Elegies by Hölderlin: Bread and Wine (3)

We hide in vain our inmost hearts as well, and in vain we

     Hide our courage, both masters and boys, for whose wish is

To hinder it, and who would ever prohibit our joy?

     Divine fire drifts, by day and night, into the open.

Come, that we may look out on what hasn’t yet been bounded,

     To seek out something of our own, far though it may be.

One thing abides; it is present at midday or it comes

     By way of midnight, there is always a dimension

Shared by all in common, but each is also given his own,

     To go to and to come from, whatever span he knows.

Thus lunacy likes to gloat in holy night, when it sneers

     At disdain and seizes, in an instant, the singers.

So come to the Isthmus! There, where the open ocean whispers

     Below Parnassus and snow glistens on Delphic cliffs,

On to the land of Olympus, the heights of Cithaeron,

     There among the spruces, amidst the grapes, and down to

Thebes where Ismenius rustles through the land of Cadmus,

     There will reappear the sign of the returning God.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brod und Wein (3)

Auch verbergen umsonst das Herz im Busen, umsonst nur

     Halten den Mut noch wir, Meister und Knaben, denn wer

Möcht es hindern und wer möcht uns die Freude verbieten?

     Göttliches Feuer auch treibet, bei Tag und bei Nacht,

Aufzubrechen. So komm! daß wir das Offene schauen,

     Daß ein Eigenes wir suchen, so weit es auch ist.

Fest bleibt Eins; es sei um Mittag oder es gehe

     Bis in die Mitternacht, immer bestehet ein Maß,

Allen gemein, doch jeglichem auch ist eignes beschieden,

     Dahin gehet und kommt jeder, wohin er es kann.

Drum! und spotten des Spotts mag gern frohlockender Wahnsinn,

     Wenn er in heiliger Nacht plötzlich die Sänger ergreift.

Drum an den Isthmos komm! dorthin, wo das offene Meer rauscht

     Am Parnaß und der Schnee delphische Felsen umglänzt,

Dort ins Land des Olymps, dort auf die Höhe Cithärons,

     Unter die Fichten dort, unter die Trauben, von wo

Thebe drunten und Ismenos rauscht im Lande des Kadmos,

     Dorther kommt und zurück deutet der kommende Gott.

Solstice Poem

The last of the yellow trees
Cling to their heavy red berries

The spirit of prophecy may be willing
But the flesh of the prophet is ever reluctant

Some things resist being swept away
— That pawn shop on Beach Boulevard —

The fire drifts slowly to the ground
The air is a void

Whatever has been realized
Must give way

But it feels, every time,
Like something died

On Learning All I Know is Wrong

I worship it turns out
What I created
To learn who I am I guess

And continue to resist
What made me
So the lesson persists

And how I feel about it
— All I am — is canceled
In the languaging

A clear path of
Unerring error
Lies ahead

The most exciting
Thing I know
That all else pales against

To be lost and wrong
Confused and alone
Forced to be sane

The fragments
In the mind always
Almost solved

Poems from Books

They have lusted for a most moon moment

That seems impermanent

But caught clover on the line

After the owl had left the barn

And the halos began to show

Before the stare where everything disappeared

So the Earth grows larger gaining debris

We make meaning from all that we see

Forgetting it’s a dream

Where all that happens is accepted as sense

Without question and lost instantly

So it may be reclaimed

We’re skeptical that the pole is an angel

But trust histories we’ve never before experienced

And only see what has ceased to exist

For the real is too raw

Too overwhelming and the false

Is easier to learn from

For remembering means

You have forgotten everything

And must make the most

Of the little you’ve gained

Instead of bravely knowing

The mystery will never fall from your grasp

Because Words Can No Longer Not Be Said

The poet that I never read is leaving town.

The men, it seems, have disappeared entirely.

There are so few vagrants left to comb the weeds’

Safe spaces in between the warehouse tracks,

Chasing – do we even remember? – some flat-tailed

Whippoorwill – completely imagined – as it flies

To the nearest piano bar, where it is safe to

Understand women, though most are leashed to shopping bags

With unheard but no less oppressive timers

As they sigh into the grain of faux mahogany.

I haven’t the imagination to conceive

The poems he would write – shuttled like a shuttlecock

Between the Woman and the Man – and children too sad

They must steal away any time for words as their

Service to his cause, the long, inarticulate sigh.

When did they stop looking the other way at

Perversity? When did it become such a gift?

If I knew what closes in as truth, not consequence

I might be more upbeat about experience

As it leaves like sewage to the nearest no place.

The razor wire, it glistens, but it seems a pale

Contrivance of a world long left behind,

Where they cared enough to quiver at the bad.

When you’re always wrong, there’s always opportunity

To admit it. The dishes always must be cleaned,

The clothes themselves will say how they’re to be folded,

A problem besides why that guy left for the hills

Will fill my mind tonight. The past will have to wait.

Elegies by Hölderlin: Bread and Wine (2)

The grace of the exalted is wonderful, and no one

     Knows from whence she came or whatever happened to her.

Such is her pull on our world, and the hopeful soul of humans, that

     Even the wisest don’t understand, what prepares them,

As is willed by the central God, who loves you very much,

     And thus you prefer, to her dark, the practical day.

But sometimes even a clear eye loves to bask in shadow

     And tries to sleep, before it is needed, for pleasure,

Or a devout man will look longingly into the night,

     Yes, it’s fitting we anoint her with garlands and song,

Because she sanctifies the wrong, the wayward and the dead,

     Though the self survives, eternal, in freest spirit.

But she does this for us, that our dither in the transient

     Will gather as well something durable in the dark,

To be granted the oblivion of the holy drunk,

      Granted the flowing word, which is to be as lovers,

Sleepless and reckless, our cups filled to the brimful with life,

     Holy memory too, to keep vigil through the night.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brod und Wein (2)

Wunderbar ist die Gunst der Hocherhabnen und niemand

     Weiß von wannen und was einem geschiehet von ihr.

