On Reflection
Far
from the din of the articulated world,
I wanted to be content
in an empty room--
a barn on the hillside like a bone,
a limbo of afternoons strung together like cardboard boxes,
to be free of your image--
crown
of bees, pail of black water
staggering through
the pitiful corn.
I can’t always see through it.
The mind is a pond layered in lilies.
The
mind is a pond layered in lilies.
I can’t always
see through it
staggering through the pitiful corn.
Crown of Bees, Pail of Black Water,
to
be of your image--
a limbo of afternoons strung together
like cardboard boxes,
a barn on the hillside
like a bone.
I wanted to be content in an empty room
far from the din of the articulated world.
On Reflection
Windscape
Reflection
A great pain strafed
the city.
Reflection
The air was a tapestry weft with cries.
Reflection
Everywhere,
women bandaged
the pietas of soldiers.
Reflection
They washed their
babies with sand.
Reflection
They slept above enormous knives.
Reflection
Finally,
the sky erupted
with little blue parachutes.
Reflection
Torn
from faces, veils
waltzed across the plaza,
Reflection
which
was like someone
leaving a wedding ring
Reflection
inside the body of
a bride.
Reflection
Because You Refuse to Speak
Reflection
A hammer sounds
between two mountains.
Reflection
White butterflies scribble
in tall grass.
Reflection
A passing cloud.
Reflection
Out on the pond, a
snake
inside a swan glides past.
Reflection
The Hymn of the Pearl to the Moon
Reflection
Cast in your image
and into darkness
Reflection
we are luminous nudes
Reflection
bathing
in firelight
by cave pools
Reflection
mistaking
our reflections
for
gods.
Reflection
Restoring the Fourteen Stations of the Cross
Reflection Reflection
I looked down on a mountain,
on a cry rising up from the cracked
earth. I looked down on the swine and the cattle,
and they moaned a
little. And I looked
down on the tiny beings with their tiny tools, and
a
few looked back and shuddered. I looked on their blades slung low
on
their hips, their ropes and whips, their hem-stained gowns, their
field
of filthy crosses. And it was good. And looked down then on
a
shepherd lost. I moved over his path in the dust, and it vanished
under
my great fist. This too was good. He stumbled. He bled over
stones.
Everything was as it should be. I painted him pale and thin
as
parchment. I drained blood from his crown thick and dark like
oxblood.
In the end, his nimbus crumbled in my fingers. And when he
looked up into the firmament— I
withdrew from him, from all of them.
-from Cloisters
