The New Formalist

Six Poems

Mary Rae — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:01:54 +0000

That Evening

There must have been a million stars but I

take that on faith, and have no memory

of looking up at all. A quiet sea

of phosphorescence was a lullaby

to all my senses, and I did not reply

to words that fell like far off bells, while he

stood near his cabin door. I couldn't see,

but felt him as one feels a firefly

is circling near although its light is gone.

It was his world, but wasn't mine for keeping,

and so I left as if I'd come again.

But, like an antique lamp that we turn on

to light our thoughts although we'll soon be sleeping,

that evening flickers now as it did then.

Season

Youth and love unite beneath the power

of velvet skin and dark, half-sleeping eyes.

Spring seems to last forever to the flower

that feels the rush of chlorophyll's green rise.

Time is not—cannot be of the essence

when second hands are slow, standing still,

while all around the sun is streaming gold.

The thought of end, of beauty's obsolescence,

seems unreasonable and cannot hold

as long as love is dressed in daffodil.

Youth never sees itself or has a reason

to know that it has no infinity.

It turns, like Spring, a sweet, unknowing season,

never doubting its divinity.

But as in Fall trees look down on their leaves

that once had been too much a part to see,

powerless to reconstitute the whole;

so age sees fallen beauties and it grieves

the unclothing of the lonely soul

that, now in rags, goes begging tree to tree.

(First prize, 2001 Raintown Review Poetry Contest)

Tabula Rasa

What is this sad and alien world

into which they've come,

with field and sky unclean, and darkened sea?

With a flag of plague unfurled

and slowly beating drum,

the shrinking earth disputes eternity.

Yet, like flowers, children grow

beneath the finite shade,

and every leaf they touch they consecrate.

They rise and stretch their arms to show

how beautifully they're made,

and turn the world into a virgin slate.

(published in The NeoVictorian)

Rooms

Every room I’ve ever seen is here.

This studio with six-foot squares of light

gives way as I pass through. Another room,

familiar in the way it empties me

of hope, of sorrow, joy and fear, of life,

wears me, for a moment, like a dream

it had when it first rose from nails and wood

in frozen climes, then it releases me

into the sun again. How many other

rooms took hold I’ll never know for sure,

but they together make me doubt the truth

of happiness I held one hour ago,

of dread I nurtured for what dark could come.

Now, paper, pen and books and music scores,

place-holders for a life, lie strewn about

the rooms that shift from snow to glaring sun.

Reverie

I walked beside the ocean in a dream

and watched it swell and shrink and part and merge,

and slide from oxide green to yellow-grey,

opaque, then shot with light where golden fish

were caught a moment, in uncertainty

that reddened gold and bronzed their stippled orange

before they blackened back to sea again,

leaving me to wonder what I'd seen,

or if I'd seen at all. A hundred clouds

in shifting shapes, white with silver edges,

turning, rolling into clay-like fields

of umber, almost black, and burnt sienna,

crossed high above the water with such speed

I could imagine purpose to their flight.

But purpose, plans, and hope were human things,

and I, beside the water, by myself,

could think of nothing future, nothing past,

but only light that scattered on the sand,

so filled with salt, with remnants of what was—

a brick-red crab, an empty pink-lined shell,

an oyster left without the glistening pearl

that made us think it beautiful and worth

our measured human touch. The tender spray

of so much life against my face grew warm,

so like a kiss, so like the first embrace,

the very first when love was only joy

of rising froth and upward-spilling light;

a light connecting life to other life

to let the spirit wake and know itself,

and let it play among all living things,

to move and grow and shift and touch the world,

changing it with subtle water motion

that pulled on every thought ; to let it feel

the rush of pain and pleasure's slow sweet rise,

the shock of brilliant reds, the strange perfumes,

that lured the mind into the silent woods

where every breath was felt, and every pulse

of blood was known within the heart itself;

to let it find, in the changing shape

of living, its own perfect changelessness;

to let it live, and let it then sink back

into the shining black of hidden depths

where spirits moved like unseeing fish,

not knowing of their selves, not of the sea,

sealed in darkness, never knowing light,

or life itself. I felt the water rise,

as if to wash humanity away

with blinding foam, too much to feel and see—

and so I woke.

The dream was not of you.

I never thought of you or longed at all

to see your figure standing, looking out,

gold against the green of churning waves.

