Untitled
To dream a world on a hunk of shade,
throw back the schedule of the maid,
and meditate in bedsheets, dim
where the morning light is slim,
studying objects that recall
the continents to a hand held ball,
tracing out rivers with calipers,
shadows in brambles the spider endures,
contemplate a bit of repartee
one brought back home from foreign stay,
and leave the rose-scented soap untouched,
receiving callers, breathless and flushed,
is only to follow the organized plan
of the modern, ecclesiastic man,
forwarding goodness by intuition,
measurement, calculus, and division,
exercising divine revision
with a maximum of precision.
Why then does this one find no words
to trace the motion of the birds,
unsettling up from the garden rose,
sipping and sampling the gardener’s hose,
and what is it, finally, that this one knows?
Only the music that is exquisite,
as ladies come calling on Sunday visit,
best in their finery like latest news,
veritable aviaries of Paris views,
shaded in quarantine, oblong, obscure,
but for all that he lacks, spanking bright demure.
It rises to tree tops and looks over steeples,
and though misanthropic of many peoples,
its harmonic strains cut with tenderness through
the shroud of his sick bed and his universe too.
Matinee
The curtain rose
on one of a million shows
the lights down dim
the crowd all in
from afternoon rain
the great ceiling’s stain
spread like a grin
the chandeliers and velvet trim
lost in the dark that the eyes settled in
The picture came on
azure and sudden
like a deep sea
or a terrible sky
over the mountains
crackling with thunder
the motes of the eyes
jerky scratch of a flaw
as we waited with awe
for the drama to begin
as we forgot our skin
And then booming voices
eased us in
and the story began
and the camera began
to travel and pan
over lush settings
and characters’ plottings
over appearances
quick to endearances
lost in our trances
of Englands and Frances
or under the sea
where the octopus
scary and ravenous
frightened the hero
of our own mind’s zero
or the brutal queen
killed again and again
while the sweet princess
attracted honest princes
down some byway
or disappearing highway
into residences
like mazes
of hidden lives
with other strifes
lost on a journey
not knowing when return will be
or if gone forever
and coming back never
Then exhausted, revived
and radiant with life
as the lights came on
to the afternoon’s dawn
in the old dark theatre
life the great repeater
awoke the 400 seater
who rose in unison
and put their coats on
In the afternoon
by the cobblestones’ gloom
with the darkened alleys
and the little shops
all glass and anonymous
overcast and synonymous
with what we had seen
with where we had been
and where the world goes
the afternoon rose
like a rainy dawn
and we moved on
and we saw no one
and we were alone
and the roofs were wet
and our dreams were in bed
And perhaps our mother
was the other
to whom the Holy Ghost
had played host