So bewegt sie die Welt und die hoffende Seele der Menschen,

     Selbst kein Weiser versteht, was sie bereitet, denn so

Will es der oberste Gott, der sehr dich liebet, und darum

     Ist noch lieber, wie sie, dir der besonnene Tag.

Aber zuweilen liebt auch klares Auge den Schatten

     Und versuchet zu Lust, eh' es die Not ist, den Schlaf,

Oder es blickt auch gern ein treuer Mann in die Nacht hin,

     Ja, es ziemet sich ihr Kränze zu weihn und Gesang,

Weil den Irrenden sie geheiliget ist und den Toten,

     Selber aber besteht, ewig, in freiestem Geist.

Aber sie muß uns auch, daß in der zaudernden Weile,

     Daß im Finstern für uns einiges Haltbare sei,

Uns die Vergessenheit und das Heiligtrunkene gönnen,

     Gönnen das strömende Wort, das, wie die Liebenden, sei,

Schlummerlos und vollern Pokal und kühneres Leben,

     Heilig Gedächtnis auch, wachend zu bleiben bei Nacht.

Day at the Beach with Cell Phones

My face won’t stay fixed in the mirror,

Like that song by Fleetwood Floyd  

On the wormholes of identity;

There’s only comfort in being someone else.

Here they welcome any selfness one cares to

Haul their way, with that chill acceptance,

Which only means that even the most

Enlightened quirks are condemned.

What comes of our witnessing

When we are the dream

And never, ever the dreamer?

Elegies by Hölderlin: Bread and Wine (1)

The city wholly dormant; silence becomes the enlightened

     Alley, and the carriages, graced with flares, rush away.

Men drift home to rest, full of the day’s gratifications,

     And profit and loss weighs on their ingenious heads

From the comfort of home; grape and flower stands are vacant

     And the work of hands idle in the vibrant market.

But the play of strings sounds far away from the gardens; that

     Maybe there a lover bows or a lonely man who

Remembers distant friends and the age of youth; and the fountains

     Ever freshen their murmuring springs on fragrant beds.

Silently in the tenebrous air the bells are rung with sound,

     And a guard calls the number of hours, to remember.

Now too the breeze arrives and excites the top of the grove,

     See! And the shadow hanging over our world, the moon,  

Moves with it in secret; and night, the effusive, approaches

     Full of stars and maybe a bit worried about us,

To glisten for the astonished, the stranger among humans,

     Sad and magnificent there above the mountain tops.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Brot und Wein (1)

Rings um ruhet die Stadt; still wird die erleuchtete Gasse,

     Und, mit Fackeln geschmückt, rauschen die Wagen hinweg.

Satt gehn heim von Freuden des Tags zu ruhen die Menschen,

     Und Gewinn und Verlust wäget ein sinniges Haupt

Wohlzufrieden zu Haus; leer steht von Trauben und Blumen,

     Und von Werken der Hand ruht der geschäftige Markt.

Aber das Saitenspiel tönt fern aus Gärten; vielleicht, daß

     Dort ein Liebendes spielt oder ein einsamer Mann

Ferner Freunde gedenkt und der Jugendzeit; und die Brunnen

     Immerquillend und frisch rauschen an duftendem Beet.

Still in dämmriger Luft ertönen geläutete Glocken,

     Und der Stunden gedenk rufet ein Wächter die Zahl.

Jetzt auch kommet ein Wehn und regt die Gipfel des Hains auf,

     Sieh! und das Schattenbild unserer Erde, der Mond,

Kommet geheim nun auch; die Schwärmerische, die Nacht kommt,

     Voll mit Sternen und wohl wenig bekümmert um uns,

Glänzt die Erstaunende dort, die Fremdlingin unter den Menschen,

     Über Gebirgeshöhn traurig und prächtig herauf.

At the Moment Before

As the mist lifts away from the grass
The bird flight speaks to me
As if it was the sunrise ...

But I'll take what exists
Off the table again
When others don't see it

And call that service,
Ever deferential
Even in euphemism

To Pia

What can you say to a girl
          who destroyed her world?
To write what she's learned in a poem
          to burn in the sky?
Or should we shun her with love,
          with needed non-judgment
That only can come
          from silence?

The flame of all that is wrong
          still burns in her bones,
And the matchsticks of others lives
          still smoke on the ground.
They say the resolution
          must be holy,
Beyond the restitution of callously
          agreeing to live,

That gifts all around will be bestowed
          on those who still hold knives
That will shape them, as boulders
          are pared by a stream --
But the stream, it seems, can't bear
          to see us wait,
So its chords, to entertain us,
          don't resolve,

They only move to more minor
          permutations,
As if it knows, as it glows
          in crystal shapes,
How to soothe our souls with the pleasantries
          of resonance,
So much so it seems it's only the water
          that remembers.

What the Blue Race Might Say

The city is surrounded by pink sky;
So lightly the ascended leave marks behind
At the hard work humans do to herd
Their fellows with pinschers and fences
As if it's for them, and not their own, benefit ...

Else the whole thing devolves to a hall of
Endless mirrors, where they must defend themselves
Against what they never know they've done,
And in trying to find the one to show their wound
They're lost like any sheep stray of the range.

It's all in a day: the pain we give that never
Goes away, and there are things that one
Could say to help them tack: "I understand,
You had my back, your cause is just, even sound" ...

But mostly it requires a kind of silence

Like the one that shines this time of year
From lights aloft in trees, of white forgiveness
For the crime of being in the dark.
The sky edges into evening
— Perhaps there might have been a word.

Elegies by Hölderlin: Stuttgart

1

Happiness comes once again. The precarious drought has recovered,

     And the sharpness of light no longer singes the bloom.

A hall is now open again, and the garden is healing,

     Refreshed by the rain that rushes down to the glistening

Valley, to the tall plants, swelling the brooks beyond their boundaries,

     And wings are venturing back into the realm of song.

Full is the lighthearted air now and the town and the thicket is

     Everywhere fulfilled by the children filled with heaven.

Gladly they join hand to hand, and mingle carefree amidst each

     Other, and it seems none are too much, or too little.

For that’s how the heart orders it, she endows them, acumen

     Giver, with divine spirit, so that they too breathe grace.

