The sun was a mirror with an image of you
Painting a picture of the sun which was my eye.
The turtle like a moon sliding beneath a horizon
Of lilypad, the day’s thin layer skimming aside
For memory’s bulk to submerge
To the murky safety of living matter.
The slaughter of peonies behaved as you passed
Then carried on with May’s riot
Here inside my body is a table for all time.
From some place in the future my ghost arrives,
Disoriented, not remembering how or when
I died but carrying a newspaper that sat
On the grass throughout the night I expired,
Saturated with dew or rain, does it matter,
And now all the words are gathered so close
from both sides of all pages, the odd and the even,
they form a single unreadable sentence.
There are no chairs around the table because
Ghosts don’t need chairs and the guest
From the past is not welcome anyway. He will be here
Any moment, even though I lied about when
Things would start, that’s how early he always is,
The past is never late. I invite him hoping my ghost
Will scare him, make him understand his end
Is inevitable. But of course he can’t change.
I end up scaring myself, my coffee goes cold.
By the time the news is dry it’s not worth reading.
This is the best table I could imagine, too, all wood,
Like the big table where Melville wrote Moby Dick
In the middle of the room on the second floor
Of a landlocked house with a view of Mt Greylock.
I can hear the turtle in the alarm flexing his muscle
And the morning air rushing in. Everything
Will be the same next time I visit, except me.
Late at night, the moon starting over.
Down the stairs the piano shines quietly
Under a stained glass lampshade.
Where leaves and boughs are a single shape
Connecting the trunks which disappear into darkness.
Like music is a single sealed vessel
Coming through the clouds the moon plays its phrase
in a lost key descending the sky’s scales.
Every season is within it: fruit, seed, husk, flower
Forgotten. In the dark mirror on the piano
Beyond the owl’s shadow the edges of sheet
Music shine. Starting over, before I unsnap
The accordion of thanksgiving, I’ll sleep.
The sea stone sets down on the sky’s lobby.
Only the birds pass through it; their feathers
Still remember when they were scales.
The star has sent a poem to commemorate
The occasion. It’s the same poem every star
Composes. That every civilization has waited for.
The family pauses between house and car.
One of them points upward. A thousand things
Still alive in the trees and underbrush see
A thousand different families.
The birds rotate the stone like gears and snow
flecks off the stone as if God were sharpening
A great knife on it, to cut through the pile of burnt
Trees. To cut through ignorance, doubt, faith.
Four years later the house is empty. Sunlight
Streaks through the lobby and is arrested by
Clouds. Night falls. The star’s poem finally arrives:
“Too late!” reads the entire poem. Because they
Always have to be right, stars have few words
To work with. The sound of birds traveling through
The sea stone is like that of snow on steps.
The sound of stars composing is like a shovel on a walkway.
The wind let me live
By not arriving. The ten thousand
wheels of the highway had stopped
And we sat on its back, still
As food in cans. And the dark
Grew quiet as we killed
Our engines to save fuel.
Mere hours away
The sirens set
Apart each moment in its stillness:
Duration’s blue and red lights.
They bounced off the neighbors’ houses
And into the distance, arriving
At some place where there was
No distance, and the aftermath
Of that. Then the windless rain
Like a chorus that is the song
Of the end of shape. Where will
I be when the one drop of rain
That is my life, descending with the rest,
Bursts against the earth, no longer
The same but exactly the same,
As many molecules as the stars
in a gathering puddle whose surface
riddled by wind reflects the sole
Of a child’s new sneakers
1
The shapes at the water’s edge
They are not your memories
They are the clothes of the drowned. Forgotten
Because they are no longer needed.
2
After a long walk through life you were tired.
You paused, hand on knee, to rest. It took
A little longer than you thought to catch
Your breath and the trees had been bulldozed
And the spiders had covered you with the silk
Of memory. I came with a single dream’s knife
And cut a slit so you could back out. Later the city
Builders saw the shape standing alone
Like a magnificent cocoon, covered
It with stone and called it a church.
3
Your soul comes to you
Like bees finding their hive
Assembling into shapes almost
Making sense to your eye
Defined by a sweetness it will never taste
And a sting it will not survive.
4
The onomatopoeia of forgot,
Regret. They sound like things
That almost are but aren’t
Solid enough to take steps
Or kneel on stone in prayer.
5
I invalidated a receipt once
By writing a poem on it.
No further exchange was
Necessary or authorized.
Like a cowbird I laid that egg
in the nest of your eyes
And you have raised it
Into something that flies
Away from you, recognizing
Neither of us as its maker.
The heart after running is less likely
to lose itself to ledge or leap. It has
Asserted resolve over a measurable distance.
So if the heart leaps after running, it is more
Than a magnitude of muscle memory. Doesn’t
The steady heart know the world’s greatest
Victories are like fireflies in a July field
I walk across after the night’s mile has cooled
Me down? Steadier than these glimpses
Of what threads through us, across time
And space. Yet it leaps as though into the light
for words it might wander toward
If this path did not already describe it best.
This month in my mind is a darkened field.
Silent signals flaring like memories coming
By mistake from the wrong direction,
from the future, then guttering out.
There will be no meeting. Go deeper– is it quiet there?
He is the one you could never have. Though he could
Never not be yours. Deeper– it’s the sound of waking.
When we were younger we could drink a lot more
Coffee. I remember our first cup together. In the depths
Of the night, its upside down ocean, sound is replaced
By a strange pressure on the ears. On the entire surface
Of your body. This is where fissures open up in the roof
And new mountains emerge. It’s where stars are born.
Where a shy medallion spilled from God’s pirate ship
twined through the waves of dark sleep and became
The moon. Some hearts would explode from the pressure
Mine is like the cork that has to be pushed back
Into the wine bottle corkscrewed side down. Torn
But doing its job. Deeper but not so deep
You couldn’t pluck it out with your bare hand.
Sometimes a memory is tame as soft rain, deeper
than falling asleep, like a read book empty and full
at the same time, the sound of a candle in the room.
I will first ask the mountains to stop counting.
Four hours after midnight I will wake my body.
I have done this a lot lately but he can’t take a hint.
I will say first I am happy nobody could be here tonight
Next I will say first nothing has been certified
Nothing has been sanctioned nothing needs to be
Said first I will say that first and then I will move
My body’s finger across the lever of night
I will do that first because nothing comes next
So it all has to be said first and hasn’t he said it
All already can’t he wake up long enough to
Lie by the open window looking nowhere
Through the silence of mountains and
See where this is going and do the math
There’s only one ballot to count but
So loud In their spring are the starlings
Translations from the English 