English

The poetry"s arrested in his scene,
which can"t be trusted, because I saw it
through painkillers that softened my head,
after I"d asked him what Keats really meant:
" Was it a vision or a waking dream? "
— You think that really mattered much to him?
In my waking vision dream, there"s no glory,
no prize committee or dew-drip Paradise.
He"s in an attic nook, or dim garage,
or the cellar where he actually writes,
the space a sheeted granulated matter,
his silenced countenance and de-boned body

Fifteen years later the old tollbooth keeper is still at his post but cannot break a twenty, regrettably, his brains blown out, or provide the forgotten directions. I did phone, what do you think? Before I can blink I am parked out front of the unbelievably small, unlighted house. I"ve got my finger on the buried bell, nothing. For hours I"ve been walking around, and I hate to be the one to tell you this, but no one is home in Zanesville, Ohio. My dusty toothbrush waits for me, of this I feel quite sure, my teenage image in the dust-dimmed mirror waits.

is my season
of defeat.

Though all
is green

and death
is done,

I feel alone.
As if the stone

rolled off
from the head

of the tomb
is lodged

in the doorframe
of my room,

and everyone
I"ve ever loved

lives happily
just past

my able reach.
And each time

Jesus rises
I"m reminded

of this marble
fact:

they are not
coming back.

To be free of situations,
To live from day to day without events

And to be free from the need to narrate them.
One small detail, the blossoming crab apple,
For example, on the lengthening boulevard
Of the stanza, this very one,
That parallels the perturbation of the waves
Mid-April — the Mississippi flowing above the locks
Of Minneapolis, once called St. Anthony —
Two blocks away, the river high with snowmelt,
And where this morning I heard the call
Of what I took to be a sparrow, white-throated,

In every life there"s a moment or two
when the self disappears, the cruel wound
takes over, and then again
at times we are filled with sky
or with birds or
simply with the sugary tea on the table
said the old woman

I know what you mean said the tulip
about epiphanies
for instance a cloudless April sky
the approach of a butterfly
but as to the disappearing self
no
I have not yet experienced that

You are creating distinctions
that do not exist in reality

Plucking your eyebrows,
Putting on mascara,
But will that help you
To see things anew?

The one who sees
Is changed into
The one who"s seen
Only if one is

Salt and the other
Water. But you, says Kabir,
Are a dead
Lump of quartz.

Chewing slowly,
Only after I"d eaten
My grandmother,
Mother,
Son-in-law,
Two brothers-in-law,
And father-in-law
(His big family included)
In that order,
And had for dessert
The town"s inhabitants,

Did I find, says Kabir,
The beloved that I"ve become
One with.

The ingredients gathered, a few small red tufts of the dream spoor per sheaf of Demeter"s blonde wheat, reaped in mourning, in silence, ground up with the pollen and mixed into white wine and honey. These stored forms of light taken under the ground. Taken by mouth. First those who by birth hold in secret the word; then placed on the tongues of the new ones, into whose ears it is meant to be whispered. Word murdered, forgotten so long ago, placed as a kiss on the lips of the soon-to-be-no-longer breathing who mean to enter death with open eyes, with mouths saying Death, what death?

From my cell I was staring at a cloud, a dog decaying in the woods, etc., as I took up the long-awaited sequel to my Confessions. By this time my hand was so far away that it looked like a small hairless spider whose progress I could hardly help but follow, from the corner of one eye, as it went on filling page after page in a notebook the size of a stamp with words too small for anyone to read. I looked up and noticed my bars had turned to gold. And before I forget, I"d like to be the first to congratulate everyone who has not committed suicide up until now.

Is unwritten, though it has lived in violence.

First the factory stood, quiet as an asylum.
Then the annihilating mallee with its red fists of blossoms
and the mountain ash creeping over it like a stain.

I have no proof, but I tell you
there were leadlight windows here once, barred.
They cast a little striped light on the women.

Now in scrub and yellow broom I stand on a history
braided and unbraided by stiff Irish wrists.
The rope and span and carded wool are unpicked
as are their faces and names.