But the travelers here are well-guided as well, and have song

     And garlands enough, and their holy staff is fully decked

With grapes and leaves entwined inside the shadow of the spruce;

     They shout and cheer, from town to town, for day after day,

So they pull, like chariots filled with the wild and the free,

     Mountains forward, hurrying what they haul down the path.

2

But now do you say, it has made the shining way of the gods

     And has opened up the gateways of heaven in vain?

And is the good given for naught to the banquet abundance

     Along with the wine and honey, the berries and fruit?

Do you serve the purple light cold to the holiday singing

     And the quiet to the deep all-night talking with friends?

If something more serious grips you, save yourself through winter,

     Have patience, and you’ll be wooed by the wooer of May.

There’s another need now, now comes the old custom, to celebrate

     The harvest, for the noble blooms in us even now,

Even if it only counts for the day, our home, and everyone

     Throws his own victims in the holiday flame. That’s why

The God of the commons wreaths our hair without a whisper, and

     One's singular purpose, like a pearl, melts in the wine.

That’s the ringing in the chalices, when we, like bees around

     An oak tree, sit across the table, to honor each

Other, and sing back and forth, and so are compelled the wild souls

     Of the quarreling men together in the choir.

3

But in order that we don’t, like the too-astute, escape

     This bowed-down age, I refuse to come too quickly

To the borders of the country, dear place where I was born,

     And where the stream’s blue waters around the island flow.

To me the place is holy, on both sides of the shore, both

     The garden and the greenhouse, the rock as ripples rose.

There we meet each other; O compassionate light! Where first

     I was affected by your keener, more conscious rays.

There began and begins anew a life of new living;

     Yet I see the grave of the father and start to cry?

Stop and weep and have the friend and hear the word, that once in

     Heavenly art healed me of the suffering of love.

Andres awakes! I must refer him to the nation’s heroes,

     Barbarossa! You, too, most gracious Christophe, and you,

Konradin! As you fell, so will fall the strong, the ivy

     Green on the crag, the bacchanalian leaves covered

By the castle, but the past is, like the future, sacred to

     The singers, and the fall day shadows atone for us.

4

So even the overwhelming thought and the heart-rending fate

     Become light and serene, though examined devoutly

From the ether too, like the ancients, who manifested like Gods

     Happy poets happily pulling the land uphill.

Great is the spiral of becoming. There, from the outermost

     Mountains many young men descend, climbing down the hills.

From there, wellsprings roar, and a hundred busy streams come down

     Both day and night and create the realized nation.

But the master plows the middle of the land, and it pulls

     The Neckar River in the furrows, pulls the blessing down.

And with him comes Italian skies that deliver to the sea

     Her clouds, with the magnificent suns she sends to him.

That is why our vast abundance grows almost over our heads,

     As it was before, here in the estate of the good

Bestowed on the richer loved ones, the country people, yet

     No one over on the mountains envies their gardens,

The wine and the grain or the lush grass and luminous trees,

     As they stand there, the wanderers, lined up on the path.

5

But while we look and wander through the potency of joy,

     The trail and the day flee from us like a drunkard, lost.

Because surrounded by holy leaves, the city already

     Rises, the glorified, there shining her priestly head.

Exquisitely she stands and holds the grapevine staff and fir

     Aloft in the consecrating heights of purple clouds.

To us, sweet! The guest and the son, O princess of the homeland,

     Fortunate Stuttgart, kindly take the stranger in me!

Singing you have always approved, combined with flutes and strings,

     I hear, and the song's childish laboring chatter brings

To spirit a sweet and momentary oblivion,

     That's why your pleasure pleases the heart of the singers.

But you, you are greater too, you happy ones, the always

     Living and ruling, seen, or even more powerful

If you work and create in the holy night and rule alone

     And all-powerful, preparing for people to rise,

For the young men to remember the father high above,

     Mature and bright before you stands the scrupulous man –

6

O you angel of the fatherland, by whom comes forth the eye,

     Be as strong, for this isolate man breaks at the knee,

That he has to adhere to a friend and ask that the dear

     Bear with him through all the exhilarating burden,

Have, O gracious one, thanks for this one and all of the others,

     They are my life, they are my good among the mortals.

But the night it is coming! Let's hurry to celebrate

     The harvest today! The heart is full, but life is short,

And what the heavenly day has commanded us to say

     To name it, my Schmid, is that we both are not enough.

I'll bring you the excellent and the bonfires will be whisked up

     And the holiest of saints should speak the bolder word.

See! There it is, pure! And God's friendly gifts are actual

     Only when they are a secret shared between lovers.

No other - O come! O make it true! Because I am, yes,

     Alone, and there’s no one to take the dream from my brow?

Come and reach, dearest one, my hand! For it may be enough,

     But the grander desire we will save for grandchildren.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stuttgart

1

Wieder ein Glück ist erlebt. Die gefährliche Dürre geneset,

     Und die Schärfe des Lichts senget die Blüte nicht mehr.

Offen steht jetzt wieder ein Saal, und gesund ist der Garten,

     Und von Regen erfrischt rauschet das glänzende Tal,

Hoch von Gewächsen, es schwellen die Bäch und alle gebundnen

     Fittige wagen sich wieder ins Reich des Gesangs.

Voll ist die Luft von Fröhlichen jetzt und die Stadt und der Hain ist

     Rings von zufriedenen Kindern des Himmels erfüllt.

Gerne begegnen sie sich, und irren untereinander,

     Sorgenlos, und es scheint keines zu wenig, zu viel.

Denn so ordnet das Herz es an, und zu atmen die Anmut,

     Sie, die geschickliche, schenkt ihnen ein göttlicher Geist.

Aber die Wanderer auch sind wohlgeleitet und haben

     Kränze genug und Gesang, haben den heiligen Stab

Vollgeschmückt mit Trauben und Laub bei sich und der Fichte

     Schatten; von Dorfe zu Dorf jauchzt es, von Tage zu Tag,

Und wie Wagen, bespannt mit freiem Wilde, so ziehn die

     Berge voran und so träget und eilet der Pfad.

