Indefinite Sidereal

 

685

The brilliancy of various stars
disappears tonight
brought down from known constellations
to the death of birth
what of phenomena?
What of eclipse and
the vastness of lonely orbit?

The years of wind have worn away
the luminous beauty of revolution
and revealed the origin of the water,
the moon and Andromeda are born and die
on its obscure surface

And the occasional meteor
whose life – so much more brief
but none-the-less
similar in value

686

I was convinced of your antiquity
it was a proof of rain
and a dream of reflections
your rising motion spoke no more of
heaven than if it was a sea of possibility

Your tempest of method has ceased
to be of any value and
may be an error of beauty

Your presence is frenzy, a
crater of fallacy an analogy of delirium

Why must I now wane?

687

Oh, silent, luminous year, you
consume my admiration, you
speak with the light of the indefinite

Your outline, your trajectory
traces the suggestion of shadow
my splendid gaze
now shuttered.

 

Exodus

682

Gather strength to the purpose of happiness
a creature with secrets moves within me
a headless hat borne on a cold wind
a house of animals, candles on the floor, blood on the door
in exodus my consciousness invites the unknown void

But what heart removed from the spectacle
will be competent to construct incertitude?

And what psalm intoned will draw
us from our bondage?

683

Heaventree, thy meditation awaits
awash in dead sperm and vaster
comedies of the unknown
the observer changed by the by the observed, the parallax of
Sirius and Orion
Coming to and finding themselves in
various night- depending on the drift of reality

The fixed bodies divide themselves again and again
until and when the germs of stars reach their
instant of death/birth and hang
on imperceptible dividend: faith.

684

The vanity of happiness
the false confidence of power
the rude problems of apogee
the atmosphere of potentiality
add up to the error of approximation

Constellations of exodus
Andromeda, the dark water of Passover,

(Why is this night different from all other nights,…)

Breathe Out

679

I am a vicarious jew
wand’ring from anticipation to
disintegration
variously famous from time to time
with my abnormal visions
and my porcelain indications

The advantages to reconciling with my homeland
are not lost on me

Attentive to your gentle expression
the obsession with hours
I hope for sleep and in sleeping to
sleepwalk into tomorrow.

680

You have been advanced your money,
excluding the cost of the static that surrounds you
and the instruction of speaking.
you are not the places you’ve lived nor the
declined asylums you only dreamed of.

As absence ratifies the deceased
so does worship confirm my sense of futile motion

There are no further destinations to be attained

681

In the palazzo next to the Grand Canal,
you know the one, the one with
all the pigeons and the shiny triangular
terrazzo tiles-

At dusk it could be a Memo From Turner
an invitation to destruction
or an explanation for decay.

JMW invites us to contemplate
the agonies of stillness and solitude
from the accident of existence to
the congenital catastrophe

To the inevitable return to the waters.

On Seeing A Falling Meteorite

676

Music of habitation!
O opulent infidel
your commentary like a sad knife
taken to reluctant pockets
the daughter’s implacable victim

Your dead deeds and superstitions
are hypnotic and propagate envy
your reluctant secrets are the
ritual circumstances of regret

Who weighs the
Tales unmixed with smiling?

677

A distant army attains its destination
and the city breathes its terror
Hallucination and memory
attire themselves in violation
and, in sleeping, crawl toward disorder

I have a memory of doll,
a button and a newborn line
a figure of exclamation in
circular birth and in constant danger

What is this body
brought into being
to the hallucination of
dogs howling in deepest, darkest winter?

678

Less than I imagined
but more than just dreaming
the healing smoke-this gift of
flight, high, aerial toward the dawn
the instinct to run the
memory of departure
now gone.

Autumn Light

Ithaca 673

Our reflections merge
with ancient signatures
a genealogy of survivors
with revived versions of ecstatic visions

the consequences of this have
compensated for our isolation
we, the living comply
with the law of melody
with the anticipation of devolution
with the anthems of simplification

Our costumes are hieroglyphs of
defective inscription
our epigrams the
writing of familiar ignorance

herein lies the restoration of the past.

Ithaca 674

where host of major modern
secludes itself, deluded exponent
of concocted reassurance
there you find the sediment of example
there you find the possibilities of catastrophe

But, what of the residual courage of ecstasy?
the familiar widows
the familiar streets
driven to trinity to predestination to
concealed sensation?

there are answers to this in all the places
where water mixes with identity
where the future no longer resembles tradition
where beautiful figures form
in un-solid light.

Ithaca 675

we home- came back to
slay the boys in hallways
and dining rooms

Back to pretty hand
and woven weeping caul
undone undone
unbroken pleasure
led to sorry feeling and
smiling  dressed in minor sadness
reciting a hero's song.