HEART THREAD 287 & 288

287.

When it caught me I was the meadow

but we all have a right to that green place

where every flower is a telephone to hell

because the colors we see so variously are the mind of somewhen else

far away right beneath our feet

or did you Lady beneath our skin

where the shining trumpets blaze drums dare to touch

is it there or is it there

of course the land I mean is someone else

right here if only I’d stop talking

if only you would speak

saddest of all songs white-throated sparrows’.

 

288.

Coming to feeling

no one knows what a word means in the mouth of the other

this is axiomatic not even the skin knows

who touched me? for I felt the power reaching out from me

touch heals but who or whom

what does the skin know of touch

intention or accident love or scorn the earth is blue

that’s all we knew

enough to be a pirate in a sea of talk

stand by your word until it falls

bury it not on the fertile prairie

bury it in language that café

full cup the church most godly.

HEART THREAD 285 & 286

285.

Life stops at any moment but the story goes on

that’s what’s wrong with it, this imaginary present tense

weirder than any future hold me in your hands

because I was war and got over it or praised the seen

read the original clay of Gilgamesh with your fingers

there is no scholarship but the waking heart

for saying is all and thinking is few

those dim magistrates dismiss all evidence

if you believe your eyes you’d believe anything

I’m an agnostic when it comes to me

I speak to the simplest things because they answer me

the question I really meant for you. 

286.

Smash the tablets at the gate

to speak in the tongues of all of you

I need to answer what you do not ask

isn’t that what polis is for

the heads to hang crowns on and laurel wreaths

rhapsodic recitation of the obvious

smooth as religion

but it’s hard in summer when the gods are far

we linger in our bodies no more sense than the day’s news

now I put on my father’s green coat

and speak another language taught by the mirror

seen through tears as he went away.

HEART THREAD 283 & 284

283.

But what if it’s all  wrong

every few minutes a boy comes by and takes an apple

you  never know when he’s coming

you’ll never know how many apples you have

it turns out the sea really is made of ink

and we are the scripture that it wrote

are you ready for me yet to read and leap

the bull calf sprinkled with wine and daisies

offered living to the Place he stands in

grazes and lifts to gore the trembling light

live forever is what he says it says

a sutra that has soared up then fallen from our whys.

284.

Get your work done before the sun comes up

how the day curls up at your feet

time changes and you stay the same

for once your skin fits you

suddenly there are flowers in the rose of Sharon

you start remembering all manner of pink things

the day wakes up again and bites your ankle

memory is the thief of time

rub your lantern bright and go down the cave

lick the pretty pictures off the wall

that’s what eyes are for you think

those bottomless wells where the light gets lost.

HEART THREAD 280 & 281

280.

Flute in the nineteenth century the phone is ringing

yes I am guilty of everything

all I did all I do was this

birds walking on the roof just like the French poem

but the sea is very far

one arm of it though strikes through the land

the River North into a different skin

as far as a ship can sail against the grain

for this is a wooden world and I am wooden too

no one hears the suffering of trees

so caught up with using them leaf shade and timber

and these are my leaves I leave for you. 

 

281.

Under the tunic the wound begins to bleed

losing the city was worth it we get to find it again

we had to set the image free

with blood I mark crisscross on this stone

nearby an altar chiseled by no iron

defiled only by a word it speaks

through my palms the rock talks up my arms

this was the first stone in the world

jihad against the unbelieving emptiness

fight for the vibrant hollow of the spacious mind

blood was meant to be the secret ink

writing the sutra of reality deep inside your frame.

HEART THREAD 278 & 279

278.

So that everything fits into one thing

the voice of that one thing is heard

the grace you give me let me tell you everything

the slow highway to Toronto roadhouse on the lake

the crowded yellow bed in Montreal

the waterfall in Assam

all of these could be my name

but comedy is finished the epic begins

my cousin’s will in probate lyric as a lotus

my grandfather looked like Wallace Stevens but he could smile

haven’t I followed Dante step by step

if your ears are clean you will hear my Tuscan lisp.

 

279.

It scares me when I get personal

like those dreams you’re half naked

we are never fully undone though

even death is only half the dance

so I can tell you everything

till I have nothing left

and your skin will still be cool on the coverlet

and sleep will tell me some more lies

the kind I can live with

there is no socialist remedy for this situation

except do everything for the other guy

if you can ever find anybody really different.  

HEART THREAD 276 & 277

276.

There is a cello at the bottom of the spine

that is how Europe got here so deep

why Tiepolo painted the actual sky above an ordinary me

we are embedded in what we thought we knew

people greeking language under my hands

I’m not talking culture I’m talking neurology

the complex music of our simple meat

lift up the manhole covers see who we are

cables and sewers information overflow

I am the conduit of the impersonal

can’t forget Nora splashing in the surf at Rockaway

so much the worse for me.