The dream was not of you, but when I woke

your face appeared and filled the aching hollow

the sea had carved so deep into my heart,

still red with life, before it ebbed away.

(published in Romantics Quarterly)

Your Melting Sky

I've saved the sound your shoes made as you walked

and kept the searing brilliance of your eyes,

and snow that warmed to water as you talked

dressing leathered death in spring's disguise.

That light embrace we thought would come again––

the one we cast away––I gathered up

and kept like new these thirty years for when

the water would spill back into the cup.

I've heard some noise of death, yes, of demise,

and listened to their tributes' rustling leaves,

and now a me that shadows me and cries

says love is measured only as it grieves;

but she says black and white, we live or die,

and doesn't know how much I've saved of you,

and while I stand beneath your melting sky

she searches for the man that she once knew.

Two Poems

Joseph S. Salemi — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:01:41 +0000

Respectably Transgressive

“Your verse is not transgressive,” said a team

Of editors who oversaw my work.

“It doesn’t cause the bourgeoisie to scream;

It doesn’t flash a cool postmodern smirk

At old assumptions, attitudes, or notions.

A poem has to break down some taboo,

Give vent to dark, implacable emotions—

But that’s just what your poems do not do.”

And so I whetted each line: made them bite

And slash and hack and amputate and slice.

The editors grew tremulous and white,

Coughed gently, and rephrased their first advice:

“No satire, violence, hatred, drugs, or whoring—

Transgression must be decorous, and boring.”

L’Etat C’est Nous

The oddest thing about the

American polity is that it is run

by an arrogant upscale elite

that fancies itself “progressive.”

—Derek Burgoyne

O we are the sanctified liberals;

We nurture democracy’s flame—

We point out the pathway to virtue

And make sure you follow the same.

We keep to the tasteful dead center;

We banish from thought and from sight

Those strangely upsetting proposals

You hear from the left and the right.

Responsible leaders and parties

Repair to us, begging for aid—

For we give the Stamp of Approval

To all that is decent and staid.

The publishing houses and networks

Comply with our dictates benign.

We like editorial pages

To follow the moderate line.

There are a few barbarous holdouts.

We haven’t got under our hat

Some renegade radio stations,

But we are still working on that.

Credentialling is our main weapon—

You won’t get ahead in your field

Unless we conclude your intentions

Are congruent with our ideal.

Our watchwords are justice and fairness—

The freedom lamp, lit and aglow,

Is held aloft at our conventions

And yet there’s a thing you should know:

These egalitarian trappings

Do not make us part of the mass.

Our status, our wealth, and our merit

Mean we are the governing class.

We want public schools to be funded

(The poor have in us a great friend)

Though Andover, Groton, and Choate

Are where our own children attend.

We force housing laws down the throats of

The evil white working-class hordes,

While we live in luxury condos

Where tenants are vetted by boards.

We issue all policy guidelines

And say when a war is required,

Though none of our sons will be ordered

To fields where live ammo is fired.

O we are the sanctified liberals;

Remember our rank, and your place—

And never presume for a moment

The world doesn’t run by our grace.

Five Poems

James B. Nicola — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:01:36 +0000

Purchase

Now, as both owners’ and their slaves'
descendents and mixed heirs,
we waltz our souls on tops of graves
undaunted by their cares.
We dress as young as Innocence,
and, under Institutions’ name,
have lazy brother Ignorance
absolve our selves from facts, and blame.

The frock they bear, impervious,
cloaks us from visibility
while we go on a shopping spree
and Chinese children slave for us
on a far-off assembly line
to make us two for ninety-nine.

Mother

You can almost see it in the lines across her face:
Her heart’s been rent so often that I guess her mind’s unsound,
What with no mere brood of children but the onset of a race
Whom she can't stop from wreaking havoc all around the place
(The Father being nowhere to be found).

Last week she had to let a little fire out with the steam;
The next day she exploded in a sudden, wicked storm;
Then yesterday, was pent up in a rage and split a seam,
The image of her children still reminding her of Him.
She’s calm now (though for winter, it seems warm).

Will her children heed her temper? Will we listen by tomorrow?
Will her Love, their Father, come back in Time, as planned?
Will she drown in her tears, an ocean rising with her sorrow,
Or just explode (which I would understand)?

