without sleep without history the first thing without sound without memory of sound Pain thinks of origin’s trespass hoof and cochlea earth without blossom without axis or column the Yangtze without passage the sea without apparition and the animals let loose at Peloponnesus Pain thinks of the first thing without temple water black as burial’s…
There was a prairie of crushed flowers, A prairie that swelled and expired, A prairie of like-it-or-not. Oh but we found it, all of a sudden And straight down below. It was like a mountain as seen from the sky, Like all that sinks and disappears. We wanted to repeat what never happened Or sing…
That stuffed pine marten in the hotel corridor Ended up on all fours in nineteen-thirteen And now is making it across No Man’s Land where A patrol of gamekeepers keeps missing him.
It is hard to remember about the hardening man he is alive, hard not to hear in the shrill nonsense he speaks when he attempts to speak the chirping of a thrush, any ordinary bird hard to see (but look) beneath his sagging mask a face, once flesh, now lost, a planet— barren and featureless…
Once the phone, called the “telephone,” was a voice one heard by pressing what looked like a stethoscope to one’s ear, answering by shouting at a device on the wall. This was before talking on the phone was invented—a more intimate exchange using a receiver that allowed one to speak to the voice while holding…
Not sibylline but clear, empty weather; of the eight kinds of sky it was the milk-paled potion most like a cup of coffee she poured past full in such a way as to show herself how good she was, how the liquid lolled just over the white cup’s rim, just so the instant before an…
You meet at most four archbishops in a lifetime. You have at most one lifetime. You sing when in pain and expect to be heard. You see the outline of holy figures, their windows and blinds. You want to kiss the gold of the coat and you want it to come off on your lips….
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…
Where would I be if not for your wild heart? I ask this not from love, but selfishly— How could I live? How could I make my art? Questions I wouldn’t ask if I was smart. Take the whole thing on faith. Blind eyes can see where I would be if not for your wild…
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