Your bosom shall burn within you
I’d’ve led him by the wrist. Still but blinding four pm
back home blazed against the glass. To be there was
my habit. Each pane sleeved by pollen from the pine.
Spores rid through by light then rid of it. Like mist
but mists that come with fruitfulness. That come
to bear as much as light. Then overbear. Then each
incident’s only an incident light. All angle. Only none
coming at night to bring me line on line a vision. None
plaiting time and time again to its fullness. To its all gold.
Inner monologue
Tell me that after
the black-gold dewlap of the dissipating storm cell, all (in being
wet and
dark) again is underlying, and in underlying, dawns on the eye. That there looks to be
more there: the sheen as late noon overcast shifts
aside brightening
each leaf until in seeing each each isn’t just a maple leaf but the shaken foil of a surface.
Tell me, brother,
that the wheat is still young. That there are times
it even looks silver, looks singed through, flute-like,
and in saying
so it’s as good as if you’d
sung it, each head bearing down to lengthen out each its slender body—
Brother, for whom
as for me, late fall fog didn’t stop
the birds from gathering; who can cup his tongue to the top
of the mouth, gather
suction, create a clack loud enough to scatter from the cottonwoods black
hundreds
into the dimming gold cat’s eye of an overcast sun; what all
day til now was gathering—
tell me have any
come back
to rest? Or are they still loose. Is it even still
light enough out
for any to settle? Please—lengthen the day
by giving me something to
go on. Something to hold in my head. Image and image,
coming to cluster, black-gold, more sweet for being held back
by briars.
I can go
on my own out into the garden-croft. Hear solo what I can only guess
is a red-breast. Or you can
tell me, “You should have seen
how I scattered them, as if I’d stripped the tree twice of its leaves, all
with my tongue”— so even more than
enough you’ll have
given me.
Kalmiopsis wilderness
More by my hands I go, rather than my feet, headed
down the basin, its west-face snow-
shouldered, less
of any given day spent in sunlight. Foot more there to stall
the rate I slip down the grade,
instep given the brunt, scudding
into the still-in-summer snowpack and close underneath upturning the black-
needled floor burnt through by box fires that
razed up the shield less than five years back.
My hands—interceding in
my drop, to grab
against the new growth, against the boy-
figured pines,
or when they go, too, in clearings, or come
up in my fist, to
palm and palm
after nothing underneath me, after scrims of over-
rime not incising the skin but searing it past redness into grey and lining
each vein’s sheath with minute
stipplings of ice, a
serrated unbundling from the inside
out— By
my hand, as though against
your face, put there
as though blind, to define
the sharpness of each
bone and bowl, but
not blind, in fact, and only
wanting to skim there, incapable, at last,
even of meeting eye
and eye, and body going
stiff at the thought, and stiff
outstretched, to stop, my foot against the drifts, and sound
of my snapping
in hand
the sound green-shafted cambiums of
pine, as if
by capillary
action, bursting back up
the west-face behind me.
Complaint
I’d’ve slept in. I’d’ve missed the gold of the uptilted
oak leaf. Inferring nothing dying. Nothing
paling to nothing.
I'd wake to no morning. Given all
to a lengthening. A bringing of limbs above the head
and further—
So
quiet bird—
So quit
dragging me from day to day to night or deeper.
