It was a fine Leghorn egg,
and inside, unexpectedly, was the city
of Byzantium. Even from that height
he could see the flash of bedding
at the windows, the lump of Hagia Sophia,
and blue flags on the enormous city walls.
Clearly it was midsummer. Right,
he thought, remembering about love.
Not wanting the responsibility.
Watching the flies begin at it.
2 comments August 15th, 2005
Obsidian. Sturgeon. Infatuated angels.
Which only we can translate into flesh.
The language to which we alone are native.
Our own bait. We are spirits housed in meat,
instantly opaque to the Lord. As Jesus.
We go into the deadfall of the body,
our hearts in their marvelous cases
and discover new belfries everywhere.
I continued toward the Minotaur to keep
the thread taut. And suddenly, now,
immense flowers are coloring all
my stalked body. Making wine of me.
As bells get music of metal in the rain.
The prey I am willingly prospers.
The exile that comes on comes too late.
I go to it as Adam, singing across paradise.
2 comments August 15th, 2005
The sky
on and on,
stone.
The Mediterranean
down the cliff,
stone.
These fields,
rock.
Dead weeds
everywhere.
And the weight
of sun.
In the weeds
an old woman
lifting off
snails.
Near
two trees
of ripe figs.
The heart
never fits
the journey.
Always
one ends
first.
12 comments August 15th, 2005
You know I am serious about the whales.
Their moving vast through that darkness,
silent.
It is intolerable.
Or Crivelli, with his fruit.
The Japanese.
Or the white flesh of casaba melons
always in darkness.
That darkness unopened from the beginning.
The small emptiness at the middle
in darkness.
As virgins.
The landscape unlighted.
Lighted by me.
Lighted as my hands
in the darkroom
pinching film on the spindle
in absolute dark.
The work difficult
and my hands soon large and brilliant.
Virgins.
Whales.
Darkness and Lauds.
But it may be that no one should be opened.
The deer come back to the feeding station
at the suddenly open season.
The girls find second loves.
Semele was blasted
looking on the whale
in even his lesser panoply.
It was the excellent Socrates ruined Athens.
Now you have fallen crazy
and I have run away.
It’s not the dreams.
It’s this love of you
that grows in me
malignant.
3 comments July 22nd, 2005