Structure

The Roman arch seems supported by air
and carries water, wagons, and upper stories
even to this day. While some have crumbled
particularly as the late empire was humbled
Italy is yet filled with ample glories
of surviving structures almost everywhere.

The Indian arrow—feathered at one end
with the other pointed—scudded through the air.
When you walk in the woods in New England,
you can still find flints, sometimes stained with blood,
though not the feathers, or the shafts of whittled wood.
And you know that all were designed and honed with care
to do something, to go somewhere, to bring
through storms and times, beyond a wilderness,
a trace of whoever made some things—something.
Their fallen stones meant more than to express
and since their flight have managed to withstand.

I am Italian and American,
Irish, too, and German—actually Prussian—
each part contributing something: the Italian, song;
the Irish, if not the mystical then verboseness;
the Prussian, a need to keep busy, the need relentless;
the American, a desire to get along.
And so my cells already had a history
before their notion of assembling into me
as a bridge to carry something, a tissue
or network of tissues, or arrow to be flung
as text to be read or recited, song to be sung,
ordered expressiveness to present to you. . . .

And words and notes have been my wood and stone,
subjected to discipline as I’ve tried to hone
them in the hope a missile graze a cheek
or reach a heart that, flinching, feels me there:
or else some later age’s woman or man
might come upon it when we’re both long gone
and rub its side for the solace they might seek,
or pocket it while on a jaunt somewhere
so they might simply know that I was near,
and some of me remains, and it is here:
in their pocket, the words, the notes, and in the air.

Better

Better a wail should burst and be misread
as fury in the swelling of an urge
than overhear, “I thought that he was dead.”
Better to lay a life along a verge

than in the ground, to holler in a crowd,
I am I want I’m here and love—love you—
unwisely long, embarrassingly loud.
Better especially if it is true.

Better to undertake a dream and burn
from failure, leaving ash for others’ raking
into a shelved commemorative urn,
than suit it for another’s undertaking.

Better to fright the world with bolts of thunder
    by popping pent-up thunderheads within.
Better than understanding’s standing under
    and in—albeit in danger, or in sin—
to bellow and be reckoned, risk and blunder—
    even if reputation’s ripped asunder
instead of made. That would be better than
    no name at all. But how do I begin?
Better if you show me how you began.

Solution

With potent potions
shake well
then take.
With potent notions
take well
then shake
perhaps, that is, when they’re
their best
and if you
swallow properly
not mixing in too
much air.
To see
if you do
there’s a test:
they should be
easy
to take, not to
digest.

Swallows

Leo Yankevich — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:21:10 +0000

It was once thought that swallows

wintered on the moon,

or morphed into field mice

beneath the autumn swoon

of clouds, or slept beneath

wavelets on the floor

of shadowy ponds and lakes

until the sudden lure

of springtime roused them from

the kingdom of the dead.

Early Christians believed

they swirled around the head

of Jesus, giving comfort

as he bore his heavy cross,

or they were harbingers

of heaven after loss.

Today I look above

the eaves as autumn blooms

in the deep well of the sky,

my house’s empty rooms

echoing only wind,

the memory of their song.

They have flown south for winter,

which here is dark and long.

First published in The Flea

Five Poems

E.M. Schorb — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 05:01:49 +0000

The Steroid Lady

The steroid lady stands, flashing her smile,

upon a pedestal at Muscle Beach.

She’s come a long way, baby; the last mile

was not beyond her iron-willed, wiry reach.

Delts, lats, pecs, abs, obliques, gluts, hamstrings, triceps,

erectus spinus: she walks in beauty like

a knight in well-oiled armor, flexing biceps,

and spreading lats and giving traps a hike.

What hope for man is left? She’s made of iron!

She looks like Mike, my hirsute little friend,

but that she’s hairless. Is she also barren?

For mothers must have fat or hormones end.

The softness of a woman has been taken.

I feel as if my manhood’s been forsaken.

first appeared in Sparrow 62

On Muddling Through

I like the English saying “muddle through.”

It's always better than perfecting things,

although the human race keeps trying to,

keeps carving for stone Victory stone wings.

first appeared in The Dark Horse #3

Caesar and Cleopatra

When Cleopatra rolled out from the rug,

that was the end of the Republic. Caesar,

involved in mid-life crisis, felt the tug

of pagan godhood, plus the need to squeeze her.