 

277.

On the glass face of the device the window birds reflected

pass over the house so short is music

music is an accident happened to the air

ergo bird bassoon the bells of Judson Church

but mostly this little mirror in my hand

shows the arcane image of each sound

what we look like when we hear the cardinal chirp

what the crow means in soaring without sound

over my poor house! personal again

the complicated negotiations in a dream

a wise old Jewish man without a word

pointed to fried chicken that’s the piece for you.

HEART THREAD 274 & 275

274.

I want to tell you all the ones I need doctor

because in your glass-wall cabinet you display

one of each essence that pursues my day

dreams are worse when you know who they are

give them to me or make them go away

homeopathic relationships a kiss heals all desire

this is me flouncing out of your office crying on the daybed

this is the cabin boy on a steamer that sank

this is the girl with the paper flower in her hair

resemblances are terrible isn’t it enough to have one of a thing

must her shadow pass through every door

can’t I make you stop looking at me that way. 

 

275.

I lost the word at dawn I knew in sleep

poor me a hundred thousand other words around but that one gone

agrestic agnostic arthritic aesthetic

but still the mercy monument went up

trapezoidal in outline a frustrated pyramid

built of all the shadows I have ever tried to reify

a junk heap halfway to the moon yet shapely withal

experiences change from other eyes

long after only by its cover can you tell a book

I will take a net and go down to the little stream

and let the shadow of its meshwork float on quick water

and no one will be wounded then by my music.  

HEART THREAD 271 & 272

271 .

If you carry the dream through the day

a smoky donkey will start to bray

you follow the road to La Borne

those cliffs up to the left we walked it only once

at every house a peaceful dog

signboards modest boast on every villa

we lived in Les Mouflons ten years apart

I didn’t understand bird talk in those days

you hadn’t taught me the language of bells

and all I knew was bread I clutched it tight

the way a dying man clutches his nurse’s thigh

this I know this won’t let me go. 

 

272.

I never saw you as you are

you know ‘you’ means everybody ‘I’ means nobody

language has a bigger heart than any man

no house but now

a woman at the washing machine

she is the secret ruler of the world

unclad into the changes

fish too plentiful aquarium

always another waiting

the sun came sluggish to this table

a game out there someone else is playing

me too though I sit close-eyed inside.

HEART THREAD 269 & 270

269.

So much I’d say to you if you were here

but far away I just keep talking

who knows how much the wind will carry

just don’t get married the dark words need you for their own

sweet child of so many mothers

know me as your elder sister

sistrums in our hands and coronets above

we are the only licensed worshippers

adoring shadows of the gods we are

size is a true story and pace is beauty

density of thought a thick saliva sweetish

wets your lips so you can speak the secret word.

270.

Roads reeds spines dawn wind lives inside us

I speak for all of us since I speak alone

you laughed at me across the laundry room

what more does a story need to be

green patterned dress folded on the floor

everything we do together is therapy

use me use me we’ll both be clean

how real does it have to be before it is

the pattern was small white flowers

as if spring could take off its clothes still not be naked

it was all about sorting the wash by hand

it was all about waking up at last.

HEART THREAD 267 & 268

267.

Where things grow by themselves

that’s the scripture for our pilpul

con each leaf and comprehend

this is the Heavenly Academy of what happens

gardens are colonial agribusiness

obliterating the mind’s first Text

the uncontrived happenstance of suchness

big words for the tiny weeds between the tiles

I too hurry to obliterate

as if it were a message from the mind before the mind

leave it till you remember what it’s saying

a language even the rain speaks just be wet.

 

268.

Hark to your habit leman

pain is sham as a country is

when countryside is real

so many did to you I mean

as many as sparrows strouthoi of her sly chariot

birds are molecules of something very big

isn’t that what Empedocles did

you talk all the time about Pythagoras

looking in the mirror is close shave enough

girls taught men poetry by skipping rope

giving hope leaving forever with a lingering smile

naked on tigerback biting the moon.  

HYLONOETIC MANIFESTO

                                        against timid cosmologists

It doesn’t matter how matter
got here, we’ve got to hear
what it has to say.
Loathsome binary: alive or lifeless—
all is animate
objects are subjects.
This world so intricately
tenderly personed,
statues strolling through the park.
..........................

 Poetry is the science of hearing things speak.

HEART THREAD 265 & 266

265.

Till we have said everything using the same words

music won’t leave us alone

children blur the colors in their books

they know that nothing has a line around it

careful signals of a girl at peace

let me read my book to the center of the earth

plum trees of Afalon truth of the dragon

a castle in the cool core of the sun

a place previous to transformation

before the legal chemistry begins

a joyous anarch in skimpy clothes

as if it all could finally begin again.

                                                              

266.