2

Aber meinest du nun, es haben die Tore vergebens

     Aufgetan und den Weg freudig die Götter gemacht?

Und es schenken umsonst zu des Gastmahls Fülle die Guten

     Nebst dem Weine noch auch Beeren und Honig und Obst?

Schenken das purpurne Licht zu Festgesängen und kühl und

     Ruhig zu tieferem Freundesgespräche die Nacht?

Hält ein Ernsteres dich, so spars dem Winter und willst du

     Freien, habe Geduld, Freier beglücket der Mai.

Jetzt ist Anderes not, jetzt komm und feire des Herbstes

     Alte Sitte, noch jetzt blühet die Edle mit uns.

Eins nur gilt für den Tag, das Vaterland, und des Opfers

     Festlicher Flamme wirft jeder sein Eigenes zu.

Darum kränzt der gemeinsame Gott umsäuselnd das Haar uns,

     Und den eigenen Sinn schmelzet, wie Perlen, der Wein.

Dies bedeutet der Tisch, der geehrte, wenn, wie die Bienen,

     Rund um den Eichbaum, wir sitzen und singen um ihn,

Dies der Pokale Klang, und darum zwinget die wilden

     Seelen der streitenden Männer zusammen der Chor.

3

Aber damit uns nicht, gleich Allzuklugen, entfliehe

     Diese neigende Zeit, komm ich entgegen sogleich,

Bis an die Grenze des Lands, wo mir den lieben Geburtsort

     Und die Insel des Stroms blaues Gewässer umfließt.

Heilig ist mir der Ort, an beiden Ufern, der Fels auch,

     Der mit Garten und Haus grün aus den Wellen sich hebt.

Dort begegnen wir uns; o gütiges Licht! wo zuerst mich

     Deiner gefühlteren Strahlen mich einer betraf.

Dort begann und beginnt das liebe Leben von neuem;

     Aber des Vaters Grab seh ich und weine dir schon?

Wein und halt und habe den Freund und höre das Wort, das

     Einst mir in himmlischer Kunst Leiden der Liebe geheilt.

Andres erwacht! ich muß die Landesheroen ihm nennen,

     Barbarossa! dich auch, gütiger Christoph, und dich,

Konradin! wie du fielst, so fallen Starke, der Efeu

     Grünt am Fels und die Burg deckt das bacchantische Laub,

Doch Vergangenes ist, wie Künftiges, heilig den Sängern,

     Und in Tagen des Herbsts sühnen die Schatten wir uns.

4

So der Gewaltgen gedenk und des herzerhebenden Schicksals,

     Tatlos selber, und leicht, aber vom Aether doch auch

Angeschauet und fromm, wie die Alten, die göttlicherzognen

     Freudigen Dichter ziehn freudig das Land wir hinauf.

Groß ist das Werden umher. Dort von den äußersten Bergen

     Stammen der Jünglinge viel, steigen die Hügel herab.

Quellen rauschen von dort und hundert geschäftige Bäche,

     Kommen bei Tag und Nacht nieder und bauen das Land.

Aber der Meister pflügt die Mitte des Landes, die Furchen

     Ziehet der Neckarstrom, ziehet den Segen herab.

Und es kommen mit ihm Italiens Lüfte, die See schickt

     Ihre Wolken, sie schickt prächtige Sonnen mit ihm.

Darum wächset uns auch fast über das Haupt die gewaltge

     Fülle, denn hieher ward, hier in die Ebne das Gut

Reicher den Lieben gebracht, den Landesleuten, doch neidet

     Keiner an Bergen dort ihnen die Gärten, den Wein

Oder das üppige Gras und das Korn und die glühenden Bäume,

     Die am Wege gereiht über den Wanderern stehn.

5

Aber indes wir schaun und die mächtige Freude durchwandeln,

     Fliehet der Weg und der Tag uns, wie den Trunkenen, hin.

Denn mit heiligem Laub umkränzt erhebet die Stadt schon,

     Die gepriesene, dort leuchtend ihr priesterlich Haupt.

Herrlich steht sie und hält den Rebenstab und die Tanne

     Hoch in die seligen purpurnen Wolken empor.

Sei uns hold! dem Gast und dem Sohn, o Fürstin der Heimat!

     Glückliches Stuttgart, nimm freundlich den Fremdling mir auf!

Immer hast du Gesang mit Flöten und Saiten gebilligt,

     Wie ich glaub, und des Lieds kindlich Geschwätz und der Mühn

Süße Vergessenheit bei gegenwärtigem Geiste,

     Drum erfreuest du auch gerne den Sängern das Herz.

Aber ihr, ihr Größeren auch, ihr Frohen, die allzeit

     Leben und walten, erkannt, oder gewaltiger auch,

Wenn ihr wirket und schafft in heiliger Nacht und allein herrscht

     Und allmächtig empor ziehet ein ahnendes Volk,

Bis die Jünglinge sich der Väter droben erinnern,

     Mündig und hell vor euch steht der besonnene Mensch –

6

Engel des Vaterlands! o ihr, vor denen das Auge,

     Seis auch stark, und das Knie bricht dem vereinzelten Mann,

Daß er halten sich muß an die Freund und bitten die Teuern,

     Daß sie tragen mit ihm all die beglückende Last,

Habt, o Gütige, Dank für den und alle die Andern,

     Die mein Leben, mein Gut unter den Sterblichen sind.

Aber die Nacht kommt! laß uns eilen, zu feiern das Herbstfest

     Heut noch! voll ist das Herz, aber das Leben ist kurz,

Und was uns der himmlische Tag zu sagen geboten,

     Das zu nennen, mein Schmid! reichen wir beide nicht aus.

Treffliche bring ich dir und das Freudenfeuer wird hoch auf

     Schlagen und heiliger soll sprechen das kühnere Wort.

Siehe! da ist es rein! und des Gottes freundliche Gaben,

     Die wir teilen, sie sind zwischen den Liebenden nur.

Anderes nicht – o kommt! o macht es wahr! denn allein ja

     Bin ich und niemand nimmt mir von der Stirne den Traum?

