sage
And dreamed in symbols of an age,
A beast incising on the tree:
I am the bear Tsoai-talee.
The Scraps of Praise
Do not believe them. They are lies.
They are the critic’s enterprise.
But if you must, take each scrap in,
Imagining what might have been.
And if you listen to yourself,
All lies grow dusty on the shelf.
Write little and write well, I say,
And be the bard for whom you pray.
Song of the Conqueror
Rejoice in the illusive spoils of peace,
And grant to greed the order of surcease;
Revel in want, and may your tribe decrease.
Elemental Speech
Lover, be my mime,
And let your fingertips touch
What they will of me.
I am at your disposal.
Are you trembling?
Do I feel you tense your toes?
Will you wind your hair
Around me like vagrant smoke?
Do you taste of salt,
Like herring eggs on seaweed
And the damp of you
At the creases of your limbs?
So you invent speech.
Your guttural responses
Are an intercourse
Now and then. I take your meaning.
A West Side Drinking Song
I speak of your dementia
And hear in it my own.
And, old friend, in absentia,
We trace the whole unknown.
Old friend, sobriety
Would surely drive us sane.
Be done with sanity.
It is a dreadful bane.
Old friend, let us restore
Compassion to the mind.
One for the road, and for
Such wit as we can find.
First Voyage
Again the far morning; we come to this,
The edge of earth, beyond which nothing is.
Between worlds, in the close of stagnant time,
The air is warm, sea-scented, and benign.
Tonight we shall be dead in the water,
And dead the reckoning from this quarter,
A doubtful flickering of inland light—
A buoyant star, bobbing, remote and bright.
I Canot Wrt
I canot wrt the sog I wsh t sin,
Fr al t t in Chn
My lve i detles, n my hrt i pur
N Cotn Ee Jo he tke t cur
Whoa
The Mortal Memory
You died in the lunar eclipse.
I think you might have been at peace;
I could not read you in your sleep
At such times mere intention slips
Beyond intention’s grasp. Hours cease,
And only love is in our keep.
I love you though you are not here,
A love inconstant, faint, and sere.
To Tell You of My Love[2]
Eh neh neh neh,
Oh, my beloved:
I tell you of my love,
You listen, you listen.
I whisper you my love,
You listen, you listen.
Now hear my words falling like snow
Upon your hair. Beloved, know
My song returns your deepest dream,
My breath the lucent soul you seem.
Eh
neh neh neh,
Oh, my beloved.
My words run as rainwater runs
Upon your skin. Like winter suns
The stars touch wonder to your face,
I pray the blessing of your grace.
Eh neh neh neh,
Oh, my beloved.
About Me Like a Robe[3]
For that man sees that I am beautiful;
I will dust my skin with pollen and sage.
For that man sings to me in lonesome strains;
I will pretend to hear the river roll.
For that man lingers late about my camp;
I will look beyond him, as if dreaming.
For he brings my mother glittering beads;
I will count them, reckoning his intent.
For he boasts to my father of his deeds;
I will laugh and make faces behind him.
For he gives strawberries to my sister;
I will chide him for being lost in love.
For that man tells me stories from his heart;
I will wear them about me like a robe.
Little Newborn, Sleep[4]
Little newborn, the blackbirds are calling;
How they call upon your sleep.
Little newborn, the river is rolling;
How it runs upon your sleep.
Little newborn, the long winds are turning;
How they wheel upon your sleep.
Little newborn, the old bear is creeping;
How he bends upon your sleep.
On the purple mountain we are dancing,
Among the living trees we are dancing.
We dance in your dreams, we play in your dreams.
We dance and play in the field of your dreams.
Sleep, little newborn, you are welcome here.
Sleep, little newborn, sleep peacefully here.
A Cradle for This Child[5]
This child who draws so near,
Who has no name, who cannot see,
Who waits in darkness to be born
Into an empty world,
I make a cradle for this child.
This child whose trust we keep,
Who knows of nothing but our love,
Whose hands will guide our destiny
Into an empty world,
I make a cradle for this child.
This child who blesses us,
Whose words will heal and carry on
Beyond the silence of our sorrow,
Beyond an empty world,
I make a cradle for this child.
This child who will enter
Among us in our empty world
And stand before us in our need
And promise us the dawn,
I make a cradle for this child.
The Middle Distance
Imagine the space between here and there.
Vision holds upon an aura of the earth,
And on that nebulous band a bird appears.
It takes shape in the vagaries of light,
Becoming wholly its own definition.
