Antediluvian Dreams
I
There
In
the emptiest house,
In
four-walled solitude, under a white sky bright with brittle
oblachki,
By
the shadowstretch tangle of roof and rock and
Sun
I watch the
horas move towards obras,
omnes,
mega completas.
And
in the driest part of every day
:[Pure
sere, brightest crystal of sandsmooth tongue]:
I
breath in the hot Mojave, playing solitaire with sweatstained
Bicycles
And
dream of row upon row of empty rum bottles lined Euclidean
-
an homage to Homer, sugar cane, and red-eyed impatience –
shemsbeads
gleaming through the glass,
slipping
like slim threads of honey onto the retinas
of
my thirsting eyes.
And
I wait.
The
day will come, a single day holding in first and final gleams
Bia
extrema:
In
vast eddies by seas long far
The
radiance will roil
-
Toil, toil, moil and boil coruscant-
And sweat will dripcrash in
Irradiant
curls outward: a god will grunt, he
Will
rise from waves unCytherean
And
work upon us.
And
so invoked he will give us over, fleshed out
Earthydown
In his furious toil. I know
I
must beware the crown of he
Who
swore that nos amat,
nos amat, but
“kto
drugomu pomoch’ mozhet? Kto yemu v dushu voidyot?”
:his
hands immense in servitio
are
to
the churngrind hours bound,
chained
to his whisper after the storm,
to
our obrushivaniyeh
sworn.
This
is what he will say, our god,
When
he comes.
And
I pray every day for him to come, kull yom,
kull yom,
On
yom kippur, on MLK day, on every Sundaymondaytuesday of
Ordinary
despair,
Wrapped
in shemsbeads remembering:
Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani
Wrapped
in shemsbeads remembering:
the
uptorn reeds by the pond deracine,
the
summer cukes and thorn-hid raspberries
[garnet-fleshed
tart, across the crayfish-bottomed brook that idled cool beneath an
oak
tree overcast],
the
sweet-fleshed trout that came neat-packed, head and all,
from
white beds of ice beside the oozing shrimp and shark:
in
my mouth the flavor Lethe-wards turned,
away
from
tyechyeniyeh,
away
from waves softly slapping on dark rocks,
and
towards the tongue turned.
II
Yea,
In
my solitude I cry, a worn voice fathered never by child,
And
I remember,
I
pull up the unculled roots,
I
remember everything that shames me, makes me glad,
makes
me turn away.
I seek out his coming
in
the shadowstark of memory’s adumbrations:
εν αρχη ην ου λογος
for
in the blind place before sight
there
was no room for knowledge or
emptiness; everything crowded and touched,
and
light did not shine on my fingersformed inchoate to display
awayness;
I
did not need answers.
III
An
Icharus I am now;
For
too long I bore the pomegranateplumpears of labor lightly,
And kept my eye upon the sun, thinking
it was where I belonged.
But
she is gone now;
Gone
the pleasures too, gone the sure-rooted sense for where
My
hopes could take me.
Gray-haired
surely now she is, mellifluous
still,
Her
eyes the color always of chocolate most bitter and best,
And I must be to her the coldest flesh
-
robbed of ardor, thoughtless, pure sere, darkest crystal
-
to have loved and lost and then
To
never have loved at all:
an petal
plucked I pressed upon her once - not because
she
was shimmering saffron and firm breasts, a beautiful face and
moonlight walking –
but
because we had given our own thoughts away
-emptynaked beside the pots and pans-
to
bind a nefsweb
‘bout us,
and
share the fresh-cast thought-felt world between us.
I
have long since watched the wind that petal blow
Away
And
long since said I didn’t give a shit
[and
I don’t]
and
long since seen that time is loneliness;
another
woman’s moans and petals
blown are sounds errantes:
zvook, zvook! Zvoochnii, poostiinnii
zvook!
Sight became
[With
tastesmell and hearingheld]
A golemhold present without
presence,
The emptiest .
The sun shone down but I drove on.
Orchestras
played, the ocean surged with teeming waves, and quiet the night sky
with clouds and rain,
Mica
gleaming in the cliffs, the dewdrop-wet grass – all! - were not the
singers, but a song.
But aurum silentium est.
I
could not watch her sleeping for an hour
Anymore;
The
hoe and garden gloves were things to put away or buy anew when broken
And
no longer the tools we held in sun in rain to
Tear
the soil up and pull out weedroots, rough leather we
Removed
To
see the sweat-bead blisters that grew into calluses. Her eyes I did
not idle over;
Her
coughs were loud, a nuisance,
And
I no longer thought to ask on hearing of a sore throat
Or
loneliness,
anger
or
Her
parent’s death,
“How do you feel?” with
eyes, a glance, a hand or
Words;
I
bought, I sold, I found and gave a thousand things
To
see her suited
To
give myself satisfaction,
To see us rise above the plain by counting
all the bills we paid,
all
the interest made, every ounce of oxygen less
the closer I got to the
sun.
our love grew ethereal
till
gone,
till
the winter rains planted an icy beauty I wouldn’t have bought her
if I could,
till
spring thaws shook down the snow and I could no longer share with her
the thawing smell
- and other beds entertained as much.
IV
Those were days of wisdom, when I
began to see
Every
fragile thing had its place, so closely scattered round,
and I had mine - but moiyoh myesto
was not near.
V
At
last the walls came about me
And
brought me silence sought,
and
here,
-here!
–
in
the emptiest house in four-walled solitude,
I
wait and remember, wait and watch:
The god
will come,
He will tear this world down,
This
and-bone
stage where I
cannot love the
dandelion
for its petal or its stem, but must
see it for a yellow blindness
Standing in my way.
He will come and when asunder torn
By
his hands around my neck
I am made rapturous as can
no drugorGodknell ring,
Together
then [or single but entire] we will at last
gliding ride on seraphim wings into
the vaulting azured hollow.
So let us then play