At a certain point stop looking

at the trees start to read them

the self-planted and the other kind

human implants immigrants our fancies

jade exotics in exurban gardens

three hundred years and still speak foreign

rose of Sharon smokebush lilac

self-taught espontaneos who choose to land

and choose to stay tall and shady and teaching

hue saturation and chroma in their differences

distances between nature and the actual

my father’s pine trees on the road to Callicoon.  

HEART THREAD 264

264.

Eloquent darkness of what I didn’t bother to think

the things we make up were there already

stories waiting to be believed

amber and lightning waiting to be analyzed

they were all waiting and here we are

the next thing you think will be the truth

the next person you meet will tell it

how easy things are when you say them

a woman in a white robe walking on the sea

believe nothing trust no one revere everyone

that way you fall in love without the fall

that way the apple leaps back to the tree.  

HEART THREAD 262 & 263

262.

                                                                    (comment lire ce livre)

Each line wants to go off somewhere far away

sit there thinking about itself

but we all have noisy neighbors

we lean on one another for the touch

take strength take weakness from each other

even feebleness is reassurance

touch is contagion

but we are here together

tangency is defilement

one line bleeds onto another

you belong to the next thing you say

and to the thing that came before you

then you’ll belong to what they finally hear. 

263.

Wait for the sun to pry the rose open

then petal by petal take it in the mouth

so delicate it is you have to chew a while

chew to let the taste come in

for these are dark times in personland

animals cull the flowers in the night

animals leave us only the names of things

only things like color shape texture size

things like reason things like belief

that are not things at all only you are

and I am we are the last of the flowers

we grew up before the end of things.

 

HEART THREAD 258 & 259

258.

The other place than where it is

a gleeful mistake like a dog running away

penny in a pocket sun behind cloud

everything is allowed

when you were a tree I held your leaves for you

when you were ocean I was your waves

the flight attendant listens to the sky

the word is out there just below the plane

when you were a city I did not know how to earn

glamorous ignorance of well-fed tourists

animals are different inside rocks are the same

their brown eyes open in amazement at the snow.

259.

So much to remember and no need to

quiet wise men correct the weather

witchcraft is too natural she said too much about fertility                                   

being fertile is not the point being now is

no one ever did that in my dream before

cloud lift sun back mad at me up there

for I have sought the gods beneath the hill

the little gods who promised nothing but to be

nature is the part of me that’s someone else

birdsongs inking lines through trees

always coming back as usual to some flower

I climbed the stairs to where you almost were. 

IN LENT

A sad people

who never will know

what this world is —

taught by religion

to look away. 

To be joyous

we must look through.

Put that in your ragged gospel

music, reverend,

rush out of the church, rush

through the trees. 

Through the tree.

HEART THREAD 255, 256, & 257

255.

Protect this fading image from all the angry images

this image I made as me

I am the one who thinks myself to be

bad think bad god

to make this double little world of me and it

make the other be one with me

or one of me or I am none

and where are you in all these trees

leafier this year than ever I’ve known

after the locust trees blossomed all spring

the basswoods our lindens blossomed high summer

their fragrance fills the house all night when the wind moves. 

 

256.

Once I wanted what would walk through the door

because the guest is god I am an atheist

some pollen fallen from another’s tree

grows an absolutely different kind of grain

go inside time to its relenting

suppose I were rain along your spine

would your mind turn rain into someone else

the way not even the weather is personal

smoky breath of an old friend

the taste in someone else’s mouth a word is

once you have seen the picture you’ll never stop

we have to keep talking to the world to make it go?

 

257.

The snail shells move in the night like ship

who knows where the copper is that breathes the blood

scratch of a pen on an ancient map

here are the islands of the ancestors

listen and you’ll hear your fathers calling

they are praying for the clouds to let them through

they have a name for you a permission

survival of the fastest

dark dark the word gouged in wet sand

they were here before you they’re the fathers

you think at first it is the traffic or the birds

but deep in your belly you know better.  

HEART THREAD 253 & 254

253.

No one can read it all the way through

even a single sentence is infinite

a verb is an abyss

he talked about language till it silenced him

humidity abolishes conversation

it is the sea come back to claim us escapees

our local habitation golden trowel round the town

hedges of Donegal all gorse and fuchsia

map the country where my body lives

wherever cold is comfort

half the folk you meet aren’t really there

vanish into that lush green hill. 

 

254.

The home I never had is you

the god of communication is the god of secrets kept

power of the hermetic axe with two blades

wings on his heels he shows and hides

wherefore set we down words on paper

hoping substance hides what meaning says

every language foreign to a thing

we live in darkness with skins of light

where Hermes is heaven is a letter you can’t yet read

spend all your nights deciphering this touch

brutal answer of a cloudless day

it must mean something if it is.

HEART THREAD 251 & 252

251.