It hangs inherently there, opposite the air.
Less the image, more the beholding it, is true,
A perception of the wild that is wild itself.
This is an isolation that confirms the alien eye,
The bird, alone, appearing on the transparent field,
The middle distance.
Woman in the Plain: A Portrait
Behold her in the foreground. She takes shape
In the long light, imaging the unknown.
She moves in weavings of the prairie grass,
Her motion slow and undulant, almost
A dance, indeed almost a ritual.
Among broken stoneworks, against the sky,
She seems always to be, embodied here
In this bright field, in possibility.
Momently concentrated, she is borne
On the echoes of the wind, in the mind
Of soil and summer. Behold what she is,
And, veiled in art, what she appears to be.
A Woman Beyond Words
You had become your metaphor, yourself
Read in my play of words and passages.
I defined you; you were the utterance
I made when first I set my mind on forms
Traditional and modern, on language
For its own sake.
Now you exceed my reach.
You will not be contained in my best lines.
Good riddance. Go your way ineffably.
Winter Arcs
A poet stands
among smoking stones
and cold waterfalls.
He thinks of nothing,
and yet the faint impulse
to tell of Creation
comes upon him.
The story is too large
for a couplet
or even a quatrain.
Dumb with wonder,
he beholds rainbows
and the random fishes
that rise and freeze,
iridescent on the air.
A Parable of Snails
They inch so lightly on the walk.
Their trails glisten in the moonlight.
They contemplate each blade and stalk
And pray the mysteries of night.
They listen in their house of leaves
And hear the voices of the dead.
Their congress is a loom that weaves
The tapestries of holy dread.
What do they know of time and change?
What drives their will to come and go
Along a wild and ancient range
Of being that we cannot know?
Beyond their knowing is the loss
Of boundaries they cannot cross.
Behold the pale streak of stars
Above the black line of land
Where evening edges the night.
Is it the path of the dead
Who danced with us in summer
And did not speak of roaming?
Neither do we speak of it,
But we scan the gleaming trace.
Crazy Dog Song
Over me the sun
Under me the earth
My life is good
It ought not to be better
That I should stand fast
A Farther Home
An old, deranged woman in a chair:
You think that she has never been composed,
That as a child she embodied age and wrath.
She emits a scream inside herself.
It is a visible scream, inaudible and terrible.
It is mute, merely motion in the wind
Of a farther place, the homeland of her heart.
We Have Seen the Animals
Lascaux
For we have seen the animals
That linger in primordial dark,
Parade in step and intervals
That mark millennia, an arc
Of time beyond the reckoning.
Whose hand has traced these living lines?
Whose mind has ventured past the thing
That mere mortality confines?
Horse, bison, auroch, bear, and deer,
Convene forever in the night,
Their ghosts, in old communion here,
Emerge in stark, forgotten light.
Or has their spirit thrived unseen,
Bled into earth and rock?—
In attitudes austere, serene,
Evincing myth, story, epoch.
Sternenwandler
After a painting by Emil Nolde
Time is static on the void, and see,
A man wanders among the stars.
He does not transcend the picture plane,
But hovers in a greatcoat, in oblivion,
In the astral, pulsing sea, in silence,
Imperturbable and indifferent.
Time is static on the void, illumined.
The man stands beyond and ever there.
Before and farther than the reach implies,
I bear his ghost; I am his compromise.
The Death of a Ceramicist
Here lies the potter Tim O’Dea,
Who has himself become his clay,
And lest his mem’ry be forgot,
Recycle him into a pot.
Visitors
They came
Not to see us
But to see themselves in our eyes
And our demise
And in the blood on their hands
Now we think it was
They saw into a twisting wind
And were blinded
We dance and the earth quakes
We dance and the earth quakes
The grasses lie low
And the earth quakes
Esquire
Beneath this stone a lawyer lies.
And lying led to his demise.
He labored in precincts judicial.
And strove to make his lies official.
“Justice is my life,” he said,
But nonetheless the man is dead.
Of the Ghost Dance
I circle above
The burial grounds of the earth
I lay my feathers on the wind
And fly
Consolation in Fives and Sevens
In the time of strife,
a dream of order begins.
At first there is light,
and objects break from the field.
Then color and shape;
a wedge of migrating birds
finds old alignments
of motion and grace. Thickets
emerge in vapor
by rivers that curl to seas,
crazing distances.
The music of morning wind
on the plaited grass
touches the ear with whispers
of the earth turning,
and the whole is as it is,
imperturbable.
The Bearers