A.H.H
Still this is
black this ashbud This light
ash pretensed as if expecting to be
blown off this
white thorn without warning This white haw-
thorn This white pink The plinth’s heavy
snap under the strewn
heave of pansy’s jet Yet not blacker
than the nightingale’s tensed eye
so much blacker I could glimpse
a little moon reflected there
even for the lack of
it Just as I glimpsed
you or you
chose to row up the Thames with
in a wherry or not with you
as much as the image of you as glimpsed
from the edge I
over-looked All
this in order
to carry you Now you come borne
from Trieste from that triste
berth those other groves those other streams
forded back from ‘Master
bowman’ now
afford me
to row you back my
fee dear just the far-
off interest of tears These
that interest just
my eye I guess Light
this song I sing on board our bark or one might say too
hopeful piping you in this our mid
morn too soon
fallen when it’s dawn
I’ve hoped for For its just too-much light re-
flecting from your ample brow For gold on gold to show that
you are really too
beautiful to be
true As from your brow in
Italy’s alps I saw with you
the world reflected but now in urn it’s burnt
to ash An urn that accordant curves and curving round
invites the sense of something
more there
More there
bent to be I bent
down the boughs of other groves to shake
its blossoms
noble clinging off
into other streams As petals cling to petal heads so I from
my own unquiet head
am my own hand disquieting
to drift off after you
as through the trees at Hampstead or at Somersby or these
whose limbs I’ve dragged down to arch
dragged to form
by curving down a place of rest circled round in thought-
withered ivy
in grapes like
those shaped in relief
plus
goatherd plus pipes plus woodbine
attired an adamant
scene too
truly represented on the surface of your urn
that through light
leaf
flood
arrives to me as worlds arrived reflected
with the sun-up light
upon the surface of your ample brow In light of this this all
unnerves me this
ball-peening I’m doing with hawthorn and jessamine
construing you as strewn
atop the waters
as on the waters
are my nerves a net hauling nothing
in but other vessels
blood or what-
haveyou purposed to
ferry you just as
blood around the human heart is thought Let
this justify me
even if I’ve too soon plucked
the jessamine the night-
blooming cereus or too soon sung Cerberus
to sleep or to no purpose
for no one not you nor anyone is waiting
for me in any under
world I reflected under
eaves as I reflecting paused
having yanked
up the rotted deck wood and found
it hollowed out
what may have been
eons ago A heart-
wood hollowed out by what I thought
could be wood-boring
gray-flies Laying
with my father new
planking double-proofed for what would be
an atrium
a shared shade
under whose cover my father said to me
as we labored to save what lumber we could
from the thought-
hollowed deck even my dearest
friends would in time
ease out of my reach
as in time the bough
lightens itself of what it’s long fleshed out
and begins to rise in dropping
day Still this
bitter constraint compels
me what I’m meant to lose
aside But its a hollow
bitterness An almond
on the tongue or at least an almond
shape A nut I nutted
too early from the tree
hulled then held then in the dawn
light its eye-
shaped weight in the middle of my tongue as if
an oaten reed between my teeth
and tongue and blown
and oscillate whose taste is taken now half bitterly now half
in all-
consuming passion if passion’s song Hallam you burn
on my tongue all the same as you
too knew yourself to sing Burn
as burns a mirror when its tilted
up to light to limn a lip of light
as an eyelid slipping
up an eyelid slipping
up an eye
bitterly I iterating I in you
A pulsing through as seldom in my line I feel
cataracting me to me to you As Bridal
Veil Falls
so long locked in ice
here layer having lidded over layer
constrained in its
compulsion What it is is
clear and on a clear
day the day’s red stoppers
here in its several states Is
it not clear
every flood finds its place
every fruit has its flesh
pitted I have heretofore been
moderate as a matter
of half-measure Now I
with unstemmed ashenness cast
even the wan
cowslip even
the black of
the ashbud Dear
were you not
taken too less
by hillsides and more by ‘streams of
purest white’
I have unstemmed and strewn white
hawthorn two-handed
engine in the copse
Breathing not my breath
but interposing it
Ease and ease and then there’s me
between what would otherwise be
easy A veil that takes
two hands to part And so the world
is real Compared
once to a finger and a thumb
you were and these
advancing on a rose leaf to crush it My dear
Hallam twenty-two year
old prone to gold-
on-gold whose full
brow Victorian stopper too
soon shattered O Arthur O.-
K. me in my consumption
in an image such as this In this
my inner aneurysm
behind the eye A rose
petal crushed between index and thumb And so a burst
of palpability Not damask but
its undammed swaths
Of pine
not repinement
A fragrance only
left behind
upon my hands as
having never
loved so stripped
I these boughs
to bend them into bowers
As between
finger and thumb
you yourself crushed
too that essence It is
through you my best
resolve I’ve borne Through
other groves and other rivers
this pall this
blent bier is
borne this
plenteous overhaul
