A silent movie walks into a bar.
Far off to the east fragments of cloud
hover in the foreground, closing credits. The clear blue sky
revolves behind them like a child’s picture lamp
before it catches on fire. But the sky does not move.
Only the clouds are moving, their vacancy signs
flashing as they pass the moon.
After a light overnight snow grounded things stand out
like a character for winter
autumn’s fallen sticks seem arranged
a gentle alphabet of dropped and windblown things
are all alphabets constructed of things that no longer grow
snapped or broken things until the world made sense of the drift
do I know as I look down on them they are looking
past me pointing to all that is still living above our heads
to all that will be green again whether I look or not
are all languages a message in relief or is it my own relief
that words will never be in season the spring they sprouted
from long gone the spring yet to arrive as forgetful
as we are with each other with growing and shedding
that even my name is an accidental landing
The sun departs through a throng of clouds
on the horizon– an overexposed photo
of an old explosion. Did it happen in our time?
the cold street wants to know. The street
which is always asking, asking! An amateur’s
snapshot, I tell it. I am always on this street
that happens to be going the way
I am going. It knows only one question
but has the patience to repeat it.
Without that question to what purpose
could a street put itself? I know eventually
the pavement will give way and the question
through the voice of dirt and rocks
and sun-warmth escaping long after dark
will sound like a song without words
or the faded caption on an old photograph
someone took of us looking at the sun
standing still against the pathless sky
The bluejay’s query from the previous twilight
hangs in the mostly empty air between branches.
On a brown maple leaf last night’s tear
has still not fallen. Though in a few hours
this moment will be gone like all the others
even grief sometimes has to wait its turn
The end of the stem
is where a flower starts. At the end
of a ragged leaf a sated bug steps.
The end of the trunk is where the tree
plunges past seeing and the roots’ ends
commence the purest conversion.
The river turns out on the ocean,
the sky turns over the bowl of stars
with no end to the spilling space.
Attending a Poetry Festival I Wonder What A World Full of Poets Would Be Like, And As I Leave the Building Into the Mid-Winter Afternoon Air I Hear the Late Migration Of a Canada Goose
In a room of a hundred poets my ego diminishes. My name grows so small
I can no longer find it on the program. But it turns out I am everywhere,
in every poem I hear, someone is calling my name! In the parking lot, in the cold air
above me a lone goose is calling as he flies, looking for companions traveling
his way. I look—no, he is not alone after all. There is one, silent, flying beside him.
The ice on the road sees us with our own eyes
and is no better than we are at helping ourselves
as direction changes. In a winter far south of here,
the edge of still water is guarded by cypress knees,
like a tired army that lay on their backs for a nap
and never found a reason to get up. Beyond them
I heard the bellow of a bull alligator claiming the world.
By a cold spring corn field a thousand miles
away, watching the storm’s wind sprint across
before it could be heard or felt, I know everything
can be claimed, like these memories—are the endless
chances to say hello merely a shout over the slumbering?
Is the wind with its violence finally hearing us with our ears?
I will sit here with you for a while and see what comes.
Note: one of an occasional series of poems with this title…
Leaves gather into a shape in a doorway, like an animal
sheltering from the wind. The hiss of cold wind
through the emptied maple. Stand in the small area
which owns the sound and close your eyes — like newspapers
burning in the fire place with the kindling. Late afternoon
all the steeples point up to forgetful blue emptiness.
But they’re empty on the inside too. In the dark, the moon climbs
up the roof and leaps in slow motion
Frost flourishes in the shade like flowers in the sun–
the gain may be temporary but isn’t the temporary
gain all that can be measured and for frost after all
isn’t the temporary a permanence itself? External
conditions set it stony and sharp, a marker
of the cold we feel—things being different
it might be the drop of dew in which
you glimpse the moon you’d otherwise miss
Late night walks are making more sense
as I realize how little of my life
I am really seeing. Making it home each night
through the black ink of every word of hope
and doom engraved into the emptiness
surrounding me—isn’t it much better
practice than bounding about in daylight
thinking I am understanding everything?
In the dark the actual tree spreads without end,
across time and space, and I begin to sense
that my blindness also travels a route
set in deep earth, exposed to the sky.
Translations from the English 