Under the Sign
Page 6
7.
Cast the small occasions of research
into a cup of
steady words—
forgive me
I am jumping with
instinct—
cast the apparition of time
into the play of integers
and their daughter N-7
forgive me I am
jumping with the unspent
as if it were a pardon.
A PLAN
Perhaps we should put all circles together
and then all squares. And let’s
sequester blue from its neighbor
then ask it to perform in the biggest atrium.
In the greatest episode of an ordinary life
there is tenderness
but this is not recalled on an ordinary day.
The sequence, on an ordinary day, is mute.
It steals and flaunts, it has the animating
iteration of an impostor. Perhaps
we should put everything in a shelter.
The lament is recursive: Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
UNTITLED (FATE)
1.
Rescind the error margin gap
adumbrated by the machine
mentioned with colored dots
during the wish for a separation
between sensation and trace
when we came close
a kiss
to suggest
the indelible
to be free from
linguistic
song of the thrush
to move
into the ungathered.
2.
The diction of the road
fails its intention.
We’re on some other path
along sight lines
unpermitted to land.
Dear instructor,
is fate shaped by an idea
withheld from daily force
and from the thing I
thought I saw
on the grave of the unknown?
The iris is the color of a bruise.
The world is uneven in its orbit.
3.
Having not read the signs,
having missed the cues—
Absence.
A bowl.
Glassy.
A FOLD IN TIME
Not to swerve off the road
dust runs in the family
of the dream
speaking into the sheet
shrouded in you
in which you
shortly after the curtains
addressed the flood
the ratio
were detained, saying
repeated frequently
need to want spoken
near the foxed copy of Yeats
under the stained eaves
had been abused
thematically after the earrings
whispered at the door
want to need ushered in
as the dream is not in the real
the door is not in the dream
rose cloth shade
hidden dark assembly
charged objects in space
what is called optimism
among the not dead
certain distributions
leaning toward the mouth
spoken in the
western sky
embrace or image
not biography although
this too, dear instructor,
and the thump of footsteps
that cruel intimacy
at the threshold
above the abrasion:
Did you cry?
Prayer spoken, arrested.
to Nat Tripp
AT/OR (RAÚL ZURITA)
1.
Gray wool rags
peripheral rider
a column has broken
strained
desert well
you haven’t seen
a girl’s head against a white tent
not blue
not blue.
Look where?
Some small
differences in shade
form to form
a splinter on the road
the bait raining.
2.
Desperate empirical!
You see nothing the drab is walks by
into the forgotten
into the shuffle
sun flaps its white wing
inhales the landscape
nobody is looking nobody sees
sun
exhales poem.
UNTITLED (THE DISINHERITED)
1.
The writer’s swan passes, quoted
in a dark interior.
As and of difficult.
No signal.
The photos, however,
are sincere. The light
dull on the swan
equipped with mean beauty.
Some motion
among those who belong
and those who visit.
Make no mistake.
The land, its uses, its
little shingles,
theirs.
2.
Among us we hunt the fickle root.
Slide on over, Hon.
My brim is too wide, I cannot
see out.
Earnest collaboration among birds.
Sing sweetly now that the branch is clean.
Fix the roof.
I’m warming up for the real thing
although I still can’t hear you
under this sign, this
sky booth.
3.
Unblessed forum counters relative merit.
Truth vortex!
The day wet, late, wet, late.
The light, dull.
The barn massively pictorial.
The house massively perfect.
Barn not empty.
Barn full of the weights of the dead.
Here, have this, a clay
sculpture of a
naked girl
on her hands and knees
before a black thing.
4.
Gist trouble markets war talk.
The irreducible bad guys at the door.
The sad gray cadets.
Stone the infidel!
Vocabulary of lost causes
meets vocabulary of
found causes
and we and they
launch combat.
No signal.
5.
Of course the present
is open is
calamity in waiting is
marked
previously unharmed
in a frame.
The present is endangered.
Sell it.
6.
Incised on the heels of the domain
no time to set the sleeve ratty logic
of the shield misgivings
traced along the shore’s bony apparatus.
Come back! A call in the septic dream.
The trees are marked for departure.
The river is laced with icy aisles.
7.
The negative is a posse! See how it rides
across the game, how it
spells exception after the ship, the ripped sail,
the extinguished horn, the engulfed mast
passed on. The one we love is
in this dungeon of blur, this mobile thread.
How lucid this is
depends
on where you are from.
Back home, shuffling
men in slippers, a woman asleep in a slip.
Or else, back home, she is
awake and the sun lays stripes on her face
through the blinds. We hear, more recently,
that the estate has been
abandoned, the marriage collapsed.
