Axis Mundi
fallen lamps of frost
ignite
an old-fashioned eye
the noise of iron’s
chthonic blaze
—metanoia
a blanched clove
so much pain
is, ultimately,
trigonometric
spun out
from the annular gash
but the eye
pools—
its brief awl
widows the gold sill
its tungsten-stain
collapsed
to altitude’s margin
Pentecost’s
my father, my mother
was a shadow
but the eye, O
let its god ember
let it womb & pearl
against
day’s ecstatic lathe
(narthex)
the violet leaping
its crux
& choir, bed
staved in splay—
Galilee
plot of sweet
snare,
confer
your pilgrim-
mark, blue
in the aisle’s
reedy flask,
round & round
in my thin coat,
scion
of terror’s
compact water—
Stokesdale
that mineral sacrifice, nacre-pled
a knitted there
the commercial
pleat, which the body recognizes
squint
of your courtesy, liege & master
*
veined density of appraisal’s
plasmic inflorescence—
*
(I slip the shoes
into their dusky crowns, upflung
a physician’s
fire, such velvet meats
to begin with the law,
to transcend the law
of clay—
of the sounding lute, entablature
*
nocked
against the breath’s taut cord—
Night Watch (Maurice Blanchot at Giverny)
my altar-habit, incinerating—
warm
the glands—
complemented glyph or rune
spectral,
at the boundary-banquet—
optical
curd of speech
milk’s prim flank or smolder
the witnesses damage
themselves, or
are damaged,
“drew a comb
across his charred throat”—
(in the bleak fastness
of the ex-
cavated solar,
not even birdsong,
praise’s jeweled cautery—
Night Watch (Sinai)
priestly interruption
the hostel’s
lone, bedighted guest
murmurs
in his sleep—
a trick of the light?
beneath
the noun, & the noun’s
progeny
(& thus
unlike music,
towards which it
makes a silent bow)
their narrow keys
(the desert
withdraws
into its brief echo)
(placed in the basket
the severed wings
rustle,
expel their wax)
under the ladder
(but oh
I am running
out of baskets, Lord)