At The End …
At the end clarity raves, dark October
the countryside transparent and skeletal
shadows thrust to the heart of the earth
glaciers touch the eyes with such fire
day never escapes the dawn’s exquisite blue
drunk with prisms and love one trembles
before this blond
transparent mistress of the heights
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Mozart
To You: when I’ve heard your summer’s rainbow:
joy radiant on that arc’s summit
the poignards of grief
are overwhelmed flooded with innumerable clouds
and birds,
in the meadow the scythe bypasses the sadness
spared for day’s pleasure,
nostalgia free from so bitter a tenderness
have you seen Salzburg at dawn in summer
shiver of pleasure the sleeping sun swallowed by
a cloud.
Shiver – Salzburg in summer
o divine mirth you’ll die captive o discovered
youth
but for one last day make use of these solid hills,
rain passes, storm’s end. O divine brightness
appease those sitting with eyes closed in the
concert halls of the world.
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Spellbound
You are my sorrow my terror my love
o imagination
you are my hangman o book where I’ve transplanted
the mountain river and bird
you are my misery o confession.
The fallen poet speaks
shredding his book printed in the hub of human
cities.
But pregnant with the sighing of willows
his other voices
answers
o ungrateful book o flawed poem,
error constant error of he who has not yet invented it,
o you are my final rest and fortress
against the infidel armies
elsewhere all is destruction while you
are sacred,
and the devil, did he truly loves all that he lusted for?
And what was the demon’s desire –
A book
replies the voice illumined by a cypress, aged
and solar,
yours mine or the other,
waiting on command.
The birds sing in the sky without
end.
And once more the poet is in clarity
he reassembles the threads of the book, once
more blinded, invisible,
he loses his family, and writes the word
he writes the first word of the book.
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Landscape With Travelers
To wander happily in the sacred desert
and from the she-wolf’s teats beneficence, as from
waters meandering the native land
once brute and wild
and now tame, to drink, lost-and-found child;
during the spring when to the steaming heart
of the grove winged nomads return
the day descends into a solitude
of shrub and palm, summer birds
among the bees, and the imagined mountains.
For there are flowers which do not sprout from the earth
but grow, autonomous selves in a barren soil.
More light than substance, and no joy in picking them.
Already golden they lift forbidden blossoms,
as poised as thoughts.