daddy so tall, holding the frightened thing,
head on the block just as the hatchet flies,
falling… fallen by the empty pen,
taking the longest count, as red wings rise,
free at last, and we are saved again.
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Marvel at the moon
feeding on ripe apples,drinking midnight dew.Giant eyes of owlsfollow their small prey.White hares in the brushresurrect the leaves
This is the last goodbye, the final salute.
the ensign is assisted down the chuteso neither flank nor limb can catch a snag.Then at last his sunken eyes see light,and he sets foot into the promised land.Effulgent plankton there redeems his sight,Elysium of bright seaweed and sand.How glorious his underwater grave,even though above, the stone-faced captainsees a guilty spectre in each wave,and dejection…
For a moment as brief and long as eternity
a sun that never sets, forms wrought from gold, puritybefore it falls or is restored to grace, the grey skybeheld from the far side of dawn. As if in a dream,he walks amid universals, essences of names,and marvels at the beauty of birds, the snowflakes teem-ing through the ethereal windows of souls, and the flamesof…
(after the German of Georg Trakl)
Along the walls that stand in autumn. Mock-Shapes: man as well as woman, dead now, walkIn the cold parlours to prepare their beds.Here young boys play. A heavy shadow spreadsOver brown dung. Servant women walkThrough the moist blue, and sometimes their eyes mockIt, longing, as bells toll above their heads.An inn leans for the down…
Had I not grown suddenly short of breath,
that I found lay martyred beyond its death.The holy sun was rising in the East,and I was watering bright illusionsas sweet and as old as Plato and Christ.Birds in arbours were making allusionsto Eden, and I was bound for a trystwith a seamstress, with Angel Jones of Mold.But the writhing and the buzzing woke meand…
Without the moon or stars to guide his sight,
he rested on the foggy hill that night,and begged the heavens for a tiny glow.Despair turned into dream… a little boatwith fishermen inside in search of faith,a boat which, neither sinking nor afloat,now blindly drifted past a drowning wraith.And he among them, but incapableof seeing a reflection in the waves,which lapped against the stormy parablelike…