Kommt und reicht, ihr Lieben, die Hand! das möge genug sein,

     Aber die größere Lust sparen dem Enkel wir auf.

The Universe as Poem

“Nature has no Outline: but Imagination … is Eternity.” - W^m. Blake

The dance between the scholar and the scribe,

The all-knowing void and the fugitive light,

The in-breath of love into the all,

The outbreath of fresh expression

That reaches, nevertheless, towards death,

The guise of endless recycling,

Just skipping the tripwires of the curse of permanence.

But the dark has its secrets, why the whole swells,

Always pushes new shoots away from the center:

It remembers all. How could time exist without

The memory? And how can memory release what’s already

Been imagined, when life comes straight out of the mind,

The root of all vibrations, that together move as one

Around the akasha, at the center,

Which hides in silence, in darkness, in death,

So life can paint from life, half-experienced,

Half-forgotten, as if the cave is blank,

For the forms, the connections, the terms

Are never again the same,

As there is no end to desire,

Its spiralings.

The Distance from Experience

The trees are red, and there is no
Explanation, now that the sun has
Moved behind the wall. I am so
Skeptical, because so gullible,
Fighting what I know
Because I need to know it.
I toss metaphors like a well-thrown scarf,
For the bloom of life is absolute
And there’s so many ways to slice and dice
It starts to feel at home, the fractures.

Yet the one resists the prism
That turns bird wings, shreds of
Eucalyptus, sidewalks red,
For perspective — what we infants
Lean on to help us walk.
It must be shown to be illusion,
Manipulation just like time and space
And things —

I thought I was exhausted
Giving all I had to the world, when in fact
It was tiring to hold everything inside,
To have never given anything away.

The Limits of Imagination

The streets are red
But since what's real is erased on waking
It's only cars stopping in the rain.

5:5

From knowledge comes light,
From light comes healing
— The service of learning
Releases the truth
From the places it had escaped to
When the heart was burning
— To surrender

Information blows through
Like a rainstorm
And peels down the walls
— Dissolved by consciousness
Like all things actual
— What's left —
The feel of the brick,
The chill in the air
— Wordless and purposeless —
The fix of experience
— What wisdom there is

Song of the Dayslave

My body turns to lightning each night
But morning's forms attract a fire from inside
To ignite — so much empathy
To become what it envies,
Only to sound the mournful chord
At what it is not.

The Cities on Pluto

When I woke up this morning I was still on Pluto
— How silly to worry about the poles
Or the grays or how Paris will burn today
When the fjords are this blue, the coastline this familiar,
The dunes that spectacular, dusted as they are
With new nitrogen snow, and when cities gleam like crystals,
High rises peeking squarely through the cliffs
To overlook the mighty rivers, the sculpted methane tors,
The farms so neat and orderly, that stretch it seems to infinity,
And the clouds, the clouds, no words can describe
The way that they appear for the first time ...
But too soon the decor changed, to pepper trees and green,
And people wandering aimless under clouds of coal tar ash
In less-than-hospitable carbon monoxide'd air —
When will they be told how life exists beyond all forms,
How people live, 30 scant degrees from absolute zero,
Lives just like theirs, just as unbelievable?

Another Moment Free of Mind

If not for the cognitive dissonance
This life would all make sense,
Enough to bear with equanimity
— Grace flowing from fingertips
The way it does now, without our knowing

The Day the Theories Didn't Work

The freedom of not knowing
Is like that class in school that broke you
Where true learning is required:
To hear the voices of everything say
How much that you have hurt them.

The Stringpushers

God may be silent
But I am not
The light moves so quick
Away from my hand
It's like I don't 
Command it
And there's only
The awe of observing
As a child first watches
A marigold explode
Knowing only
She must get to
The ends of space
To reach this home

Blakean 2

Self-marginalized —
To catch the wideness of the multiverse
Inside this tiny shell —
So hope fills out of emptiness
In a flask that must be sealed

The World Outside the Skin

Each of us have lived
     A raindrop's life
Yet we watch the lines
     Roll down the glass
To see the other side:
     What might
Recognize us
     Through the mist

The Poem That Says No

It’s when the crack appears for your reply

That silence floods the room like what’s to hide

The light like mathematics glues the forms

But proofs are more elusive than before

The unwatched weed, the orphan eyes are all

That can be said of the truth as it falls

The rich, viscous pupils have void inside

To counter the glare of the surface lie

As the spiral depths pull further away

Behind the crystal where deities play

Promising all that inmates guarantee

To those who don’t quite realize they are free

We plan: a crust of land, love that won’t die

While the words we use dissolve when birds go by

A Seemingly Random Murmuration of Pigeon

The world seems content

     to move on without us,

How we hesitate to peek

     into its veil,

As if invisible was the same

     thing as naked,

And the shapes passing by

     were really people.

How hard it must be for the tree

     not to ask any favors,

For the birds not to care

     what we think.

And so it is for us, to forget

    what we know,

Block the whispers

    of raw eternity.

Sunset as Prison

No words could capture these shadows,

How they open and close on the real

Like a dream is remembered,

Its epiphanies only a feeling

Not meant to be held in a mind,

That master of this untrue world.

Yet something unknown shines,

Sounds pass from far away

And as much as we name it to constrain

Our experience, it persists

Where it cannot exist. The visible

Always glistens, things turn ever more perfect,

Still you cry through the night for the lover

You can’t see, the color, the truth,

As if all that is has suddenly

Gone missing.

At a Methadone Clinic in Saugus

The shithole streets are frosted glass,

No pain, no cars, no stars. No early morning

Rotgut waft from the blue haze off Nahant.

The desolate neighbors Lighthouse Tattoo

And the Fountain of Life Apostolic Church

Shine an icy drool through the windows and

Into the warm “cutting edge recovery” line

Which includes cookie monster pajama pants,

Sunglasses for under the fluorescent ballasts,

Bundled children’s happy questions answered

With “Your dad is the laziest man alive – sleeps

15 hours a day.”  Behind them a man claims he

Owns a chain of vaping stores: “Went to get my

Juice – said there were no royalties — face-to-face,

You’re in Kentucky now – I need to get a lawyer.”

