The Midsummer King
I know you-
You who journeyed long in staggered step
To bury your heart in a tomb of faltering pride-
You who torched the gleaming mountain pass
In pentecostal fire, outshone the sun of June,
Then took the exile of a broken king in July.
Now in the sere summer heat,
Did you tread back through this broken land?
And give up the dream that blossomed in youth
As the warning-song for a lesser man?
Summon what gods may save you now,
And pray the angels watch in their steadfast wiles.
Did Napoleon ever turn his back
To the Seraphim that, for him, meekly smiled?
No, the flaming rock of Corsica in golden evening
Must have burnt like the seat of Armageddon
As he swore to put out the sun in glory
Or, if not, boldly claim the kingdom of Heaven.
So the dew gathers swiftly on your brow
From the grass where the fallen heroes wept.
They sing their war-songs songs as pallid flowers
With roots too short to stay the season,
Too weak to call their death triumphant, too fickle to mark
the arid plain defeated.
I will not watch you join them,
You for whom the stars of glowing nights gave way.
The stems that bore the greats of old blossom upon your knee
And through new hills resound and blaze.
The angel's names are written here,
Their stone-carved words reminding
They too limped through the valley of defeat
And ventured on in twilight.
One Thousand Love Letters
to Everyone I've Ever Met
Because you gave me yourself,
I have nothing else to give you.
And because I carry only you with me,
Take this poem,
Because it is yours, and it is you.
Tonight I sit at the table
You never graced, where
None I know ever came.
And among strange voices,
I talk in your voice
Of whispers muttered through the door,
Watching our youth pass
In a rave of forgotten joy.
Now when I speak alone,
I sing you-
Your many voices all shining,
Reflected the chorus of memory,
Assimilated in moments long forgot.
So if I don't see you,
Read this in your own words,
In your own room,
Where you took me once
To plant roots beyond the walls of my self.
Some nights I return there smiling
To see that trellis in bloom,
With your shifting mind
Shining in each wisteria-bud.
And if you don't remember me,
I’ll remember you,
Standing in scrubs blue as warm oceans,
Washing me down the vista of years
To when you taught me to smile in a nursing-bed.
These innumerable gifts
You've spoiled me with,
Suffering anemic in photographs,
Awaking tall or short
In far-away beds,
Bounding human perception
By the change of weak glance,
Like a child in a passing car.
When the taxis flicker through the fog,
I look for your gaze.
But even as I watch them into the sunshine,
You sit by my side and think my thoughts for me,
Admiring the colored light-shafts,
The graceful dew reflecting;
And when the sun breaks,
The daylight is shrouded with fears
Of isolation or impermanence,
And of spiders bigger than your thumbnail.
So I smile to know
These agonies were first yours, long ago.
Now they are just the contrast to
your dreams, my dreams.
From these top boughs
Growing young from my tree of life,
I admire the forest you planted here,
Even the branches that turn,
And the vines that block my way.
Read this poem and forget every word.
Drown each syllable in your life,
Verse for broken verse dissolved
In the cool blood of countless veins-
Returned like a library book into
The throbs of your beating heart.
Please be well. I love you.
Admiring Sargent
Bob your hair with twelve French pins
And glitter your eyes with a half stopped tear–
Light the candelabra from the windowsill
To dissolve into the smoke and disappear.
Why do you weep in this realm of gold?
Tell me what to say to wisp anxieties away.
No furs you drape or jewels you shine
Warp the loathing in your eyes.
You may make me viceroy
Sitting in my blackwood chair,
And call my daughter from the frey
To burnish like a house-servant your thinning hair.
She turned away and blew the candles too,
Then there was no threshold
Between the deepest sky and darkened room.
And through that door she scurried in step,
Only the marble busts reflecting the dress
As pure as hatred, thin as breath,
Stained with tears falling through realms of gold.
|
|