1
If I could write the radiance of birds
Or name the births of all the continents,
Would I be closer to your secret mind?
Others have touched the penetralia
Of your obscure recess, so why can’t I?
When will the azure of your voice proclaim
The feasts of patience come? Never?
So I lose you among the guests and ghosts.
2
Let’s dip into the monologue of someone else.
Wow. It is
noisy in here. Like windows
Thrown open on the loudest city ever built.
Things are always different from what they might be.
Time is moving away from itself
Like a train whose cars are getting farther apart.
Some things will never grow old.
Mysterious things we have no use for.
3
The languages of flowers will revolt the mind
Seeing into the long dark passages that never add
Up into constructions, like the gusts of horses
That galloped away before these hills rode in.
The obstacles are supposed to have some use,
Like an opportunity.
Optimism fizzles like a drink
While unknowable rendezvous arrange
The flowing substances, the dark necessities.
4
Walking around naked on the moon,
I stop only to consider the coffee stain
In the glass of the soul.
The house is defenestrated with griffin claws
And a leopard is laughing at emptiness.
Some people are never
Satisfied they didn’t discover the Pacific.
Not even I can wish you away.
5
I suppose I ought to love the sea.
But I hate it.
That’s why
I don’t return to America. I love the land.
The great thing is to love something.
If you wait for things to change, you’ll never do anything.
I don’t know whether you know.
The masses are seething beyond the portico.
If only we would bother to perceive them.