They talk as if their life depended on their wit

And back-room connections. “Oh yeah I remember

You, we used to sell food stamps together

With Blaze at that check-cashing front they raided

Next to Bunghole Liquors in Danvers.” They seem

As content as any with the condition of the roads,

The fact that the candlepin lanes have closed,

The cruelty in every booted cry for approval,

And laugh like they aren’t the punchline in a town

That never realized it is dead — that much they know,

For wearing the robes of the living is so much more fun

Now, with burglaries turned to work-release careers

And the kindness of strange nurses a perpetual

Lady of obligation. The past, like everything else, is too

Painful. Still, like the possible not yet polluted mussels,

Some talk may go uncorrected, like how the dog

With the different colored eyes wags her tail.

Owl Days #30

The moon is full of unjustifiable emotion,
The truth is at 7 degrees,
The wind is angry that the past is redeemed.
All the painted gnomes are complete.
The nests high in the trees
Turned out to be for squirrels
Not wild turkeys. They call that
Learning. It's time to put
My face back on, and peel
All the masks — that of others — away
And time to let what is there
— It is never enough — be.
Wisdom will continue to be found
In the sound of absence leaving.

Owl Days #29

I have too much compassion
To do anything about evil;
I watch the ideals burn
As if I was the one who lit the match,
'Cos I won't do more than tell the truth
And let it go, then punish myself
As the good people turn bad
With just a few choice words
And dangling suggestions — as if
They were meant to be bad all along —
And I stay with them as they march
For the unresisted murders in their name
As if I believed with them it would take
Their fear and guilt away, and I have to say
They did nothing wrong, everything
Will be okay,  there are points or two
Where we agree, for that is what love does
Behind the veil, it can only spend
A little time in hell,
There's fear, there's fear, perhaps it doesn't
Care enough to disappear.

Owl Days #28

At the table with the grapes and cheese
The distant past trades stories with the dying present,
Vying to be cooler, funnier, more relevant,
Most true to all who stand around the light
Hoping for rapture in a moment
That spins ceaselessly around the two poles
Surviving on a common magnetism.
How tangibly they live inside each other already,
One looking to be recognized, the other
Vindicated, the heartfelt gifts they offer
To each other, as if there is no self,
Is the compassion of some sufferers to share,
For the perfection of the moment,
The most remote of mistresses,
Never whispers in their ear that they exist.

Owl Days #27

The pop of black pebbles,
The shifting of levels,
The surf says so much
It is all I can do to stare —
People are somewhere
Across the sea.
The mind keeps churning out thought
To fold in and frothily savor
Then retract to connect
Then send more lines in
To invade and cover again.
It makes one deaf to the exhortations
Of those who create for a reason
They need then to understand.

Owl Days #26

Or could it be I simply want to know
What I don't know?
My beliefs won't yield to others
Often enough —
Such a primordial fear of darkness,
That some crumb of knowledge
Exists outside my mind,
As if each crab has in its head
Everything that every crab knows —
And who am I to say that isn't true?

Impressions of Decadent Sea

Third revision

I.
Morning comes like tiger stripes
     to flap upon the swells
like gulls that pull invisible sails
     across the agate cloud
as morning shows compassion
     and the sea on pewter kindness
serves beads of sun like runny eggs
and a distant grapefruit shining
               with a joyous cherry top.
Where phantom fins in weedy skeins
     rope through the tinsel sheen
          as if on mystery feeding.

The sea protects its fishes,
     makes every gleam of sun seem jumping life
          to shimmer in mid-air like rising stars
               as if this heaven isn't really there.
Then the ocean lightens
     from cloud openings of blue, to express,
          without meaning to, something of the secret

Of these restless peaks, that drive
     like ordered armies, how they
          send out tribal lines as one
               long irritation of current
Across the deep blue monochrome
     forever torn by white and wrinkled black
          like slackened fabric pulled forever tight.

II.
The waves smooth out by afternoon
     from sunlight's white steam iron,
          rough wool brushed to burnished pearl
               that swirls with impossibility,
That the water never stops its churn
     in honor of our mind
          listing in the golden light, side to side.

But the blue sky lets the blue sea
     darken back to mystery:
          it's but the play on water brows of light
               that makes us speculate there's something there;
It could be veins of coal,
     obsidian sun sharpened
          for all we know, as we move along alone.

From our pirate masque we call the clouds
     macabre across the Baja,
          and in between the thing we call the void,
               a kind of mirror on the unseen.
All the ocean has of us
     is that light shining back
          as a momentary hope.

III.
The blue grows bolder as it slips
     across the dying sun, become a dish,
          a dome, a hover of aurora
               before her last light twinkles above water
And sky spreads hues of purple-rose
     and peach-skin lavender
          while the sea below stays blue and undisturbed
save its endless agitation
     as it drifts to neither yield nor connect
          just persist, overcoming
               what no longer has a bearing or a path.

We cross what has no voice
     or face, just sound and sight bereft
          just like our longing
to form the plastic ocean
     in the yoke strap of the human
          seeking purpose, finding meaning
               in emotion come like beads of moon off of the swells
     that, though impossible to know, we intone
          a kind of prayer to, of actual accord,
          to the hidden lace imprisoned
     by the disappearing self.

Man-made lamp on inky whirl,
     fish scales rise against the spiral,
          all we want imposed on ocean
               as imposture;
All the implications are a circle
     banging round our brains
          as all we have.

IV.
No succor, just transcendence;
     brain strands pulse in milky plumes,
          continually collide
               without consequence,
Just shears of sea expressing,
     as the weight bears languidly away,
          rainbow spray from white-capped frosting.

A rolling boil of blue, adjusting,
     sends would-be shapes back to the void,
          all the unborn shores and fields and mountains
               for us, it seems, to know
In the moment they are gone:
     the blue translucent dunes,
          the bolts of sapphire sun.

Smoke appears along the sea
     like a Portuguese Man-o-War
          and the waves dissolve in nebulous mist
               that hits the deck like tea-kettle steam
Releasing every vision back to white,
     which clears to fresh nothingness, born-again sea
          as a dolphin breaks the plane
          to children squealing.

