1
In the forests of the eye:
a flame.
In the codicil of noons:
a chasm.
You listened your way in.
Angels rose up
faceless from your shroud.
Still, by just a thread
of your disappearing,
I hang.
2
A leaf clangs in the stillness.
A beat of wings.
What dark thought stirs these ripples?
What pale hand
smears my shadow to infinity?
Return unto thy rest
Return unto thy
unto
un
3
It is always near.
We eat together in the noon-dark.
Rib to rib we fall asleep
at the edge of the abyss.
When it breathes
it stirs the veil.
When it brushes my arm
the world breaks:
the heaped shards point only
to themselves
like moments flashing on & off:
now here :: nowhere
4
Stone: How wounded you sprout
from the pale seed.
Branches: How darkly you hang
over the crisis.
Night: How sweetly you descend
into the blurring earth.
Moon: How slowly you climb
through the pin-pricked absences.
5
Beneath the white paradox
you held your breath.
At your feet
the earth was trembling.
It was almost blue
as you waded in
& the light
closed over you
& destruction on destruction
churned in your wake.
6
These hours, razor-thin.
These words, plunging
into the void.
The darkness foams with images.
The gust of leaves.
The red gash.
Drops of nowlessness
slide along the blade.
7
Let us go back
to the beginning.
(Now is etched in blood.)
Let us sew up
the wound of time,
& dwell henceforth
in twilight,
& never speak
a word.
(Not You.)
(Not I.)
.
(a beat of wings––)
8
Tears:
morsels
for the lions at the hidden gate
blazes
on the forking path
coins
in the fountain of goodbyes
windows
through which you look back
darkly
into the world
9
For you: the shapeliness.
For you: the clearing.
For you: the poem,
cracking its shell in the dark.
And yet, how can it be
we are here already
in the past?
How can it be
I waited these distances?
And what is this,
rising from soot
like a ragged wing?
10
In the pain-sealed moment,
you called out:
the world was gone.
And what was I doing,
still scraping at the silence,
still listening for this?
this?
this?
And what if it breaks?
And what if human tears
are not enough to bear you up?
11
The spark, the blinding flash
to silence.
Darkness.
Dreams of lead.
. . . . .
Somewhere far above
you hammer away
& I dig timeward
guided by shocks.
12
Banished from the meanings,
your feet cut their own for miles
through the snow-lit dark,
through the ravenous night,
the terrain of a wound.
And when, finally, you
arrived, naked & trembling,
at the frontier of zero,
how silent it was,
how beautiful,
as flake-by-flake
all was forgiven.
Only, far off,
a house,
drifting toward dawn.