The Dance

In the dance hall
One can see two lines

Here, by the banquet tables
The compromisers

There, by the stone doors
The unyielding

Note how the first group stands at ease
Well fed
And listen to them speak

But do not forget the second company
Lean, solitary
Who stand in silence


In this world
Of shadow and sunlight

You will always find them

The children of the flexible
Who dance, and make merry

On the graves of the rigid
Who died fulfilling

Oaths of protection

Fruit of the Stars

If I would taste the fruit you are sampling
I must let you eat it as well

If I would hold the hand you are holding
I must let go of your own

If I would kiss the lips you are kissing
The way you are kissing them
I must remove my mouth from yours

If I would dance as you dance, sing as you sing
I must take my Mind from its intercourse with yours
I must remove your Mind from mine

And you must go moving freely
As freely you moved when my Soul first saw you
Out and away into infinite space

And when your lovely body
When your pale, freckled limbs
When your grapefruit breasts
Your quivering rear, your red-tufted sex

Enters the galaxies beyond ours

Your long, full orange hair, streaming
By your face and down your alabaster,
Dotted, bony shoulders

Will weave amongst the stars, an angelic nebula
Framing your pale, open, honest face, then

Then

You will smile at me from the night sky
Your hand will reach through light years
To touch me a final time

Before you fade away forever

The World

It was just yesterday
When I let go the hand of a phantom
And saw light appearing through the window
Between curled branches

It was only yesterday
And photographs from the War
A German family dead : suicide
As the Russians entered Berlin

It was yesterday
In confession to a little priestess
A wild bitch-angel with a snug
Imaginary pussy – that

I came up against the walls
Inside myself

Me, the self-styled wielder
Of the jackhammer of the mind
Me, the one who scoffs
At walls others build to guard

Precious illusions

Found myself reduced to the great
Commonality, and infinitesimal -
Traversing the endless, arced, curving
Grey, impassive edifice

That I meticulously, assiduously
Built around my own Heart

Failure

Because I have been unable
In my waking existence
To create the life I desire

Because I have been unable to find peace
Joy and abundance

Because I cannot raise the dead
Spontaneously heal the sick and dying
Protect the abused
End war, torture, cruelty and rape

Because I am unable to stare into
The shining face of my beloved

Because my children are distant from me

Because I have not been able
To tap this staunched fountain
Of Love within

I will lay myself down

On a large, soft bed
On the quiet second floor
Of this ancient home
And rest

And I will hope to sleep

If, in sleep, dreams come
Dreams which provide a confirmation
Of the fruition, in some distant land
Of all these barren desires

I will surely accept them

Remnants

I went over to the ______’s house
To look through my stuff in the garage

It was there from when ____ left me
In the autumn five years ago

The cool wind was blowing
Through the changing leaves

Winter coming




__________’s son was there
And he walked up to the barn with me

We spoke directly, but indirectly
About the situation

I looked through things and found
An old CD, on which my ex-wife

Had written, in permanent marker
With sincere, and childlike script

Our two names, connected with a plus sign



While we moved a few boxes
___________ arrived in her car

And invited me in, so we talked for a while
And didn’t talk, because her son was there

About the disintegration of her family
Or _____________’s many affairs

I told them I would see them next week






The amalgam pavement outside the library

Seems to contain universes
____________, the librarian, knows me and

Indicating the Union soldier statue
We speak about the South

I come to escape a red haired angel/tormentor
To retreat, as self-styled aristocrats do

Onto family land



There is nothing remaining of me
As I unload the car with the detritus of 45 years

In this world, and a lovely woman from the past
Smiles to me as she steps out of the bridal shop

In her face a gentle, frightened, happy, aloof, dispassionate
Gleam of memory

In the local roadways, ground into every mile of asphalt
Ten thousand lives, love, marriage, children

In the windows of stores, the haunting faces of ghosts
Women standing alone in their driveways, at the midpoint

Between youth and old age, between joy and bitterness



And as far as me, as always

Driving, seemingly only at home, only at peace
Putting on garments that pass for the Self, and dressing emptiness

In songs from speakers in the back seats

The Eastern Front

Two Madmen Were Beaten

Beaten badly
Can you see them?
More importantly
Can you feel them?

And so at Kursk tankers were burnt to death
Screaming within iron tombs

And at Stalingrad
Men perished calling for their mothers
By the hundreds of thousands
Burnt with jellied gasoline
Shot by snipers
Frozen to death
Blown apart

In Leningrad
The bones froze solid
in a three year siege

Behind the lines
The SS herded jews
And tore the breasts off villagers
One by one
With combat knives

Can you feel the madmen who were beaten?
Just little children
When they were brutalized
They determined, both of them
Never again to be humiliated

Others paid for it

Who knows the dark grey green horror
At the bottom of the world?
Who can stop the tanks
When they begin to move?
Or the death ovens
When they warm to exterminate?

Jew? Russian? Nazi? Partisan? German soldier.
Child.

A child dead in the street.
A child picking through corpses.
A child on the last German lines in 45.
A child rushing through the Russian winter night.
A little girl raped, by whom?

And does it matter? Because the rapes, once started, never stop.

Who will stop it?

Will you?

Can you?

The Last Night of Nocturne

And what is the significance of This?
And why is it that we do This?
For when, heads down, in the rain
We hear the recession of an endless train
And know that the empty tracks will so soon want
The heavy comfort of wheels again
So why is It done?
And why is it completed?
For when, heads down, they leave in the rain
For home and hearth, for pleasure
For work, for life and death
What is it they carry, and what retain?
And what is the reason, the reason we did this?
Your reasons are yours, and mine are mine
If reasons there are, if reasons you find
As for me, into the soaring night it flies
To eternity, upwards in the wet-drenched skies
I know that on the narrow track of the future
No significant answer will be found
And in the echoing caverns of the past
Mere clues, mere trails scratched in hollow ground
So I go, on the curving upward bending street
Beneath a ceaseless, steady rain
Under the beat, of the Heart of the world
And its bittersweet, ephemeral kiss
It was not for then, not even for now
But it might have been for This

Nightfall

So now night has fallen
The day is over
And your work is done

Tomorrow will require
Other things
And there will be other things to do

In the thread of a day
It may be possible
To hear a whispering logic

Of direction
But to hear it and to act upon it
Are two distinct things

Tomorrow there will be an opportunity
To take up your burden
And act upon it

Love and War

Nations in diplomatic interactions
Are smiling and handshaking
Sometimes grinning

But in the background
They assemble weapons
Maneuver armies

So they are showing the face of peace
But their actions betray them

Men and women in the public sphere
Are smiling and handshaking
Sometimes grinning

But in the silence of the mind
They are sucking, fucking
Moving in, moving out, leaving

So they are showing the face of decorum
But the Truth betrays them

The Light of Death

There is a light streaming
From emptiness

Streaming across us
Pouring over my face

Will you take my hand
And step out, into emptiness?

I was watching You
Like some speeding vessel

Passing by your own sound waves
Into the land

Where you can no longer hear yourself
All Sound

Is left behind

And now, You fly alone
You are moving beyond all sound

You have let loose my hand
And are streaming towards emptiness

Grief

They will pass it by
They will lay down quickly
Or smoke
They will drink, screw, watch television

And leave you to bear it.

Now

I thought I was lost before
Now I know I am

I thought I knew grief before
But I did not

You can cast a thin line in the ocean
And fish for a great whale

You can leap from the top of a hill
Countless times, trying to touch the moon

You can skate across vast frozen lakes
With a can of juice and a snack

But you cannot correct foolish errors

And when someone really goes
Nothing in the Universe
No power in Eternity

Will ever bring them back.