Portrait of the Artisit as King of Ravens
Ragged figure in a leafless tree
Pilgrim, what visions now
*
A long pause, something other
Than silence, how it ends
In the margins, ghosts
*
A slipknot of couplets
Corner-creased
I remember her beautiful, blood-tipped toes
*
Beneath this road, another
Older still
And beneath that road, a path
The wind’s width, winding
To the place I came to
To be named
*
A chill in the weather
The sundial clouded-over
*
The world drowned, the memory
Still with us, the hint of cumulus
Over picnic lawns
Next time, heart of stars
*
Hauled from the depths, a fish
In its belly a scroll, ancient
What the writing said
*
The Israelite’s choir rehearsed Salvation
Death itself conquered, acappella
*
Against mud-brick walls, babies' brains
The Old God, resting: My Son is coming
But until then, more blood
*
Constantine, sick of heresy, agreed
Father and Son divine beyond Logos
Gaul to Byzantium, from
Boar-thrones to the See of subterfuge, a Creed
Of parchments scattered on the table
To the Bishops at Nicea, raging, What remains
Is the Bible, what falls off
Is out
*
Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be
Required of thee
At the edge of darkness, strange lights
*
Rain-shaped, mobbing gusts
Umbrella domes cracked back, each ribcage sprung
Against black
*
The Shark God, delicate as flowers
Glides between the boats, through watery stars
In lagoon houses, incense for what cannot be changed
Smoke and small offerings, lost souls
Waist-deep in waves
*
Russian soil, revolution’s red hammer
And after
Bony, gulag fracture dust
The avatars, their glistening scales
Dead ocean karma, these postures of submission
In the shadow of waves
Stravinsky grinding treble clefs
*
Venting in the rigs, the Pleistocene
Ignites across the canopies
Metal spires, trailing black flags
In the distance, the pipeline, west with the sun
*
The saurus nothing could catch
Sunk now in tar
Resin, buffed amber, within it
Fossil bees in flight
Old men, staring into the fire
*
In the shaving glass
A man born the year “Parsifal” premiered
The cut-throat edging his jaw, he pauses
Taps soap scum in the bowl
Turning to me, the air nicked for emphasis
Don’t ever get old, boy
No good will come of it
*
Swifts arc, snap-turn
Squealing, the house sheared
From its shadow
*
Pencil-stroke reeds, dirty skies
Seamless in tidal pools
Still, black water
A coin of the realm interrupts
Nothing is accidental
*
Moonlight swallows the lanes
Behind us on the path
Shot-silk hanging from the trees, the way
We came
Deciding dark from full
*
The felled oak opens the sky
Isobars thread the grain
Scratching lazy circles
Counted back to Harold’s reign
Years marking drought and wet
And now this sudden space
Tell them I rode the weather’s needle
Tell them you found me
Watching stars come out
*
Pulls bird-shaped paper
To the wind
Lifted, lightly passing
Observing, in sunlit air
The movement overhead, at its limit
High streamers
*
Everything, she said
Always adds up to this
Beneath blood-tipped toes a numeral
The waves catch
*
The raven’s plumage, not black alone
Not studied jet, in this light
Violet bass notes, oily emerald
Ghost I came with
No comments:
Post a Comment