THE RADIANT

                                        for Susan Rogers

the ship all the hard-

won inches of her

to be a boat

a boat from someone’s

hands uprisen,

low-gunwaled,

prompt to the water,

swift,

        a wherry

she calls it, one woman

can scull this thing along

I call a ship

 because it leaps

along the river soon,

soon, she hopes, so many

hours hundreded away

to knit this wood together

to be a boat. 

   Her ark

against the dangerous

mainland,

                where we abide

bound by gravity

full of fear about that lucid

luminous water all

round us, all we have left

of the first America,

before we did to the land

whatever she flees from

into the beauty

that is always moving,

that touches everything it passes,

waits now for the slim

vessel that will know it well,

this hand-made animal she weaves.

HEART THREAD 302

302.

You want to translate Homer I want to write him

all new all over again all shining and no war

no more war and the pale cheeks of men

pierced by no bronze prong and no fire

walks up and down the corpse and the hymn

that grieves for Linos turns into the Ode to Joy

a cliché has no memory it plugs a leak

even Homer nods well I can snore as well

and pour the beauty of Helen and Diomedes and Kassandra

back into the ordinary dance of day

and we will know each other in that company

proud abashed a little silly full of soul.  

HEART THREAD 300 & 301

300.

Something like a breeze through people green as trees

this is your moment mother

before the flowers come and go

a life of gentlest waiting

like the hibiscus for its bee

a bird will do, anything I can say you to

and love a little while, the mild

adultery of objects fondled then set free

there is some moment in the stillest things

we learned in the sacred tedium of Sunday Mass

eloquent silences between the words

when the priest stopped mumbling and held Something in his hands. 

301.

But God is more personal than sex

when the outside and the inside are the same

a horse you never heard of comes rushing from the mountains

the comfort of enough against the ecstasy of more

o horse you cry I will not ride today

but he thinks otherwise and there you are aloft

the two of you above the hills beast and human

who knows which is which a fable no one ever tells

vanishing in blue distances song fading

nobody knows nobody knows I hear the dearest voice

laughing at the effort I put into doing nothing

a snowstorm of images around a freezing child.

HEART THREAD 296 & 297

296.

Religion is to dance as prison to the Constitution

the underside the got-it-wrong the social trap the money

when all the great ones said go to yourself in the empty place

quiet room or vacant tree

sit there silent till you know

know enough at least to help and how

and know that we all need you

yes I need you to be, tree behind you now

you walk around the world

hinting how to take the pain away

we make for each other and ourselves

now put that in your organ and play on.

 

297.

I am not the only one who I am

the others need me too

the lighthouse turns out to be the moon

raspberry bushes replete with thorn

make me doubt the sweet real things

flesh and its discontents, pink tongues

on suburban buses o I have lived too much

too little time and bring it all to you

that word again the queen of implications

sparrow hawks and midnight hens

you taught me all the names of birds

I’ve had to do my forgetting all alone.

HEART THREAD 294 & 295

294.

Old pens old friends the given always gets

hand it to me we say and hand it surely is

weather of a distant city breath of your mouth

transhuman rhapsody suck on your finger now

o you everything you beast of a million leaves

make me listen to your touch

also spoke sorrow after joy to mingle

red sky at evening leave your grieving

all you lost is safe in Amitabha’s glowing land

it is good to console better to unmind the sorrow

who are you to lose to feel to grieve

answer me that you Trinity scholar and rejoice.

 

295.

I’m translating back into my mother tongue

what I heard in the high mountains

what I learned under the hill

earth gods and mind lords and me in between

a haggard buffoon with a bottle of ink

o sail me to your island ever after

pillow me with stillness till the fever eases

then I’ll take hold of autumn skies

and bring them onward with a sheen of rain

to cool the counsel of an angry world

gets hotter by the day as if all scriptures

give us one mandate to conquer and to kill.

HEART THREAD 292 & 293

292.

That was good kyning they’ll never say of me

I lost Caesar on the way to France

a slim-hipped nation on a crowded bus

Europe is always on the march I want to sit still

buying a dictionary brought me closer to girls

I was so young I believed in what I read in what I said

even if I didn’t believe a word of what it said

I was a boy with a penknife looking for the bark of a tree

to carve my name in and find out who I was

the trees were quick in those days and I was slow

so I remembered music Mahler mostly

and pretended it was you talking to just me.

 

293.

So much for me, life begins when you forget

and live by feeling through the world of will

that angry place of plastic and aluminum

commonest elements made hard and not to eat

so feeling is your blade young man

keep silence till you get to say it

spoken silence is the richest meat

and nourishes the clarity inside

all those layers of you till I get to me

and always always the other way round

Leipzig the fugue trapped in the organ

I opened the creaking door and let it out.  

HEART THREAD 289 & 291

289.

Nothing is likely to end

the rose of Sharon is just now blossoming

should I hand over to it this work of saying

she is easier to read but harder to understand

all touch dissolves in color

color crystalizes into sound

a sound you mistake for a word

rain on marble steps slippery as poetry

but it isn’t raining it isn’t anywhere

the word you think you heard unlocks your memory

everything you remember escapes and runs away

leaving you free alone with your own meaning.

  

291.

Successiveness dissolves in klang

all the notes played at once of what will be a song

use the simplest word for it

a word though now sick with commercial implication

song as commodity is the root of war

copyright is blasphemy

all of these words are yours to begin with

I just got in the way on their way to you

shall we end at the Milvian Bridge

where they began to confuse Christ with Caesar

o throw that denarius away his face is in the sky

no his face is your face when you wake up.