Letters of the Law
Published 1994; available from Small Press Distribution or Amazon.
Foreign Gender
for Susan Howe
Walking tonight, I wished
for some of the wild flowers we gathered
that were choice. To become wise
work in the company of such virtuosos
while day lasts, dark to work
in a night "whose effort leaves
no sound." You spoke Dark and became
a countryman. His chariot wheels
within the remembering crowd
none heard, home is whose message.
All in twos but you alone. I shall
my pilgrimage unravel, outset
and continuance, perplexed in
their snarl while the unknown die
first. In thought the self.
One fewer bird sings each spring
projects curling from immortal flames
of thought-death, whose hope is real
a day gone, one day less. All falling
things resemble others. Struggle
cites fictitious shores to prove
the leaf that curls from transience,
vertical branch identical as snow-
fall or footfall in the snow. A wreck
bobs in pleasant waters, near where
bitterly whipped, sand still is safe,
"but I love to buffet the sea."
Confidence in daybreak modifies dusk.
"Then will I not repine, knowing that
bird of mine, though flown - learneth
beyond the sea, new melody for me
and will return." A face in a phan-
tom niche cannot tell time
is short, lips sealed, the open
revere the shut. One song in
the far woods, one flight, cage
and bird, one dainty sum. Bareheaded
under the grass, the dead go
with the ground. Give it to me
I am strongest. That trinket is strange
that each wears and none may own.
Though I think I bend, something
straightens me; harbors multiply,
and the sea is not reduced. Syllables
ripe as grapes are deathless kings
whose subjects devour the unknown, our
largest need. My mind has lost
its friend and cannot begin again
to remember. There is no world. None
can assist another's night, opening
and shutting its hopeful eye, a
fragment whose obligation to enchant
is binding, for there are no wholes
below. Give me our severe
earth that cannot tell how eternity
seems, its power further to surprise
what it has caused. We bear dear form
through a wilderness of letters whose
origin is the sky. Light concludes
in a shape, disclosing great confidences
in departure. Overwhelmed to know,
I am not sure. Is there another life
where vane defines wind or wind
defines vane? Not what our stars have
done, but what they are to do detains
the sky. How strange to change
one's sky, unless its star go
with it. We are aboriginal to the sky.
We call back its largest need.