She took him on a tour of Egypt, showed

him secrets, like the tunnels used by priests

in their predictions of the Nile, and rowed

him on her barge. She showed him that her breasts

were fully formed, those of a goddess waiting

for him to join her in the Royal Way.

“A balding man should wear a crown.” Her baiting,

her teasing, proved Great Caesar’s feet were clay.

She laughed to see democracy go down

and Caesar turn from great man into clown.

first appeared in Light, Double Issue 64-65

The Night Sweats

By our intensity, with hanging head,

we spell the wolf away, who pants and croons

outside the door, who wants us to be dead

so he may have his meal. By magic runes

we rid the world of wide-winged evil loons

whose madness mixes metaphors instead

of bringing clarity, whose looney tunes

make breathless nightmares in our sweat-wet bed.

Hear them who creep toward our peace of mind,

destructive artifices of our brains,

to wreak their havoc! Run, leave them behind!

And in the dark we try to run in chains

and can't escape because the night is mined

to blow us up in spite of all our pains.

first appeared in Sparrow 62

The Bosnian Cherry

. . . the explosion appears to have

shocked the tree into blossom.

–Reuters

Friends, look with faithless unbelieving eyes

upon this miracle the bomb has wrought,

as now, in shocked conversion, I tell you

of spring against the devastated skies

of winter war, the hopelessness war brought,

and how, enveloped in explosive blue

of acrid smoke, this tree could still devise

beyond predictability.

It caught

the bomb’s enormous heat, and grew

fluid with sap, miraculous with surprise

of spring, for all combatants to be taught

anew a faith unlearned by deathly cries,

a blossoming the human heart has sought.

This cherry tree denies a war is fought.

first appeared in Measure, Vol III, Issue 1

Stalking the God

Paul Christian Stevens — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 05:01:20 +0000

Old Lack, dressed in black,
Boney buttons all down her back,
Broken needle stuck in one track, Old Lack.

Absent will, she sucks up dusty juice,
A something nothing cannot show her, Old Lack.

Lost her name so we can’t ask her how;
Forged her face—she can’t smile true now, Old Lack.

Old Lack, warming her hands on ice;
Old Lack, racked by the window pane.

Her eyes reflect reflecting cones of light.
She gulps back black spittle, Old Lack.

Old Lack, missing a shingle up top;
Old Lack, minus a tickle below.

Can’t be helped: her ululating wail
Tonguing night right to the echo’s crack.

Hunched in her one-room flat, she heard me walk,
Sensed my casual shadow passing, Old Lack.

Hates my presence till she’s gagging for it;
Loathes my voice, rapt like a devotee.

Sniffing out some telltale whiff, she creeps
Up close and close to nose her old breath, Old Lack.

Worries words, picking them through and through:
Shrill lilting wins a shilling, Old Lack.

Plots my itinerary like a stalker,
Hugs my image to her like a lover:
I’m the one she never can get over,

Old Lack, Old Lack, Old Lack.

Four Poems

John a'Beckett — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:01:07 +0000

The High Country

Drive up to where the smooth road takes a bend.
A peep-look in the rear-view has you knowing
corn-poppy, much behind is what’s ahead
to venture forth into a landscape flowing
table-lakes where you gamble for an end
from a road that knows now where it’s going:
don’t deliberate but turn instead
into a future that a past contrived.

Let it deliver you, fading into old
white, thatch-roof cottages of rambling farms
carved into shape by church or pagan pillage;
and let a mother-meadow’s ambling arms
embrace your no-direction hillocks, rolled
up into the parcel-prospect of a village;
unpack and shack up here, knowing
in all of this you have at last arrived.

The Kenchyn Girl

Our thick, imagined forest finds
the Kenchyn girl out mushrooming;
neat, curious, folk-pattern dressed,
attentive to the distant wolf-howl,
flash of fox in dusk hush looming,

what wind-drop in a melting snow
reveals in hum-snatch song along:
an amber twinkling in the dark
is gem to catch her satin interest.
Peeling back the sapling bark

she sees the German helmet sunk
moss-covered deep into the mud,
then rusty rails in bent direction,
as instinct offers her the bearing
to the grass-grown-over granite:

not what was once upon a clearing
but bent steel thick rusting rods
so twisted up to grasp the sky
that giants must have rested here
till driven out by warring Gods.

A wisdom in home-going song
is telling parents what she saw:
this was Wolf-Hitler’s lair, his
concrete fortress, till his hunters
trapped him in the Berlin bunker.

