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Drouth

I invoke the air in rage,  am like a cancer in a cage— only myself to burn, to burn;  mere glass and sun on an empty stage. Pick and spade, curse and yearn— agatefulls are struck and turned,  one by one and year by year,  until the hollow has been earned. Now the . . . . Continue Reading »

For Duns Scotus

Under the dome-sky oneness  translucent and unincarnate as thought, blank as unburnt light, the hope of thisness chokes in nebulae of beetles, sand grains, hydrogen atoms. Gnosis blurs, pits the achilded One against the unfathered Many. Asks, ‘‘Who could hear each song in the All Song?” . . . . Continue Reading »

Simple Anna

Simple Anna liked the words although she didn’t understand what many of them meant. Her man sometimes could make them into worlds where forests shaded green young girls. The girls were always what she was  when what she was was what she dreamed.  By herself she never dreamed,  not . . . . Continue Reading »

Choice Trees

In primal garden  the tree  stands laden,  splendor  consummate,  grace-rooted,  owned by him  who warns,  don’t eat or  sure you’ll die. Yet you,  arrogant Adam  in us all,  grasp prerogatives never due. Thrust out,  . . . . Continue Reading »

Man in a Glacier

The mountainside failed. But when  we saw that deep spot the dead sun  came back heavy as an engine  and my pick rattled like a gun. The ice unravelled; we peeled it from  his toothy face, glittering brown,  a woody rubber round his mind,  the Bronze Age still stuck to . . . . Continue Reading »

Aceldama

Eternity is uncorrupted light; the world proceeds by interrupting sight, exchanging day and night. Half the acts of earth avoid the sun; much that's done may be begun by day but end at night: aborted, buried light is customary here; it shocks no more than does a war such as the one we wage against . . . . Continue Reading »

Momento Mori

What do the living know about the dead? I was called upon to wonder when the well-meaning camp director’s wife who knew parts of my family asked where I stood in relation to the brother who’d died, she had heard. Died? I said. Yes, I believe, cancer, she said. Oh, I said, that, I believe, was . . . . Continue Reading »

Momento Mori

What do the living know about the dead? I was called upon to wonder when the well-meaning camp director’s wife who knew parts of my family asked where I stood in relation to the brother who’d died, she had heard. Died? I said. Yes, I believe, cancer, she said. Oh, I said, that, I believe, was . . . . Continue Reading »

Earthworm

Seven meters an hour, top speed, pulling closer the edge of asphalt you cannot see. Mizzling rain glistens your body stripped to the skin. You row, row for your life in air thick with whirlpools of danger. I cannot look at you without suffering your fragility. There reels from the morning sky a . . . . Continue Reading »

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