Poetry

from The Jade Buddha: A Sequence In the midst of a life, out by the propane tank, by the stacked timbers, while magpies kept up their quizzical cat-like calls in the piñons— a little threatening, their small part in the large thinking of the planet, their part to be clever and quick, seasonal marauders at…

I loved one person do you see the evergreen there in fog     one by one I was taught to withdraw first from him do you want to     know how the mind works under extreme cold ice forming on the     eyelid or wind thrown at me I felt every needle felt every breath…

for Taha Muhammad Ali and for Aaron Shabtai From nothing but his fear, and kiss her cunning brows Who braves the risen salar, daughter’s bursting ripeness Moaning through the sash, he marries to a settler The crown sits on his head, to hold her as he wants For him the dead king’s wife, in a…

The shame of an idea is in its seriousness, a conqueror’s     seriousness, shameful the way it surveys the landscape of remains, laying claim to the vast ruined view and each surviving privacy     alike, claiming its own pure force as the origin of things, seizing even the moonlight on the leaves of half a…

In one film, a man turning the pages of a book. In another film, a man turning the pages of a book. Outside, the snow and the semis cover everything with mud and someone talks to someone else. The snow creaks like an old floor. Inside, the paper weighs the same as the inside of…

Call me What You Will. This for your complicated hands— my best mechanical tree. Test?                                  No thank you. Question?                           The rivers run in circles. You noticed.                       We noticed. (thinking) Duet!                                  & the pin factory . . . Sweet extrovert, it is making pins. You will, you know, but I shouldn’t sing              Introvert! Introvert! if I…

Asking     Carrying a bucket full     Of a broken window or     Watching people and their mirrors on     TV; the woods tamped down     By snow and the very high iron of trees;     Air passes from purple to blue into     Black pitched lower than trees;     Glass for this     Half-week….

—at Dal Pescatore, Cannetto sull’Oglio, just outside Mantova It’s just as the waiter has brought us                             a single buttery dumpling        stuffed with pecorino, parmigiano, and ricotta that arrives after the porcini mushrooms                             and the seafood risotto        and before the snapper with tomato and black olives   and the duck in balsamic…

Brush of sunlight on the dry grass. These shadows blowing black up the mountain, and elsewhere there is laughing, you are moderate, see, I am there. A noise from inside the neighbor’s window. In the dark drifts you gather— let drop the poor idea— kisses him swiftly and leaves. That we may be increased. Thrum…