BEAUTY AND CONSOLATION (RICHARD RORTY)
Sometimes there’s an altar:
world, dressed
flagrant & discerning
stopped above or lines of flight
arrested seemingly arrested
an altar:
quotidian in pace a cart’s wheel, a tag
made for the mildest enterprise
to follow and so anticipate an edge
as if wanting to sail
or to move closer along the periphery
a table or cloth or now a hole
through which a needle
cannot pass
the sign having landed on the wall
in its garb of light
waiting for its name
after nature
not web not wing marked
for some better foil
than the diction of the real
hovering or suspended a call
to pivot on the unconsoledas
an image
drawn from the lover’s pocket
into the nearly opaque blank
straining the ordinary from its only or also there
crawl space of the lungs mold dust
not, dear instructor, auto-
biography
while listening to
Richard Rorty talk of
Nabokov
and
kestrel, cedar waxwing, rare
orchids, his hurt companion stymied.
to Joan Richardson
UNTITLED (THE RIVER)
1.
And Diogenes placed a crown of pines
on his head victorious Diogenes
spitting in the face
of the ignorant teams
Diogenes crowns the horse
who stood his ground
Diogenes
the dog illumined.
Because he said so
trussed under the moon
the blessing garbled as usual
forgiveness
spilled on all the stones.
Historical stones, as they were what
touched the core
trussed behind a shut door
under an invisible moon.
Because no one mentions
rust across the river
sun tissue streaked or hairy
the familiar beasty hills
the atomic flaw
breasted and phallic
across the wide gray surface.
All this, dear instructor,
our material journey
blown onto a radiant scarf
as some remnant rhymed with
scant flow
or distilled into thought’s
crowded integers not to turn away
to acknowledge the tracks of sky
marking our way
or drawn above
in such yields no market could furnish.
The affinities their stake
at the terminal hour
you will not recall the willow
you will lie down
how on the train
others exist
along the way passages
her floral scansion
ripped
the horizon divided
intelligence
of love’s song to the ghosts
they or Diogenes
who might
prevail
reading ashes leaves cards
no preference
among their habits the ghosts
bored at rush hour
among the gossips
knocking sparks from each other
the tide withstanding
habit bored by any occasion
rising from lamps along the tracks
moving under a huge blue tarp
as if something had erupted
opening the book.
2.
But if love of data refutes mystery
must the philosopher walk away?
The poet is a procrastinator
and a revisionist. She observes
the river is for the birds. She recalls
the sacred Nantucket coast.
Her vision is empirical
even as a love of mystery refutes data.
Geese on the baseball field.
A flag, red tile, a metallic balloon.
The aggression of sorrow.
Marianne’s orange jumpsuit.
Had better launch another trial
without jury
without the old cavern
endowed with a seamless, impervious argot.
If the last revolution
discovered silence
while the rest heard
over the swerve
a telltale scream
braided or sewn down onto the field—
what now?
UNTITLED (THE NEUTRAL)
1.
That we might find here
that we might hope to find
expertise
descending
or sleeping with everyone
or guided by questions
the neutral
sitting like a duck on the river
as an argument
unbound in the face of it
the fact of it
and such easy equations
reminiscent scores
to trip out over the exquisite form
the ancient in rags
the past as an arrangement
with knowledge
forgive these slight durations
the moments of prosody
outside our chamber
haunted by an
articulate sublime
without coastal reference
without the bloodied narcolepsy of desire.
Try the pathos of ghosts on your side
the riven energies of need
the rabbit is waiting
the sparrow is waiting
a creature lurks below the broken adage
and so beware of whatever is next
whatever has been left out
about to turn up
in the known stories of the home
—she ran away, he did not stay—
in the sarcastic iterations of the norm.
2.
Or instead we might find
the neutral
on a bright morning in
late July, and wonder, in this shade, what
is happening all along
the scintillant edges of time.
If to mourn is
to be alive
and if the shape of knowing
is only the shape of not knowing
what else is riding
along this edge
as it leaks
onto the shapes of things—
blurry cascade
unattached
until it touches
the evident.
Is that this?
Circling over the tidy episode
a constant
as of a bird over prey
the heart’s insistent refrain
wingless as a chant
&nbs
p; but then elsewhere
wandering
how the mind wanders
into the verbal shade
leaving and returning
iterated as echo or prayer
summoning from the shade
inarticulate benevolence
care enters the dismissal of care
drawn across the virtues of a stage.
3.
A rustling in the wings.
Restless mercurial
annoyance: nothing gets started.
You are waiting for me
but I do not appear, even in disguise.
The stage keeps unfolding its infinite domain.
At the final curtain, certain names
are cut into morphemes: no and win
fall from their origins in the adored dark.
Meanwhile atrocities are creased
into the percale
one by one, as if drones
left behind in a prohibited archive.
No one is writing this act.
Author! Author! calls the diminished crowd
wandering from the plummy sunset
caressing the hills. Backlit
hawks turn and turn above the scenery.
TO THE GIVEN
Dear instructor,
tonight I am
word poor and so unchained
and the world seated
could be
sensed partially
your back to it my looking away
trace of a cry in the air
accumulating from afar
a clarity of means
because
entrenched in beloved
semblance
to climb into the given as
music or the simplest conduct—
touching the threshold
migrating
serene as matter or