Breathturn into Timestead (10 page)

You—all, all real. I—all delusion.)

 

 

E
RODED
by

the beamwind of your speech

the gaudy chatter of the pseudo-

experienced—the hundred-

tongued perjury-

poem, the noem.

Evorsion-

ed,

free

the path through the men-

shaped snow,

the penitent's snow, to

the hospitable

glacier-parlors and -tables.

Deep

in the timecrevasse,

in the

honeycomb-ice

waits, a breathcrystal,

your unalterable

testimony.

 

 

II

B
Y THE GREAT

Eye-

less

scooped from your eyes:

the six-

edged, denialwhite

erratic.

A blind man's hand, it also starhard

from name-wandering,

rests on him, as

long as on you,

Esther.

 

 

S
INGABLE REMNANT
—the outline

of him, who through

the sicklescript broke through unvoiced,

apart, at the snowplace.

Whirling

under comet-

brows

the gaze's bulk, toward

which the eclipsed, tiny

heart-satellite drifts

with the

spark caught outside.

—Disenfranchised lip, announce,

that something happens, still,

not far from you.

 

 

F
LOWING
, big-

celled sleepingden.

Each

partition traveled

by graysquadrons.

The letters are breaking formation,

the last

dreamproof skiffs—

each with

part of the still

to be sunken sign

in

the towrope's vulturegrip.

 

 

T
WENTY FOREVER

evaporated Schlüsselburg-primroses

in your swimming left

fist.

Into the fish-

scale etched:

the lines of the hand

from which they grew.

Heaven- and earth-

acid flowed together.

The time-

reckoning worked out, without remainder. Cruising

—for your, quick melancholy, sake—

scale and fist.

 

 

N
O SANDART ANYMORE
, no sandbook, no masters.

Nothing in the dice. How

many mutes?

Seventen.

Your question—your answer.

Your chant, what does it know?

Deepinsnow,

                       Eepinno,

                                       I—i—o.

 

 

B
RIGHTNESSHUNGER
—with it

I walked up the bread-

step, under

the blindness-

bell:

it, water-

clear,

claps itself over

the freedom that climbed with

me, that misclimbed

too high, on which

one of the heavens gorged itself,

that I let vault above

the worddrenched

image orbit, blood orbit.

 

 

W
HEN WHITENESS ASSAILED US
, at night;

when from the libation-ewer more

than water came;

when the skinned knee

gave the sacrificebell the nod:

Fly!—

Then

I still

was whole.

 

 

H
OLLOW LIFEHOMESTEAD
. In the windtrap

the lung

blown empty

flowers. A handful

sleepcorn

drifts from the mouth

stammered true

out toward the snow-

conversations.

 

 

O
VER THREE
in sea-

drunken sleep

with brownalgae-blood

ciphered breast-

nipplestones

clap your

from the last

raincord breaking

loose sky.

And let

your freshwatermussel that rode

with you to this place

lap all that

up, before

you hold her to the ear

of a clock's shadow,

evenings.

 

 

O
N THE WHITE PHILACTERY
—the

Lord of this hour

was

a wintercreature, for his

sake

happened what happened—

my climbing mouth bit in, once more,

when it looked for you, smoketrace

you, up there,

in woman's shape,

you on the journey to my

firethoughts in the blackgravel

beyond the cleftwords, through

which I saw you walk, high-

legged and

the heavylipped own

head

on the by my

deadly accurate

hands

living body.

Tell your fingers

accompanying you far in-

side the crevasses, how

I knew you, how far

I pushed you into the deep,

where my most bitter dream

slept with you heart-fro, in the bed

of my inextinguishable name.

 

 

G
O BLIND
today already:

eternity too is full of eyes—

wherein

drowns, what helped the images

over the path they came,

wherein

expires, what took you too out of

language with a gesture

that you let happen like

the dance of two words of just

autumn and silk and nothingness.

 

 

L
ATEWOODDAY
under

netnerved skyleaf. Through

bigcelled idlehours clambers, in rain,

the blackblue, the

thoughtbeetle.

Animal-bloodsoming words

crowd before its feelers.

 

 

T
ODAY
:

nightthings, again, fire whipped.

Glowing

naked-plants-dance.

(Yesterday:

above the rowing names

floated faithfulness;

chalk went around writing;

open it laid and greeted:

the turned-to-water book.)

The owl-pebble raffled—

from the sleep-cornice

he looks down

upon the five-eye, to whom you devolved.

Otherwise?

Half- and quarter-

allies on

the side of the beaten. Riches of

lost-soured

language.

When they impale

the last shadow,

you burn the vowing hand free.

 

 

M
IDDAY
, with

seconds' flurry,

in the roundgraveshadow, into my

chambered pain

—with you, hither-

silenced, I lived

two days in Rome

on ocher and red—

you come, I already lie there,

gliding light through the doors, horizontal—:

the arms holding you become visible, only they. That much

secrecy

I still summoned, in spite of all.

