Poetry

She’s heard that apples go silver in moonlight, That the lavender cloud Of phlox along the wall Is absorbed by rocks, and that even The steady, village church is eaten away On a night like this. They told her when the moon shines Through a stained-glass window, there are no Reds or blues crossing the…

The silence of the Bionassay with its uneven glitter, blue-gray knife sculpting the mountain as when I whittle at distances so that they meet the eye, at light, a possibility towards which a single leaf unfolds. Beyond the timberline where silence enters the skin and jangles the small nerves of the teeth, the mountain glistens…

Well, it finally happened. A monstrous monogamousness has finally overcome me. That is, the idea of devoting this body, even for an hour or two, to any other body but you seems not only immoral, but pointless and silly. What’s the good of it? That’s sensible enough, I suppose, but the degree of my devotion…

This is the kind of night on which Yuan Chen cried out to his dead wife: when one dreams of another, are both aware of it? the moonlight blackening his bed, the ice roaring in the great northern rivers of Honan. From such a night, to such discoverable likeness, Adam himself awoke, knowing none of…

How deep is frost?      I dig six inches deeper. That is deep enough. Why do you live in this fenced-in garden?      I am the lord of the garden, the retainer of the gardener      who makes his plans and mends his fences. What can’t      get out is his business. Have you no friends?      I emulate my…

1 You need the woman wearing blue to remind you of the future. Her body has the shape of it. You need the movement of a wrist turning in its sleeve capable unlocking air. The bone, the tool turning under the skin unlocking the skin. The bone, a mineral of light unlocking and you remember…

What sings the holy language of meaningless music? Maybe some kind of a bird, I think. What knits the invisible patterns that fasten the sky? I think maybe some kind of bird. What circles above the dying? I think a bird of some kind. What darkens everything in the shadow of a wing? Some kind…

1. Ulysses to Calypso I think I’m looking for Ithaca, not myself. My heart, brain, ivory bones below the surface might be pearls to serious girlfriends, but I consider myself an onion, not an oyster. You might get wise by staring at your face in the water, listening to Sirens, asking the dead in hell…

You make yourself new again. Along your sides, only a thin line marks the scar where you lay open one whole summer. Steam rises from your body in this heat. You move slowly you sit up to your chin in yourself. One morning you are a blue floor. You are rising, you are learning to…