Owl Days #25

A post-truth world was supposed to make things
Easier, cut the humorless specialists
Out entirely, and let us imagine a better
Or at least more convenient world,
Instead of one less seawall against
The terror of never being right,
One more meaningless experience
To keep to your twitching self,
And more fallacious appeals
To the cloud of facts and supple
Suppositions where the terms are
Safely two dimensional, and different
Views turn without any pretense of
Foreplay instantly into violence.

Owl Days #24

The curse of oneness
Is with you from birth,
You never quite get over
Not knowing where you begin
And your echo ends ...
But you become friends
With strange versions of yourself,
Learn it's okay to think differently,
Even to disagree,
For the way sounds travel
Over time and through space,
The message that was sent
Is often unrecognizable
To what is received.

Owl Days #23

The networks and patterns wait there thus,
For the eccentric,
The as unusual as love's
Inexplicable pawns,
To make one unexpectedly leap
From nothingness revealed
To the promise of an enemy
Awaiting in the warmth of the void.

But the shopping cart in the park
Is soon enclosed by loving eyes
That make it ever-one with the eternals,
And there are not any lines anymore
At The Dive Bar -- it, too, has disappeared
From regard, a story once, then slickest
Reference, now indistinguishable
From unfeeling plants and lifeless sky.

Owl Days #22

Death in the sky makes the birdsong

Of immortality more profound.

The players and sides in the war are,

As usual, obscure, but life, just as mysterious,

Goes on, it is up to you to choose between

The overwhelming silence or

The omnipotent propaganda.

Both offer a victory of sorts,

As long as you know how to surrender:

The dream is always better

On the other side of the real,

As the mind that loves a labyrinth

Needs to be trapped to know escape.

Either way, some faith dissolves some

Mystery, a faith in some exclusionary God.

The silver light falls on the corridor

As a guide to perfection

That finds everything perfect already,

Perfectly one in separation.

Owl Days #21

The wind makes the cars so quiet as they pass,
As if they're the nowhere of their destinations,
But their rotors reply with their own overruling squall.

The building seems to be constructed of words
For all the need of talk the workers show
As they vie for loudest voice before the Lord.

The freight train threatens from far away
With its scraping void, as if to say
No one will escape this ringing unscathed.

Its horn moans, the birds fill their beaks with song
Instead of seeds, the wind stirs a frenzy in the leaves
All in fear of not having the next, last word.

For silence has a way of answering;
It makes everything that came before it
Seem to have never existed.

Owl Days #20

Hallelujah again I'm wrong.
If others don't bring me peace I have failed
To seek peace instead of seeking others
— How they feel, where I can help,
What we can learn — the work of ego
To see itself, not of spirit, that calls such a self
A false impression, a moving shadow of heaven,
Not what comes then with the sun through the garden,
The unflappable, real, alien I.

Owl Days #19

After a certain number of lives you don't exist anymore.
Erasure becomes a habit hard to break.
The other is in such sharp contrast
And you, you are the blur,
As you sift through new possibilities,
Unresolved historical facts,
Like clues in other people's faces
To confiscate in dark alcoves, where they disappear
And the mystery persists:
Why the others don't cooperate at all
With what I think, or take even
A minimum of direction without a hand out
For an impossible, unquenchable treat, or, worse,
Abandon me to the horror show of consciousness ...
It's enough to make me wish to fold into the sweet
Roll of death, to get, at least, away. O how they
Are laughing, in the sky, at that surprise,
How two wrongs can never make a right
But three might.

Owl Days #18

I guess all that makes me illegal,
Fit for the night with its somnolent glare,
My pearls like the sun fenced in secret
To evade being snared by the long,
Compassionate arm of blind Justicia,
Who senses me come and go,
Even into my hole, but my shadow
Never quite interferes
With the things that are judged by appearance.
Still, I am a thief,
Not because there's anything I steal,
But because they can't know
What they've let fall away
— Too painful to ask its return.

Elegies by Hölderlin: The Walk to the Country

With Landauer

Come, friend, out into the open! Though only a little

     Shines down on us today and the skies are closed up tight.

Neither the mountains nor the tops of trees have risen yet

     As we had wished, and the air rests empty of song.

The dullness lulls the passages to sleep, and almost makes me

     Wish it seemed, or was, that we weren’t in this leaden age.

However that wish succeeds, righteous believers doubt such hopes

     Could be sacred for a day, or even a moment.  

For they’re not a little pleased with what we’ve gained from heaven,

     That refuses yet begrudges the children in the end.

Only converses such as ours, the footsteps and the efforts,

     Are worth the returns, and our pleasure is the whole truth.

This is my hope when we actually begin what it is

     We wish for, and our tongues are finally unfastened,

And the word is found, and our hearts are lifted up and away,

      And cogitations escape from a more drunken brow,

As the blossom of the sky, with the same start time as ours,

     Opens to the open gaze the luminous becomes.

For what we want is not so mighty, but a part of life,

      And seems honorable and happy at the same time.

But with it comes again as well the blessing-bringing swallows,

     Always a few more, before summer, in the country.

Up there specifically to consecrate the ground with high speech,

     Where the visitors build the sensible host his house;

That they taste and behold the most beautiful, the fullness

     Of soil, openly, in accord with spirit, ardor

Of heart, to feast and dance and sing and crown Stuttgart with joy,

     That is why we desire to go up the hill today.

May Mailicht the philanthropist explain it better still,

     Reiterated by the self-educated guests,

Or, as is the ancient and usual custom, to please

     Others, who so like the gods look back on us smiling,

May the carpenter do the talking from the top of the roof,

     The trick that we too performed, as well as we could.

The place is but beautiful, when in festivals of spring

     The valley lets loose its blooms, when the Neckar descends

Greening thickets and pastures and all the blossoming trees

     With countless white flowers that sway lumbering in air,

Below the mountains bedecked with little clouds, where the vines

     Dawn and grow and warm under the sunlit aroma …

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Der Gang aufs Land

An Landauer

Komm! ins Offene, Freund! zwar glänzt ein Weniges heute

     Nur herunter und eng schließet der Himmel uns ein.

