(i)
"there is no ebb --
the face of the wave, rising,
becomes a wall,
and then the sky"
-- nothing of significance
[so the boy whispers,
descending spirals:
tastes you on his skin, tastes
secrets under the skin of the desire;
eating red apples, green
fruits from Chinatown
+ here the bonfire itself:
all that will burn, aflame.
bring into the garden, love,
three lanterns -- these nights grow cold.
:- the sun has plowed; its gold, now
buried deep, motions the becoming --
you know, ear-pressed, its clamour [the vanity of
under the furrows of Highbury Fields life]
love, tell me again, what it is
we know & do not know:
these leaves, since
late September heaped, are
thrown: heaped, thrown --
love given, ever against the
chill of this season
[ what this place, made
lit for this occasion
serves between
[is] suddenly shown.
(ii)
[ form:
bright flecks distant [ the light
rising
& higher up the same hill, on the slope,
stones in water, the calico bag you left there,
snakes sunning, everywhere bones, the
Old Spring
here, heaven: everywhere above blue
(iii)
...the winter was, with blades
of ice
over Hackney Road,
there,
several times, a Chinese opera perfection
you might have lost, later, in the ground of the general,
the blossoming of things
from their stems out, mistaking
for the old spring
the new growth frozen, by a glance too brief
to catch the shift, had we not seen.
Come,
[Leika -- how do you want me?
I can give you (only
stones,
pearls, in dry April
Sky blue filigrees
of steel:
walking Sunday from Spitalfields,
, white
wings, all this laddering
of layers: no copper joint, Kwaikutl, holds heaven
here to all that falls, this imprecise
colourfield
of broken walls, near Albion Drive, some purple
skyburst of climbing herbs something like
the song,
cabbage roses
or the moon. pollen
in the air. this also the way home;
& though the boughs are low on the east slope
and you must crawl, you disturb nothing, you remain
awake
and feel the dust. Itself, you are
dust. Of iron, stars. wherever
where the dust is from
(iv)
or
forward, for what you said: &
here, in the shuttered house, we
climb the empty stair, hand in hand.
dissolving forwards. dissolving.
& the dilemma is stardust: not so.
:we are, by mere being,
a fault in the nothing
between these places, lost,
still
in the progress of
as all the light is, or the same heat: rising
