Finer

i

nostalgia
invests clear water with lucent purl.

In its blue enigma other maps are turned
white sails : thrown high, all
familiar flooded things, also
the hyacinthine,
the amaranthine, amongst
dead leaves & copper bells.

In Ponto-cho, or in Upper Street
I am drunk in the firework of this night: words, all crocodile chalk, all
cluster; canticle of birds, all useless speech in the perfect dark to reprise the unreturning,

I am
here, always here — anxious for
the change in it: the rising sign, the finder,
the flower of stillness.

The fallen sweetness of the rose once
promised a different end to summer;
the lilac by the open door, persimmon and honeydew,
ferment of sweetness; fresh figs —
all distraction become the moment: ten years not lost or gone
but given, you can not hold in the circle of hands; the broken hologram rose.

In Sanjou after soft rain, snow. In
receiving postcards, answers are set tokens:
love
is real.

My friends have made me these three words, two times: indifferent — reading, forgetting them.

ii

We are brought forward
through an arabesque of errors, to where we started, & what remains.

The spine, the spire: the span
that holds the form to one form, the fire which over us itself the keystone, its globe
all heat refracted,
now lusters bronze only to spindles raised from the dust of the road;
the women walk over them. We walk over them.

At this turning the lake reflects nothing that is over it, this fallen tree bleeds sand and sap,
the chain of gold around the sun is
hope abandoned:
I cannot stretch the skin of another day its cover, nor recover its sense.

Those we loved lead us, bringing forgotten gifts
they no longer understand,
that we follow them. After us the road is empty.

cordons de la eternidad;
silence impenetrable as speech.

Knowing words cannot past the triumph of the carnival
at the nine gates
reach,
are the wrong compass to that
we had thought so simple they might suffice, from here to here.

iii

In my garden, under Orion and the new moon, I plant
cardamom and coriander, carraway, saxifrage,
sweet basil, horehound, lavender; burying the carnival.

bury this also, finer into the same earth
that we may find, though later, the flower of stillness.

Snow yet piles.
& (its silver bowl