Gods, Like Men

Many, many memories have died and many futures shed their blood

throughout this war for the present,

this desperate whites-of-the-eyes campaign against the past

and all that it could lead to.

I am so tired, emblematic of my generation,

my generation emblematic of my race;

but I could escape.

I could know the hidden tunnel and the refugees,

I could know the touch of sunlight through the ash like clouds,

the clouds like gods displeased and looming,

the gods like those they condemn, the gods like men:

frail hands stained with blood they do not think their own.

Galatians 4

Do you remember the light from whence you shone?

Do you have any remembrance

of that bright womb cradling you before you were?

O God!

What did your mother whisper in her birthing groans to make you hate her so?

Will she squeeze love from you as water from a stone?

I am sorry that you wept at Moses' blows when words would suffice;

but hate, hate mothers? Hate bruised, discolored self?

Hate God that he is not obeyed?

You, Voice.

He does not see, but fear unblinded sight; not all feet are shy of Damascus.

Your hold is not so deep that a lion cannot draw you from his back by the throat.

This fire will burn, see all your ashes out upon a forge's breath!

You would have martyred impure ore, but perfect gold comes of it!

Golgatha taught you what you have not learned.

Persecution is the maidenhead of grace

that bleeds when it is pierced.

Eternal Long White Sheets

Eternal long white sheets, cool draperies,

forever and ever unending waves of noontide, moontide and dawn

fell with soft sounds, orchestral rushings, brushing silk and air and moth wings,

secrets down from tall beds, cold, thin clouds, down from the real, warm sun,

forever sun, where it has floated like a moon behind the veil,

where beauty has reflected in the rippled, glassy pools of promises and time

for so, so long, the tide has rushed and lapped, receded and moaned against the land,

the white, white beaches, the cool, clear rocks and moss,

the pictured scenes, the opaque whispers of a time to come,

the close, the near, the almost, the shiverings, the want restrained,

the forgotten time and the hopeless hope,

the hair that lay across shoulders, the some skin, the held hands,

the leashes for the dog in the alabaster coat, the shelved jar with a rush of blood in it,

the wind that told the first, withheld the last and ran while we ran after it.

All fell: a single infinite, impatient, instantaneous unhurried rush

of cloth and dress and wear.

There all of every inch and foot and dip and swell

and scent and sight and breath and lips and ears and hands and arms and legs

and touch and glance and lithe and long stood still and waiting.

Saw the sight, beheld the touch, embraced the real,

it all was there to be; I wept to her

as both our souls like stars collided and there lay,

burning until we were the brightest, only light.

Your Bright Ghost

I can remember losing a lot of memories in cloudy water

like a milky stare, like a child's gift swept angrily away

past immeasurably wounded eyes, the first landmark of adulthood

and confusion in the face of stupid cruelty.

I can see myself going blind with the sunset;

I cannot feel the touchstones I once held in hand:

light, rest, reason and faith.

All fades, yet I remember you, my gilded Lily.

I am encompassed by the night, these grassy rustlings, but you have a bright ghost.

Having lost even the deathly sense of the drowning glass, the looking glass,

the glass darkly swimming between blue hands,

your lingering warmth is all of mine.

God took you from me.

I would have been as jealous of my love.

Warm to the Rim (Five Cups)

In the first cup, I have no object

because I do not know what is there.

I drink from it when I drink from it.

The rim is smooth and the tea is hot until there is a cup,

some tasty traces on my lips

and a warmth within.

In the second cup I look for more and it frustrates the hell out of me

because the taste is different, the temperature is changed,

the process is observed, not done, and only fools seek to be wise.

The tea is first a catalyst, then a vexation, then a symbol, then a clue,

but never is the tea tea in a cup from which I drink.

In the third cup there is a mixture: tea, some milk, a little sugar,

bitterness and some redeeming warmth that makes the cup worth drinking.

I do not notice when it is gone; I've already begun to stir again.

In the fourth cup there is no tea and there is no cup.

There is a little milk to which I add some water and a golden strand of honey.

With these additional things, it still looks like a little milk

in a little bowl of cool, clean porcelain. The first drink is wonderful and warm,

bitter as hot water, cold as milk with no trace of the golden strand.

I hold it in my mouth and stir the liquid in the bowl with one finger.

I can feel the warmth on my tongue and I can feel

the viscous, golden strand entwined about my finger as it stirs.

I swallow the first drink and I taste the rest at once,

and O glad God! I am glad because there is so little milk and water in the bowl

and so much honey. Not wasting a drop, I clean my finger in my mouth

and empty the little bowl with my tongue.

I have forgotten tea and cups.

In the fifth cup is tea, but the fifth cup doesn't exist

because it is tea in a cup and I am not thirsty;

I want for nothing, having become, by this time, nothing myself.

There is tea in a cup, warm to the rim.

New Yorker

A woman on the back of an American magazine tells me with her gaze,

behind her cheap expensive shades,

that she is bronze and I am metropolitan,

worth looking at from the vantage point of the stiff gray threads

that make up the soft, cold couch

upon which lie her frighteningly long, long legs.

Her sex is barely covered by her leather bag and velvet hands,

her hands with little more to do in life than fondle her own vanity,

touch my eyes and lead me: onto the couch, on fast to nothing,

(that is, the point at which my paycheck ends, another man's begins)

and if, if I am lucky: into her

to be devoured, maybe photographed.

She wears her eyes as well as now her breasts wear both her hands,

almost as artfully as her ego wears her nakedness.

Her fingertip, paused in the apex of her clavicle,

moans me to rest in my pursuit of love by chasing her.

But I have seen her when she bathes her face,

have seen it run the same as I: madly

and far from her tumbling eyes.

Clear is the Dawn

Newly born of night, my sun rose clean and clear

into a dawn that faltered as it moved towards true light, true warmth;

no cloud to warn, no single drop of rain

from low heights of high hopes.

Into the dawn to wither?

Into the noon to die of darkness and misgivings of What?

Into the highest noon

like one of many cold stars that day.

Bright is the sun, clear is the dawn,

warm is the Summer that the Spring entailed:

distance, silent far-off space, has made the day so dark.