More on: Poetry

Vigilante couchant on a pillow of air at hover in the Hopkins-eye; excess of fire, self-contained, prone to set the heather steppes ablaze: Rufus Raptor, of the falcon family, master of the chimney-stack, mistress of the house-sparrows flustering beneath in the gutter-dust; Prospero of the island, of moorland and coast, upland and down, power-bolt out…

  Weird magic, it seems now, a spell to believe in the candles crossed like swords across your neck for the feast of Saint Blaise— God preserve you, the priest intoned again and again. We stood in line, the whole school, as the white tapers were pressed against each neck to ward off sore throats,…

—-You were about to be missed forever when you took just like that. I can give you tight if you want tight. At you out here to the sides of the little dick you are are souls not yet impossible, not dreamt. Though the times of their wellsprings are how far upstream, you’re in their…

When I wander oblivious among the buildings I see future sacrifices emerge, I would like to adhere to some artifice, Rediscover hope through furniture shopping Or believe in Islam, feel a very gentle God Who would guide my feet, take me on holiday, I cannot forget that scent of departure Between our brusque words, our…

Evident duplicity of solitude. I see these old people seated around a table; there are at least ten of them. I could have fun counting them, but I am sure there are at least ten of them. And phwee! If only I could fly off to heaven, fly off to heaven straight away! —-As they…

Almost nothing happened and yet it is impossible to free —ourselves of the vertigo Something has begun to move, powers with which there is —no question of compromise, Like those of opium or Christ, the victims of love are —happy victims first of all And the life circulating in us this morning has just been…

Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.                 —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Tame me—you whom I can never see— ——-each word I utter, each prayer I kneel for. Here I am, pacing—now wrest from me ——-a new song to find its way to you. If you…

From cramped to roofless ——-I became—I don’t know how— ————–an open-air temple with no pillars. My walls of stone, lichen-covered, where many feet came to pray. ——-The willows shook around me ————–as mice and small insects knelt in moonlight, I could feel the breath of many spirits ——-winging through my chamber: ————–rabbis dropping pocket lint—…

The thing I did for sorrow was silence. The thing I did for sorrow, the thing I did, the silence. I thought when replacing the pillow under the sleeping girl’s head it’s been a while since kindness. When my mother was sick I didn’t go I rolled over in my own bed I thought she…

With more persistent stitchery I might breach the red intelligence of berries taking French-knot shapes among embroidered leaves, or bring a spirit hovering in the satin-stitch of a hummingbird’s small throat; while outlining a dragonfly I may divine its mythic origin in dragon—fiery, winged, then tricked into an insect’s form, but keeping flashes of the…