That in the this
lies nearness
and so
the voice that bends.
That the bend.
The bend that releases,
releasing us into bond.
That the bind, that the bend. Hold.
Hold the banded riot, its loosened face
approaching.
Is this land
On which we stand?
Is it dust that sifts
When we list?
What wends through
And leaves us
Lidless, boundless—
What household wind?
That goodness meets us.
That it widens
like a hand to a span, greets
with sky-fallen wing
to feather our heads
in commonness.
That there are many kinds
of kindness. That each
kindles the breath
to a felt flame, burns
the bone-house down
to a fingered soot.
That the blood. That the breath. That the bone. That the bit.
That tenderness is a meat
cut with salt.
That we sleep in the waves
of its woman blood,
wake and walk
from one tenderness
into another
and find final sleep
curled in seabed rock:
a leaf’s imprint—
simple, imperfect, unblown.
All those days
I lay like dew on grass
Thieved the dear
And held for cheap the glad.
All those nights
I woke with quick in fright
Gazed the sheer
And inked its quake on white.
All that pealed
Called out and asked
Stays its eye behind this mask.
That I turned, that the wind blew my hair in two halves and smarted my face, that I turned and saw, that I turned and judged—what?—but my own turning—what?—but myself looking out. That I knew—is it knowing to describe what we recognize as if by instinct but nowhere perceive?—that I knew I had arrived at a middleness in life. That the middle did not measure itself out into equal parts behind and before me but marked the standstill in a turning point where there is nothing to show for oneself, nothing to prove of oneself but turn and face forward, but turn and face backward and watch the years mist into my abstracted gaze. That my gaze lensed each moment until it became the rock on which I stood, until it became the rock from which I fell. That I stood and gazed, that I fell and gazed. That I gazed at a field of grasses rising and falling with the wind into a neat wave, that the wave rose and fell to a field, that the field folded the past and present, folded into a future wave, that the wave unfolded into a field where all moments erase themselves to a middleness. Middleness everywhere. That even the end would be like this. That even the beginning had been like this. Middleness everywhere. That I stood amidst the folding and unfolding a mere crease ironed into the horizon by the heat of day. That I looked down at the ground to steady me—no, not the ground but a proscenium free entirely of props, a space subtracted from space and arched over by blue sky. That I looked down and saw no not space, no not ground, but foam, sands, sea waves churning around my ankles like the strong confusion in any manhood. That I leaned like a tree in search of a placeless center, that I knew in the way that all knowing intimates itself by coming close, closer, then slipping away. That it was not the light on the waters that flowed lubric but the shifting shards of my face. That middleness unmanned me, unnamed me, gripped me by the ankles with groundless empathy. That all this time I had held onto dried beans, salt, a fist of stones. That in the cares that trouble the sleep lie the care that cures. That I had delayed and deliberated indiscriminate love. That yet I breathed. That yet I stood. That I looked up and saw a hawk gliding back and forth, back and forth like a slurred note that hung in my throat, hung in the middleness that everywhere unfastened air.
To what unfastening love fastens me
That, releasing me as other,
In otherness binds me as key
To what unfastening? Love fastens me
To debt and vows to own me free
Of heat and sweat, earth touched with ether.
To what unfastening love fastens. Me
That releasing. Me as other.
That we lay hot
with dying, that
all through its coming on
we stared at a sky
raked thick with clouds.
That death measures out
the immeasurable—sands
fused to a melted stream,
the minutes
hardening to a glass pane
against whose cool
we lean our heads and watch clouds
unbutton to rain.
That we finger the one
pock in the glass
the way eyes in a mirror
settle on error, a reflection
clutched in false light and swallowed
like a small scandal.
That what we wanted to consume
was not error but
unimpeachable love.
That each time we bit through
its furred skin our teeth met
grooved stone.
That the stone lay
not at the fruit’s heart
but ours
and so weighed down
our best intentions.
That love like death
pairs us
to air, to the hum leaving
any flower.
That it names
indifferent faith, an
and and and and and
so much
beyond bounds
we fall through
its openness—body
clothed in body, addressed and returned
nameless.
That like love, death
sentences us
to form
the interminable terms by which
we do not end. That
as any road seen
through a pane of glass, it moves
the gaze in voluptuous drift
nowhere
until a cardinal
startles the eye
to shape, each wing a hinge
between this world
and another—
| That the bond | That the bind | That the hinge |
| That the end | That the heart | That the rock |
| That the wind | That the earth | That the span |
| That the wing | That the bound | That the wave |
| That the air | That the cloth | That the weight |
| That the love | That the debt | That the heat |
| That the cut | That the fold | That the note |
| That the fist | That the leaf | That the fall |
| That the fright | That the voice | That the vow |
| That the hand | That the flame | That the bend |
| That the blood | That the breath | That the hold |
Hold the banded riot, its loosened face approaching.