Weder die Berge sind noch aufgegangen des Waldes

     Gipfel nach Wunsch und leer ruht von Gesange die Luft.

Trüb ists heut, es schlummern die Gäng und die Gassen und fast will

     Mir es scheinen, es sei, als in der bleiernen Zeit.

Dennoch gelinget der Wunsch, Rechtglaubige zweifeln an Einer

     Stunde nicht und der Lust bleibe geweihet der Tag.

Denn nicht wenig erfreut, was wir vom Himmel gewonnen,

     Wenn ers weigert und doch gönnet den Kindern zuletzt.

Nur daß solcher Reden und auch der Schritt' und der Mühe

     Wert der Gewinn und ganz wahr das Ergötzliche sei.

Darum hoff ich sogar, es werde, wenn das Gewünschte

     Wir beginnen und erst unsere Zunge gelöst,

Und gefunden das Wort, und aufgegangen das Herz ist,

     Und von trunkener Stirn höher Besinnen entspringt,

Mit der unsern zugleich des Himmels Blüte beginnen,

     Und dem offenen Blick offen der Leuchtende sein.

Denn nicht Mächtiges ists, zum Leben aber gehört es,

     Was wir wollen, und scheint schicklich und freudig zugleich.

Aber kommen doch auch der segenbringenden Schwalben

     Immer einige noch, ehe der Sommer, ins Land.

Nämlich droben zu weihn bei guter Rede den Boden,

     Wo den Gästen das Haus baut der verständige Wirt;

Daß sie kosten und schaun das Schönste, die Fülle des Landes,

     Daß, wie das Herz es wünscht, offen, dem Geiste gemäß

Mahl und Tanz und Gesang und Stuttgarts Freude gekrönt sei,

     Deshalb wollen wir heut wünschend den Hügel hinauf.

Mög ein Besseres noch das menschenfreundliche Mailicht

     Drüber sprechen, von selbst bildsamen Gästen erklärt,

Oder, wie sonst, wenns andern gefällt, denn alt ist die Sitte,

     Und es schauen so oft lächelnd die Götter auf uns,

Möge der Zimmermann vom Gipfel des Daches den Spruch tun,

     Wir, so gut es gelang, haben das Unsre getan.

Aber schön ist der Ort, wenn in Feiertagen des Frühlings

     Aufgegangen das Tal, wenn mit dem Neckar herab

Weiden grünend und Wald und all die grünenden Bäume

     Zahllos, blühend weiß, wallen in wiegender Luft,

Aber mit Wölkchen bedeckt an Bergen herunter der Weinstock

     Dämmert und wächst und erwarmt unter dem sonnigen Duft.

Owl Days #17

The uncorrected world is like a sock
To the jaw. It's nothing personal.
What complement in such diversity
Of error could I be, happier
Making mistakes together, and holding
Each others' heads underwater with a smile?
That it may free me from having to see
The terror of grace alone, and to
Painlessly share in others' suffering?
Emotional resonance may be
The difference between life and death, they say,
While reading a book on medieval knights
Who keep ogres at bay does nothing
For humanity or for the sky.

Owl Days #16

This goldlust resists what is,
As if the world is a piece of myself
That must be aligned austere
To compulsion, what I call the ideal.
The illusion that the world exists
Is too difficult sometimes to believe.

Owl Days #15

How long can you keep silence quiet?
Like combing the hair of a corpse
There's only so many ways to articulate
The false, to tease it to be true.
The shoe is always waiting to drop,
Breaths escape, the air goes out of the room
And the best laid plans collapse like cards.
Silence never even lifted its sword.
It took every ounce of strength not to.

Owl Days #14

The words of wisdom

Start with gurgles, grow to gibber,

Then break branches to fake swordfight with trees,

And soon they are confused

By the sun when they are moon

And the dark when they are light.

Before long they’ve amassed armies and acolytes

And throw flames over virgin soil,

But their victories are temporary,

Their doubts too persistent,

And they fall back eventually

To what they are:

Dependent on others,

Who now see what once was meaning

Only a will to mean,

Like a blind woman leads with her stick.

Owl Days #13

The past is insurmountable.
One heart. Subdivided.
Each moment has its catch,
The slightest grimace for
The anticipated hammer
Of the gun that never fired.
The tear in one
Tears all the hearts.
Whatever I've learned has been forgotten
In the pain
Of what I knew before
Not changing,
Only the heel of time walking away
From the shoe gum chewed up scenery of my crime,
Trying to shove off from the Alcatraz of self
As if the forms beyond the fog are a city.

Owl Days #12

There is me on one side
And nothing on the other.
That's why I look from every 2nd story window,
Walk every dog down the sidewalk,
Deliver every piece of mail to my yard:
To examine what I'm doing
And silently judge.

Owl Days #11

The two great mysteries: love and death,
The all and the nothing,
The one thing that exists
And everything that doesn't —
Ripe fruit for empty minds,
Ones not being used, in that moment,
By the stream that has no cause,
Offers no solution,
And calmly floats as if it's superfluous,
An explanation.

Return to Whiting Ranch

Spirit will get you at a certain point,

After the desert scents have snaked over dead streams

And the dead trees have been discarded like weapons.

What is it that makes the rustling breeze

Become the rosary squeeze of the divine?

Dry fungi and dead leaves are as pink as the sand.

Where does the desert begin?

Where the stone exposes its nakedness?

Where the cactus rose offers itself to the sun

And the delicate branches wave from far away?

The red of the canyon swallows us 

With its cavernous limbs, and rouges the countryside 

Where the mountains end, in sheer sunlit sides

Where I stare until the God within them appears.

But they stay, in their silence, as bare

As the branches cantankerous in their beds

And the memory of my release from this provisional Eden.

The noises of voices continuous from below cast off

The spirit wind for the peaks of non-existence,

As hordes spread out to cover every toehold in the canyon.

There’s a few moments of silence down the hill,

Where crickets keep time with the wideness of what is,

The stream that carries us without touching,

The sunlit peaks, now so far away, take life

Only from below.