She too young to catch the fact:
bombs ripped this concrete apart;
the wolf escaped—that we know—
but deep in her Slavonic heart
an insight she is not far wrong.

Flinders Shore

Ships, in your knots of journey
untangled by the guessing tide—
what purpose to be born, built
in a miniscule, a distant Britain
too busy in her shifting history
to know what rock unlocks, silt
in a sea-weed rot reveals, your
reasons meant, unwritten on
this rich irrationale of shore.

Here, on a face of cave, turf
for the stallion race of wave
punched out of cliff, drilled
by the whip and slap of surf
knuckle-bone ocean stones
konk on the planks for days,

echo the step of press-gangs
and their rap on tavern door
to round up men for voyages,
bringing the gossip-maze, salt
of old conversation over ales
to whispering and sudden halt.

Waves, in your restless turning—
in long insomnia of sea—what
bad dreams are you driven by
to buck tall ships of tar, cargo,
letters of illicit love and hidden
prison notes, allow the dives
of your deep currents forage,
cull in a spread-wide farrago
for solumn secrets of our lives?

The Shed

There was a sabre in the shed—
I didn’t know what meant—
along with garden tools
that Dad had kept
perhaps as monument,
reminder of his dead
mates in New Guinea.
“Fifteen of us would go
out into jungle where
guns, big-fist rats
and Japanese were
waiting in the trees—
and only five come back.
But, for the moment, that’s
enough of that,” he said,
“it’s time for tea.”

Was potting round that lead
me to it—kid curiosity—
its falling from the tall
shelf let me see the faded
Melbourne Herald,
headline print gone brown
announcing War. Dad
didnt use it for the fires
of barbeques he had
for friends, unless the flames
would light up, funeral pyres
in dedication to his dead
mates in New Guinea.
“Some even drowned—
enough of that,” he said,
“it’s time for tea.”

Halloween, 2006

Leo Yankevich — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:33:56 +0000

You see October at the foot of hills,

the leaves of suburbs rotting in the yards

of smiling couch-potatoes, hands on hearts

that beat because they can. They’ve made their wills.

They will bequeath their kingdoms and their money

to bunny shelters. Childless, they will send

their love to Bantu tribesmen, give the honey

from their jars to geisha girls who bend

and make their beds. Yes, you can smell the rot

as you see young men dressed as Catholic nuns

parade the streets, young women crude and worn

by buck abuse, and yahoos watching, fraught

with fear, and waving flags. The evil runs

its course. A rough beast slouches to be born.

The Unknown Circle of Hell

Joseph S. Salemi — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:07:09 +0000

Personae and scene: Vergil and Dante,

somewhere in the mid-region of Hell.

Dante:

Honored Vergil, tell me where we’re going—

It’s hard for me to take in what you’re showing

Without some preparation. I can’t deal

With shocking sights that make my blood congeal.

Already I’m a quaking nervous wreck.

Vergil:

Dante, we’re not halfway through our trek.

Before I guide you to this special ring

I have to ask you for one little thing.

Dante:

What is it, Master? Whatever you request,

I’m bound to honor it. I’m just a guest

In this dead world of spectral pain and fire.

I’ve come to see, then serve the sacred lyre.

Vergil:

That’s exactly what I’m driving at—

Dante, this next ring is not for that.

What you see here you cannot write about.

Keep your mouth shut, for without a doubt

It will not serve our honor to disclose

This special class of sinners. Heaven knows

They aren’t quite as bad as some we’ve viewed:

The heretics, the violent, and the lewd,

Or those the devils roast upon a spit,

Or gluttons in a rain of piss and shit.

Still, I want this circle to stay hidden.

Dante:

Master, I will do what I am bidden.

But Vergil, just who are these chosen sinners?

And by what favor of the Triple Spinners

Do they escape the fury of my pen?

Vergil:

Dante, there’s a certain group of men

Who can produce great beauty if they try

By fashioning a pretty little lie.

These are the poets, and you know the breed,

For you and I are children of their seed.

Dante:

But master, are the poets all in Hell?

This abattoir of foul sulphuric smell?

Vergil:

No, not all—but there are quite a few.

Let me introduce you to the crew.

First, there are the scum who scrounged for grants.

Here the demons stab them with a lance

Right in the rectum. Though they howl and yelp,

Their résumés won’t bring them any help.

