Monday, August 2, 2010

The Solitudes of August - I

“The world imagines for the beholder” - Wallace Stevens

It was there, the quarry, when I woke:
Intention, the granite holding up the glass facade.
Was it me who dreamed, or an angelic whirr
That made the island purr with endless life?
(Or was it just the neighbor, what possessed him
To ride his mower like a locust in the whiteness of the morning?)

It was there when, like anonymous scribes, we spoke
For hours, of immaculate mirrors and marshmallows,
Recited icy poems to film noir heroines
From the same distorted book of hymns,
But was there...agreement?
Was what came like squealings
From distant pools, through the vapors of afternoon,
Just sentences construing in my brain
Like the thrushing of a train, in one vast chain?

What you say is never enough. I go beyond its barricades,
Make lists that all dissolve, of meanings uncontainable.
Red raspberries now peek through clinging thorns.