 

 

S
OWN UNDER
the skin of my hands:

your name comforted

by hands.

When I knead the lump

of air, our nourishment,

it is leavened by the

letters' shimmer from

the lunatic-open

pore.

 

 

T
HE HOURGLASS
, deep

in paeony shadow, buried:

When Thinking comes down

the Pentecost-lane, finally,

it inherits that empire,

where you, mired, test the wind.

 

 

HARBOR

Sorehealed: where—,

when you were like me, criss-

and crossdreamt by

schnappsbottlenecks at the

whore table

—cast

my happiness aright, Seahair,

heap up the wave, that carries me, Blackcurse,

break your way

through the hottest womb,

Icesorrowpen—,

where-

to

didn't you come to lie with me, even

on the benches

at Mother Clausen's, yes, she

knows, how often I sang all

the way up into your throat, hey-diddle-doo,

like the bilberryblue

alder of homeland with all its leaves,

hey-doodle-dee,

you, like the

astral-flute from

beyond the worldridge—there too

we swam, nakednudes, swam,

the abyssverse on

the fire-red forehead—unconsumed by

fire the deep-

inside flooding gold

dug its paths upward—,

                                        here,

with eyelashed sails,

remembrance too drove past, slowly

the conflagration jumped over, cut

off, you,

cut off on

the two blue-

black memory-

barges,

but driven on now also

by the thousand-

arm, with which I held you,

they cruise, past starthrow-dives,

our still drunk, still drinking

byworldly mouths—I name only them—,

till over there at the timegreen clocktower

the net-, the numberskin soundlessly

peels off—a delusion-dock,

swimming, before it,

off-world-white the

letters of the

tower cranes write

an unname, along which

she clambers up, to the deathjump, the

cat, the trolley, life,

which the sense-

greedy sentences dredge up, after midnight,

at which

neptunic sin throws its corn-

schnapps-colored towrope,

between

twelve-

toned lovesoundbuoys

—draw well winch back then, with you

it sings in the no-longer-

inland choir—

the beaconlightships come dancing,

from afar, from Odessa,

the loadline,

which sinks with us, true to our burden,

owlglasses all this

downward, upward, and why not?
sorehealed, where—,

                                                                                   
when—

hither and past and hither.

 

 

III

B
LACK
,

like the memory-wound,

the eyes dig toward you

in the by heart-teeth light-

bitten crownland,

that remains our bed:

through this shaft you have to come—

you come.

In seed-

sense

the sea stars you out, innermost, forever.

The namegiving has an end,

over you I cast my lot.

 

 

A
NVILHEADEDNESS
, at

palfrey pace,

alongside us, of the double

slowly streaming redtrack.

Silvery:

Hoofsayings, lullaby-

neighing—dream-

hurdle and -weir—: no one

shall go farther, nothing.

You under me, centaurishly

rearing,

I empty into our across-

roaring shadow.

 

 

L
ANDSCAPE
with urnbeings.

Conversations

from smokemouth to smokemouth.

They eat:

the bedlamite's truffle, a piece

unburied poetry,

found tongue and tooth.

A tear rolls back into its eye.

The left, orphaned

half of the pilgrim-

mussel—they gave it to you,

then they bound you—

listening it illuminates the space:

the clinker game against death

can begin.

 

 

T
HE JUGGLERDRUM
,

from my heartpenny loud.

The rungs of the ladder, up

which Ulysses, my monkey, clambers toward Ithaca,

rue de Longchamp, one hour

after the spilled wine:

add that to the image,

which casts us home into

the dice-cup, where I lie by you,

unplayable.

 

 

W
HEN YOU LIE

in the bed of missing bunting,

by blueblack syllables, in

the shadow of snowlashes,

through thought-showers the steely

crane comes swimming—

you open yourself to him.

His bill ticks you the hour

into each mouth—in each

chimes, with bloodred bell-rope, a silence-

millennium,

the hour and the reprieve

coin each other to death,

the taler, the groschen

rain hard through your pores

in

the shape of a second

you fly there and barricade

the doors Yesterday and Tomorrow,—phosphorous

like eternity-teeth,

buds your one, then your other

breast,

toward the grips, under

the strokes—: so tightly,

so deeply

sown

is the starry

crane-

seed.

 

 

B
EHIND COALMARKED
sleep

—our cottage is known—

where our dreamcrest swelled, fiery, despite all,

and I drove the goldnails into our

coffin-beautiful morning

swimming alongside,

there the rods dipped royally before our eye,

water came, water,

savagely

the skiffs bit through the grand-second memory,

the mud-muzzled beasts drifted around us

—that much

no heaven caught yet—,

what a weir, torn one,