Let’s do it yesterday

for music’s sake the angel facing backwards

there is something of sulfur in the rose

a petal fallen laid along the skin

no other fact can slip past it

natural affinity of rose with flesh

of thorn with mind

the prick of thinking

trickle of blood along the flesh

break the sentence open it will bleed

Scriabin saw his word in color in the sky

a fatal rose that knows so many. 

252.

Something true about defilement

wrong tool for the right job

or dawn full of feathers fallen

from some legendary bird you never saw

but these things fly their kind is to come

close and touch you while you sleep

you say O my dream but it eats you

disdains your sorry meat

touch defiles

that’s why we need it

we come into this dance so pure

no one can remember his father.  

HEART THREAD 249 & 250

249.

Where there should be a road

I write with what I gave you gave me back

all exchanges spiral into one

this is the point the start the target the soul

will you get to the point I am the point

there is no other a minute is my mother

trees look away today don’t dry on me

I need your perfect beauty in every line

some people get no older it is a play

retrieve the rain that washes the rose

cistus or labdanum brings the dying back to life

offer this resin in the temple and see what god appears. 

 

250.

To Venus Virgin Mother of the world he wrote

shaky Latin his mind on something else

because nothing is born it all is here forever

love makes us turn our notice to each thing

though things appear to enter the world they were here all along

I like you will you like me back the only song a child knows

I will lick your back of course of course

each of us is apt for every need just find the way

if you believe that you’ll believe anything

I believe everything because I know

but what he knows he wouldn’t say

leaves it to you to find the right word.

HEART THREAD 247 & 248

247.

Walk in the shade disprove the sun

everything has been said before so now we’re free

the blue flower is a never-spoken word

the color she bent down to touch became her sky

culture is a long contagion

what can you do with a thought you can’t think

the empty parable Satan’s answer

if I give you the desert will you give me my emptiness again

all the jewels of the mountain red gravel of the Irrawaddy

I had three homes none of them mine

my wife was mad at me and turned away

for me there was no deeper pit than this. 

 

248.

As if our business is to make our way to hell

only that way is the road to paradise again

who made up all these stories even if they’re true

everything that’s told is true is true enough

how much is there to know about you

look into my life to find you

a crack in the windshield makes the sky belong to someone else

you found your way into my arteries I breathe you in

cleansing of the blood miracle of simple prose

grammar of the heart nakedness of any window

we forget the important things so they can happen

an image worn smooth by too much looking.

 

HEART THREAD 245 & 246

245.

Where is this up I asked you to use me to

a seashell in the sky a grammatical awkwardness

Bruno’s cavatina in music someone’s bound to die

we all are victims of perceiving

but what image lingers in the dying mind

that is the real question about death

what do we go out with

wearing our curious inherited garments

what symbol nestled in the socket of the throat

so many things to remember only one to carry with me

what is the mind before perceiving

the deep and simple well in which no star shines.

246.

Day of knife angry dreams the crowded train

never any clear way to get home

leaning on the woman till he fell a statue

live in slo-mo with your eyes on fire

Schlomo, the king with a wife for every night

but only one wife for all his days

married to wisdom with a golden lariat

fine-tailed doves fly up into green fronds

all this happens only because you’re watching

if we didn’t see it wouldn’t be

language is the alley of dead kings

lets you speak without opening your mouth.  

HEART THREAD 243 & 244

243.

All the definitions are now in place

revise the animal feed it from your lap

a bee knows by

the is the center of the maze

woodpecker gospelling a dead tree

bird bath tepid on the lawn

be quiet we are someone here

try to be as quiet as it is

we are not meant to live together

each human is alone with the earth

the earth my only wife

touch me if you can.

 

244.

Don’t worry about the numbers

John Muir told Emerson they keep house by themselves

I teach the interpretation of mirrors

the calculus of skin

how many contacts in a sleeping life

don’t wake up for me

for I am sleeping too my music snores

gnats bother the porches of mine ears

how dreadful is the natural

give me the word that flees its thing

let me go to the country music goes to when it fades away

let me live on the ashes of what someone sang.

 

HEART THREAD 241 & 242

241.

And so gave up Jerusalem

want the trees before the clearing

no temple’s worth a living tree

let alone fifty acres of English oak

culled to craft one warship then

days you could still see the goddess in the trees

before the parsons bored all life away

in windowless senacles clustered round guilt

grrr I will wolf this land anew and lie on it

I thought you said you had no enemies

no I have no war my enemies are friends

I do what you tell me who else is there. 

 

242 .

A lyric absence though birds mute trees

lyric means doing something to the air

lyric means the right to be wrong

keep company with dumb ideas

sailing paper metaphors around the room

lyric means knocking on a wall and crying Open

lyric means being baffled by an open door

lyric love is not like other kinds

flowers bought in the supermarket

the old mast of the Ernestina lying on the dock

heartwood still fresh after a hundred years

lyric means the heartwood of a living tree.