Breathturn into Timestead (16 page)

 

 

TODTNAUBERG

Arnica, eyebright, the

draft from the well with the

star-die on top,

in the

Hütte,

written in the book

—whose name did it record

before mine?—,

in this book

the line about

a hope, today,

for a thinker's

word

to come,

in the heart,

forest sward, unleveled,

orchis and orchis, singly,

raw exchanges, later, while driving,

clearly,

he who drives us, the mensch,

he also hears it,

the half-

trod log-

trails on the highmoor,

humidity,

much.

 

 

S
INK
away from

the crook of my arm,

take the One

pulse beat along,

hide yourself in it,

outside.

 

 

N
OW
, that the prayerstools burn,

I eat the book

with all the

insignia.

 

 

TO A BROTHER IN ASIA

The auto-transfigured

cannons

drive toward heaven,

ten

bombers yawn,

a running fire blooms,

as surely as peace,

a handful of rice

expires as your friend.

 

 

J
OSTLED
along the delusion-run

by someone who read:

Scab and scurf. Scurf and scab.

To vault the sleep-buck, O once.

 

 

H
OW YOU
die out in me:

even in the last

threadbare

breath-knot

you stick with one

splinter

life.

 

 

HIGHGATE

An angel walks through the room—:

you, close to the unopened book,

absolve me

once again.

Twice the heather finds nourishment.

Twice it pales.

 

 

B
Y LIGHTNING SCARED
, untransformed, barely

balking:

                Géricault's

                                     horse,

                                                  already

healed by your needle-glances

over and over.

Even here in this

thunderstorm

you break it in.

A stepstone, still far from your foot,

waves with the one

reddish

strand from my beard.

 

 

III

D
ISCUS
, bestarred

with pre-faces,

throw yourself

out of yourself.

 

 

K
NOCK
the

lightwedges off:

dusk has

the swimming word.

 

 

T
HE ESCAPED

gray parrots

say mass

in your mouth.

You hear the rain

and guess, this time too

it's God.

 

 

I
N THE DARKCLEARINGS
I learned it:

you live toward me, nevertheless,

in the standpipe,

in the

standpipe.

 

 

S
CATTERED PROPERTY
, dust-

immediate.

Evening after evening

the messages, withdrawn from

the thoughts, drift in,

king-hard, night-hard,

into the hands of the grievance-

reeves:

from the break

of their life-

lines

the answer steps soundless:

the one eternal

drop of

gold.

 

 

T
HE LETTER READ FROM

the unwritten

pages,

the play-dead reflex's

graysilver chain on it,

followed by three silver

beats.

You know: the leap

goes over you, always.

 

 

C
UT THE PRAYERHAND

from

the air

with the eye-

scissors,

lop off its fingers

with your kiss:

What's folded now happens

breathtakingly.

 

 

W
HAT'S REQUIRED AS STARS

pours itself out,

your hands' leafgreen shadow

gathers it in,

joyously I crunch

the coin-pithy

destiny.

 

 

I
CAN STILL SEE YOU
: an echo,

palpable with feel-

words, at the departure-

ridge.

Your face shies quietly,

when all at once

lamplike it lights up

inside me, at that place

where one most painfully says Never.

 

 

N
OTHING BUT

single children

with faint, moory

mothersmells in the throat,

as trees—as black-

alders—elected,

scentless.

 

 

I
N THE VOID

where the chitlins wind

around the brains-

blossom,

I threw myself toward stones,

they caught me

and crowned a round

with what I became.

 

 

T
HE LOAMY SACRIFICE DOWNPOURS
,

circled by snails:

the image of the world,

carried heavenward

on a blackberry-leaf.

 

 

T
HE WILDHEART
, dishoused

by the halfblind stab

in the lung,

disbreathed bubbles,

slowly, bloodunderwashed

the rarely promised

right

by-

life

configures itself.

 

 

IV

T
HE ETERNITIES
went

for his face and beyond

it,

slowly a blaze put out

everything candled,

a green, not from here,

bedowned the chin of

the stone, which the orphans

buried and again

buried.

 

 

H
EARTSOUND-FIBULAS
, fenced in,

the pair of cranes

thinks itself before you,

aspectral

the light of your flower bestows itself,

the mantis's trapleg

meets your over-

starry

Always.

 

 

G
ROWN WEARY

of each other,

roaming the margins,

come of age,

air

shovels itself up, water

too,

the fortune-teller, slain, she

sticks to the back of the

ace of hearts.

 

 

A
N EXTRA DOLLOP OF NIGHT

is the share

of the from afar un-

damaged

captured

son.

