although we were not
that their merely being there
means something
that soon
we may touch, love, explain
are likewise permanent
with such permanence as time has
whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
is not in question
they know me well who surround me here,
know well my afflictions and weakness
see, they depart, and we go with them
and the rest
is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action
in the brown baked features
the eyes of a familiar compound ghost
both intimate and unidentifiable where every word is at home,
taking its place to support the others,
the word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
an easy commerce of the old and the new,
the common word exact without vulgarity,
the formal word precise but not pedantic,
the complete consort dancing together
every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
every poem an epitaph we, content at the last
if our temporal reversion nourish
the life of significant soil
not too far from the yew-tree
who are only undefeated
because we have gone on trying
they'll long outlast our oblivion
and never know that we are gone
on a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
in navigable weather it is always a seamark
to lay a course by, but in the sombre season
or the sudden fury, is what it always was
now they are paolo, francesca,
not two friends who are sharing
the savour of a fable
but i cannot say where
so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing
the wonder that i feel is easy,
yet ease is cause of wonder
a condition of complete simplicity
costing not less than everything
and all shall be well and
all manner of thing shall be well
when the tongues of flames are in-folded
into the crowned knot of fire
and the fire and the rose are one
while the world moves
in appetency, on its metalled ways
of time past and time future
this is the one way, and the other
is the same, not in movement
but abstention from movememnt
are you here?
what
where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
the prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
prayer at the calamitous annunciation? in spite of which we like to think
that we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
again, in spite of that, we call this friday good
each
joining a neighbor, as though speech
were a still performance
the shame
of things ill done and done to others' harm
which once you took for exercise of virtue
you'll not be seen to visit that well
under white sun or yellow moon the communication
of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living
'on whatever sphere of being
the mind of a man may be intent
at the time of death' - that is the one action
which shall fructify in the lives of others
and the time of death is every moment and do not think of the fruit of action
driven by daemonic, chthonic
powers the day was breaking
and that is where we start
not as making a trip that will be unpayable
for a haul that will not bear examination
if i think of a king at nightfall,
of three men, and more, on the scaffold
and a few who died forgotten
in other places, here and abroad,
and of one who died blind and quiet,
why should we celebrate
these dead men more than the dying?
for liberation - not less of love but expanding
of love beyond desire, and so liberation
from the future as well as the past
the first snow will fall
america waits for me on every street,
but i feel in the decline of evening
today so long, and yesterday so brief
they say
i gaze but don't understand
it's as if they were strangers
but this is the nearest, in place and time,
now and in england
you'll never see the bright moon again,
you've now achieved the unalterable
sum of moments granted you by fate
space, time and borges now leaving me
all who have loved me and forgotten i may not comprehend, may not remember
not admiration or victory
but simply to be accepted
as part of an undeniable reality,
like stones and trees
but that which is only living
can only die
the patient is no longer here
no wind, but pentecostal fire
in the dark time of the year
the taste of fruit, the taste of water,
that face returned to us in dream,
the first jasmine flowers of november,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we thought forever lost,
the pulsing of a hexameter,
the little key that opens a house,
the smell of sandalwood or library,
the ancient name of a street,
the colourations of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date that we were searching for,
counting the twelve dark bell-strokes,
a sudden physical pain