A Few Short Verses from An Earlier Life

      

          An Introductory Note

If my syntax seems immoderately forced,

it is to somewhat hide my sense from

ears that want perception.

The times, devoid of honor,

require mild deceptions.

If my approach appears oblique,

truth is I speak straight-on,

though sideways, tongue-in-cheek.

No great offense

when Great Ones cooing frontal

lies affront the plainest sense.

A brittle spirit needs its small defense:

all bones break.

(To which I might append

that in the present instance

most bones seem to mend.)

                        Conjugal Pair

They wrestled bound in violent lovelock,

broiled and tumbled through the fury fire in

holocaust and hymn and bent the back of dark

with incantations shining in their limbs:

Rolling, turning, rising, falling,

sweat burnished white and mirror silver

white their faces white their flesh

white the flame that joined their single spine.

...and rainbow arched taut bow drawn

they flung their ancient torch to arc the dawn

and made their covenant with life.

               Epitaph

She stood to the world with

undefended ardor only.

Naked as light she came,

as susceptible as hope.

So shy a creature

(too wholly heartcomposed

and cursed with giving)

she froze to death in the icy

emptiness of Real Time

leaving, like her footprints

in the melting snow, the skeleton

and the laugh, nothing more

(a lovewhite hanger for

outmoded flesh and the shadow of her

oncewere eyes).

                  Language Lesson

My son greets me cribside in the morning

in the sunrise tongue he fashions from the

pleasures of his waking.

Foolishly I answer, taking care with

phrasing in his baby grammar, while

he politely shows his four new teeth,

smiling at my errors.

A song outside his window...

I'm sure he wonders how the birds

(who are so small) can answer readily

his language which I (who seem so large)

seem quite unable to recall.

Prenatal Poem

(Against all science, I am certain that I remember)

Adumbration of a future vow,

the dream uneasy draws the dreamer

nearer to the narrow gate,

elicits images in the nightly watch

where figures formed of sea foam

forge the secrets of my natal state

and voices disincarnate whisper

in an unknown tongue.

At last the vigil has begun

that yields in time to waking

in the frightful light...

but first the water rite.

Before the passage comes the dream,

the solitary drama in

the purifying night,

the inquisition by the ghostly shapes,

the trial by combat in the shadow play...

Then at waterbreak I tumble into day.