A voice, amidst,

a-crows a face.

 

 

B
EHIND FROSTSTREAKED BEETLES

the driving lighthappiness

bangs away,

a helpless

belly-grimace, friend,

lulls you to

sleep.

 

 

T
HE
I
RISHWOMAN
, farewell-stained,

reads into your hand,

faster than

fast.

Her gaze's blue marbles it,

loss and gain

in one:

you,

eye-fingery

distance.

 

 

T
HE LEFT-TO-ME

beamcrossed

One:

I am to puzzle it out,

while you, in sackcloth,

knit at the secretstocking.

 

 

R
EPUDIATED
, need-

friendly,

distaff-legged

goddess:

Where you open up, in the kneeseat,

a knowing knife turns

on its axis,

in counterblood-

sense.

 

 

P
RODUCTION-

HANGAR
:

Glare-effects, at dusk,

—on you, imagine,

rested the healing hand under the flash-

ing sheen—

the guardian-word

in the overpressure-helmet,

a sign in the sentence

as fresh-air-machine.

Welding of the souls, shortlight.

In the blast bays: application of

artificial respiration to

the rhymy, beautiful

metal bellows.

 

 

I
N THE VESICLE CHAMBER
the

disbreathed wakes up, the

dangerous embryo,

at its crater-

end

sprouts the thirdeye

and spits

porphyry, also

pain.

 

 

M
AGNETIC BLUE
in mouth,

you gasp-gain pole after pole,

summered snow

throws itself on top,

soon the staggering starling hangs

in the double songswarm.

 

 

O
UTFALL

combs your algae together,

lays them

around you.

What you still have

grows rampant, dammed in.

A white forehead-splinter goes

for you across the border.

 

 

T
HE MANTIS
, again,

in the nape of the word

into which you had slipped—,

courage-inward

wanders meaning,

meaning-inward,

courage.

 

 

N
O HALFWOOD
anymore, here,

on the peakslopes,

no con-

versing

thyme.

Bordersnow and

—sounding

out, death-

saying the stakes and their

waypost-shadows—its

odor.

 

 

W
EBBING
between the words,

their timehalo—

a slough,

graycrestedness behind

the lightmane

meaning.

 

 

A
DDRESSABLE

was the one-

winged soaring blackbird,

above the firewall, behind

Paris, up there,

in the

poem.

 

 

V

ORANIENSTRASSE 1

Tin grew in my hand

I didn't know how

to help myself:

I didn't want to mold,

it didn't want to read me—

If now

Ossietzky's last

drinking bowl

could be found,

I'd let the tin

learn from it,

and the host of pilgrims'

staffs

would ensilence, endure the hour.

 

 

W
ELL
-

like

depthed into the enchanted,

with double-hipped

daydreams above,

ashlar-

rings

around each breath:

the chamber, where I left you, crouching,

to keep you,

the heart commands

the frost quietly fascinating us

at the separate

fronts,

you'll be no flower

in urnfields

and me, the scriptbearer, no

ore, no arch takes me from the round

wood-mud-hut, no

angel.

 

 

W
ITH DREAMPROPULSION
in orbit,

smolder-

singed,

two masks instead of one,

planetdust in the caved

eyes,

nightblind, dayblind,

worldblind,

the poppy head in you

lands somewhere,

besilences

an also-star,

the swimming mourning-domain

records a further shadow,

they all help you,

the heartstone pierces its fan,

no kind of

coolness,

they all help you,

you sail, smolder, and die down,

eyeswarms pass the narrows,

a blood clump swings into the orbit,

earthswarms encourage you,

the weather in outer space

begins to harvest.

 

 

F
OR THE LARKSHADOW

laid fallow: the hidden

un-

hardened,

brought in: the experienced

stillness, a field, islandy,

in the fire,

after the

saturated hope,

after all

branched off fate:

the unrepentant, sung up

moss-victims, where you

search for me, blindly.

 

 

T
HE CUT-THROUGH
dove-cordon,

the blasted

blossom-powers,

the suspected

found object, soul.

 

 

W
AN-VOICED
, ha-

rassed from the deep:

not a word, not a thing,

and of both the single name,

fall-true in you,

flight-true in you,

sore gain

of a world.

 

 

S
OUNDDEAD SISTERSHELL
,

let the dwarftones in,

the interrogated:

they mumble the greatheart together

and carry it piggyback to

every plight, every plight.

 

 

W
EATHERSENSING HAND
,

the moorpool shows it the way,

at night, through the fenwood.

Luminescence.