Who dreamed for us this sky, ah dear departed, schemes, ah
the sleep stole me, the silent doors. Under cover of a life the ah,
hitched away. Distrust does enter hearts. The impossible smell of the
ah, frozen morning. Air, air for you my love and air and air.
III As It draw breath but would not sing
still for you’d stay. Clouds, hinged in crimson
leaned into the yawning ground. How hope
would fade, as you depart. A saddened turn.
This morning, this grand impossible morning
avenues of light passing through the barriers
I wait for you. There is annihilation in this
speaker, though when it comes, who knows
poison, and poison begins somewhere, in
the unconscious mind, a dark door over
the left shoulder or just out of sight, before
you are through it you are through it;
the world closes down and the entire soul
is sabotaged, institutions formed up to pattern
recognition out of sight, out of the head
and shame and unyielding attacks
on the imaginative faculties are its lifeblood
feeding on the desiccated numbers, at large
mounting the insurgencies: Addiction and calm
this morning arrive here, learn its names,
depart without a kiss, pure blank severance
a light as light will form, forcing back the door.
Wide artillery corrupted hillside
she held in her body historic
press occupation buried
layers of prison, distant faction
as dawn would rise and the panoply
fall asking our feet to proceed
for their soulless close, warm
germinal rain by the shutter mural,
in a distant window, not so far now
we held one another’s faces,
shared a quieted kiss, close in the nerve
uncoupled as the blue blades became
the rest of the sky, and fixed,
to departed life, so ordering the clouds.
Refuse and flowers, haunted
I move on, through the world
searching for that which disappears
in the hand
lost to nothing, by remembered
honeyed leaves
in its echo, scented, satisfied…
We stood in the middle of a field
of corpses. It stretched as far
as the eye can see,
in every conceivable direction,
above and below.
They were new corpses.
We had not killed them, and
we stood there, in the field
was the world.
He kissed my mouth. I laughed
and stumbled a little. My weight
landed on a belly, lightly covered
in dewy grass, and a sound, a little cry
came from the mouth of the corpse.
We both remarked on this;
we had not known
there might be a corpse
and that gas, lost in the belly
acts on the chords to make a voice.
His fingers, warm, wrapping my fist
and in the field's dawn
chorus, elderflowers opened
their faces to the world.
How to sing
discerning a pinpoint
or set
along the way.
The anchor
was the rain. Elements
and focus
distance you along.
I knew that face
and called as the crowd
closed, the morning
light away.
