1.
Humped gravity/tree-backed vatic shard/white
disarray/arc
secretly allied to the dark clear dark/herald
sick of his forms, dry
with remorse.
There is a cup in the landscape buried under the indefinite
as if it would last: salt, sugar, salt.
Sooner or later he’ll want a child
hushed up against him
spawned in egregious thirst. Pale
inventory of a lunar smile/applause track
slips off the rails, flute twisted, strings
knotted and loose. Must be numbers, letters
afloat on the surface: augur, thread, mast
honeycomb, terrace.
I am jealous of his garment, his shirt’s wide cut
the gaudy transience crouched in his throat,
great thimble of heat poured out—
a thing in the landscape:
salt, sugar, salt.
2.
Now this news.
If you do not mention it she will not cry.
I laughed as well at the child’s invention.
Yesterday I saw a painting
of a young woman in a red dress. Yesterday
yesterday I saw
paintings of fire. I met a woman she said
my father my father my father
and as she spoke he became her portrait.
If a room is artificially white
all whisper in the affirmed
physical space:
touch touches touch.
The violinist moves
like a marionette/legs
buckle/hair
jumps with light/torso
breaks forward.
Music adheres
enclosing the figured silence
as if setting were bondage.
As if setting were bondage
and we on the brink had walked up to it/raw thread
chafing the waters of the percolating wave.
As if we could say to the fire,
Stop! I command you, stop!
3.
That night the moon was the Evil Banana King
crouched in a bowl.
See, said the child, drawing the light,
this is the Princess I asleep on her bed
this her pet snake/this
is the mother in her slip
she is wearing a nest on her head
she is a long lady standing in front of a leaky mirror
she says I would rather be in jail than stay
hidden in these devotions—
I am making red and yellow stitches
although my crayons are stale.
Now she is walking toward a cave
where the tools are hidden and the Book of Instruction,
peeled into slight wings, batters the foam.
This is a circle.
The name of the circle is Gray Pond.
There are lilies on the pond/you cannot see them
as if the memorial had rubbed away.
This is the ghost.
4.
This black thing is a mistake.
It could be a cat or a cart.
It is lonely like a mouth in a desert
under sand. I
do not know who hears it.
I do not know who calls.
It is a long way since
with no way out into a song.
There is ecstasy in battle,
on the somber chasm’s edge.
That thou wouldst narrate me
thru these worlds.
I am in derelict garb
my category is broken
I am covetous of the extreme.
5.
Then the periphery dawned as later, as ebbtide
on a channel, as the gray pond of recognition,
the memorial rubbed into a wall.
How soon? you ask, and again, How soon?
You may as well ask is the water bloody
is the chair frail.
And, at the horizon, a ribbon of fire
finds its way to the woman’s dress to ravish it so in the box
wild ashes fly about in a litter of silence.
The father-woman and the child do not meet, the
violinist never smiles. Is it a sunset, this fire,
seen from the dusty window of a passing train, or is it
the oiled conflagration of an event brought home to us as a trophy:
which comes first, artifact or source, and what stroke strokes the flame?
In the Museum of the Word (Henri Matisse)
—for Thomas Neurath
1.
There was the shield of another language
transient enclosure/gate
swings open
shut shut
walking unnoticed into it
as with avec
down stone steps into the vineyard
rose as decoy/beauty as use
riding up onto the surface
glance, sway/hawk
comes down dragging silence with it
no light, no applied Sun King
opposing shine, commonly
bereft
creature of habit lost in a wood.
Here I said take these thimbles these hooks
you can count them and toss them away
one six nine/they
will fit under any stream, fill any slot
will color the waters
of the restless exhibit
lizard’s billowing throat
hiccups on a wall/its tongue
flicks air
bird-strewn wind
And the milkman’s doubling dream, his
dilemma, the composition of his
intolerance for dawn/great
Aubergine Interior too frail to move: link
between A Conversation and event. There was
there had been an awkward tour.
I was shown two rivers, their vistas
snailfooted/waterskinned abyss
wheelwinged staring at muck
weedy, indifferent, purplepronged up
in avid rays their comprehensive is
bearing emblems smaller than time
under the decor
coiled among rocks
I met a woman with odd eyes
she said this is the figure of guilt
hurling a snake boulder
wall
ripped from a wall
fragment installed.
This country is a
cavern of drunk light/shade rubbed onto day
the corpse is not luminous/vines dangerous/flowers profuse
as in an arbitrary Eden. These
consolations also are damaged/seepage under roofs
thru which the musics
might come.
2.
She traveled.
Sun lay against her knees printed on purple
boughs fell with a thrash
color collected on the dusty sea floor
fronds meticulously scissored/commerce
raged thru the sky binding its harmonies
regardless of space.
Although something insisted, pointing.
Although similar doors did not open similarly.
Blackbirds reminded her of written blackbirds/it was
humid with blackbirds/her mind an inscription/a proverb
or heap so she could almost see its faithful
retrieval: monkey hanging with long limbs/bird
on her shoulder/rigid man/moon
doubled in glass.
Nothing timid is allowed while we believe in it.
Doubtless it should be told.
Doubtless tools will be needed.
Desire in an etched wineglass like an old bloody dime.
3.
A fable of prescience/looking up into the sky’s garden
and the statues on the roof
withstanding bombardment
seven paces to Paradise
halted startled voyagers/nothing to correct
the possible direction collides with the way
each morning’s tray a rudimentary splendor.
I said here are some useful numbers
some untranslatable rain
facades pockmarked in the new contingent state
now untethered on the Street of the Harp
the blind man cannot/soft sloped palm
dog leading him on into the unscented garden
They are scooping out the bloods in jars
the real has a stench/it is not
the tableaux we elicit.
I went up a steep hill in a foreign country
in unknown grass/there was an aperture
boats, birds
many unknown letters
snake-wrapped sphere
Persephone delayed
stolen, raped
Hotel where Mozart stayed/street where Brecht
Beckett’s daily walks
impermanent oracular trace so that
not any fragment will do counting my steps
from margin to margin/scenic on foot
turning a page.
4.
In museum Street, Liu Hai is
standing on a three-legged toad
the toad
was thought to inhabit the moon
it lost its leg
in order to correspond
with the three-legged bird
that inhabits the sun.
And the Apostles were fishermen and thieves
base fellows neyther of wit nor worth
seal
reduced to a wax turd
flaunting a tail
charred Charter’s remains
under glass
Merlin
helps a young man
to paint his
shield/an illustration
Attendants in a garden mounted on a crane
Under green and ochre glazes
under turquoise purple and ochre glaze
with aubergine, green and straw glazes
In a woods a black scroll
let us caption the first scene
on oak
on poplar on lime
green earth has been used under gold leaf
instead of the usual orange bole
as well as I can
As if conducted to the eulogy fields to lie down with a shade
under turbulent vines
walls studded
Peiro’s meticulous plummage
Come this way said the guard this is where
your opponent lies grieving
here are the spoils set in violent maps, re-
named, disinhabited, inherited
made bloodless with shine.
Read this example
it praises the country of origin
it teaches you facts
in the new gray wing
lion, corpulent monk
Here are some postcards to send home/the one
you want is sold out/the thing you came to see
is temporarily gone
that she is seated/that the door
that the window
that she wears part of a tree
that the color of the conversation
moves as if it were sky/that the frame
continues to dissolve
(sadness of the Rose Marble Table)
man wearing a pajama column
rigidly pronounced/woman
redrawn in response—
Is is possible to memorize this blue?