Indeed Is the Sound the Day Made

It’s true that I met a Havana businessman

Crossing the Mississippi River beneath Vicksburg 

The time I took was by the shore and weightless

Moments I stuffed like plunder into my tote bag

Because then I wouldn’t need money any more

The Cuban sat in a stolen rowboat stowed

With fat gold-leaf cigars each one chewed

Only a little at the end and he said he’d trade

Twelve stogies for all the time I had in my duffel

One for every year of your young life he said

I said just a minute buddy I’m no chump see

I want the water-splashed light on the gunnel

He said one does not bathe in the same stream

Twice and I said also that half-rotten banana

Of All the Days Crowding at the Exit

Come out come out—you yawn—I call!

There is an hour called dawn the dusty

Ennui of a washboard gravel road the solar

Tedium of insects humming shrilly and tepid

Light of the long summer watching us from all

Our bedroom mirrors come out come out—

You yawn—I call! there is an hour called noon

Gentle beneath a sugar maple where shade

Kneels like a preacher in a powder blue suit

Erect a stone to us! erect a stone to silence!

You are here again bringing the season

Of a breeze just a little before cool evening

Perfumes your neck your damp forehead

The shadow of a bird falls across your face

Suddenly Love the Equal of Terror

The angel gnawing the marrow-bone holds

The hidden map of our whereabouts the secret

Of our silent progress through each indeterminacy

Each contingency a progress with no present

Between what has passed and what lies ahead

What we speak is less than what is spoken here

Where we find no essence no truth where the angel

Gnawing bones holds the scale of wounds we call

Forgiveness O we speak purely as if under some

Obscene compulsion always and only to be falling

Upward into the lofty abyss where we perform

The office of eternity to be bespoke by language

To become angels sucking sacred words from bone

The speaking does not cease in what we speak

In the Dream Light Where We Meet

We sing with white voices in a wilderness

We dance beyond the thin line of what’s real

Something vast and lampless trembles over us

A galaxy of black butterflies to cover all  

The feeble tomorrows that begin yesterday

Here’s where everything begins yesterday

Where we discover the true name’s not to be

Read aloud nor ever to be felt on our lips

Our tongues in such light as no sun claims

In such great naked pain this mournful

Thunderous noise sunders the ancient forest

Lays the timber bare and flat now noiseless

Lightning shines on the last inflection of life

Where everything we fear is consummated

A Choir Burning in the Church of One’s Heart

One must speak now on the renunciation

Of throats pulsing raw dark speech each

Word a jolt of absence an aborted sound

One must call down earthward smoke spit

Out and abandoned by alcoholic angels

Cheap talk piss beer tavern on the hill

One must accept the straight wind riptides

Of holy drunkenness and swallow thick wads

Of joy feeling night after night’s a holiday

One must believe in the sorrow of damp cities

Drop by drop the piecemeal storm of failure

All of this is that which comes into the world

When one imagines a voice carved in marble

A song so far away a song so vast and true

We Who Have No Words to Say

We are the great forgetters advancing

From nebula to nebula now looking back

Only to wave goodbye to an entire epoch

We are the gigantic meaning of ridiculous

Lies the answer to whatever’s lithely mysterious

We know nothing of our past O yes we most

Assuredly dream things untouched by love

Things irremediably lost O terrible youth!

Leviathans lurking in deep cosmos can fuck all

Listen to the dog star shake great silent barks

Hear it trembling so eager to be punched

It is we who dictate these dark strains to us

We announce unfathomable distances

We  enunciate the loveliest dissonances

We Meloncholics in the Age of Unreason

O my heart my eternal ancestress

Walled up in extravagance now quelled

By the moment of loss you too you too

Love the moment when light reaches

A shadowed face a sudden dark wind

Listen! it takes ten thousand years each

Time earth blinks a lazy eye and this too

Resolves in fire far from breath but still

Air trembles in the blue light of stones

We walk in the blue light of dust

We breathe we who wait with voices

That whisper in the interval between

Stone and air and burning so close

To a center the scarcely hidden plumes