They spent their lives brown-nosing derrières—

Now they get a violent thrust up theirs.

Dante:

I can’t conceive a better retribution

For those who turned their art to prostitution.

Vergil:

These men here ran seminars and workshops—

The devils lift them high up, and each jerk drops

Onto a bed of upraised bayonets.

That’s the fitting punishment he gets

For conning fools and grabbing coed ass

And spouting lousy poetry in class.

Dante:

Who are these who fill the air with pleadings?

Vergil:

They are poets who gave countless readings

As an excuse to socialize and drink.

We load their backs with lecterns. Don’t you think

A punishment of that sort suits their crime?

They’ll tote those lecterns till the end of time.

Dante:

I notice there a pack whose horrid braying

Is donkey-like, but God knows what they’re saying.

Vergil:

Those are silly twits with MFAs

Who pay the price here of their wasted days.

We stuff them (like good Strasbourg geese) with theory

Until their minds are gone, and eyes are bleary.

Dante:

I hear a piercing scream that starts to harrow

My very soul, and chills me to the marrow!

Vergil:

Ah yes, that’s someone who can’t keep the meter.

Hell considers such a bard a cheater

And so he’s stretched and broken on the rack

Until the vertebrae inside his back

Are carefully laid out in pure iambics.

That’s the only way to treat these damn pricks.

Dante:

Vergil, is such punishment condign?

Not every poet can maintain the line.

Vergil:

If they can’t follow metrics, why the hell

Do they claim to be poets? There’s no smell

Here in the Devil’s Furnace that out-stenches

These limping, foot-shy poets. He who wrenches

His line-length out of kilter is a ninny

Who turns our golden art to something tinny,

And once down here he’ll pay for it in groans

As we set straight his sinews, joints, and bones.

Dante:

Well Master, on this circle I’ll keep silence

Unlike the sins of carnal lust and violence.

I’ll write no canto on this ring of poets—

No reader of my Comedy shall know its

Presence in Inferno. But please tell:

Why leave unsung this little bit of Hell?

Vergil:

Dante, we are poets, you and I—

And when that holy calling goes awry

Our general reputation is befouled.

So therefore let this circle be encowled

Like hooded monks in cloisters closely pent

Unspeaking and unspoken of. They’ve rent

The fabric of our art to tattered rags.

They’re just a pack of whoring, worn-out slags.

Allow them not a taste of celebration

By writing of their well-deserved damnation.

Dante:

I’ll add unto the pains these folk endure

A compound curse that leaves their work obscure.

They shall inherit, as their portion just,

The tongueless silence of the dreamless dust.

Five Poems

Mark Allinson — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:52:01 +0000

Revolutionary II

[After “The Revolutionary” by D.H.Lawrence]

Yes, I see them standing there

With white, metallic, tin-slit lips,

Insisting that they care—they care

Aggressively, with hands on hips!

Caryatids with such a task

To carry heaven on their head,

Their face a metal ideal mask,

Fixed and pale and dull as lead.

They yearn, aspire, and seek above,

Ignoring all beneath their feet

And call their ideal vision “love”

When it is merely self-deceit.

They know precisely what “should be”,

What is “proper” “good” and “right”

And since their only skill’s to see

They’re planning to out-law the night.

I see them here as clear as you

Saw them eighty years ago,

They have not changed, they will not do

A thing to move, they cannot flow

And ripple with a living pulse

Of energy, changing course,

Bounding, leaping true and false,

Instinctive as a wild horse.

I see them holding up their sky

Of stoney heaven, painted blue,

But when it cracks and pieces fly

They’ll envy Lords of Hell like you.

The Dark Ray

In the heat of sparkling days we loved to burst

The blown up paper-bags of clouds afloat,

And shred them in the ribboned pools of light:

Among the rocks we did our very worst.

All summer long we wallowed in our sport,

Exploding mirrored clouds with body-bombs;

Well buoyed upon the ample seas of time,

We never thought we ever could be caught;

Until, I glimpsed below, that shocking ray,

A massive arrow head of poison black,

Slid fast below our treading, tensing soles;

I still recoil to think of it today.

And every day I see it sliding fast,

In gulfs of dreams that make me swim awake,

And in the mirrored pools of tv screens,

The ray has come to stay—will not swim past.

The Common Bond

[On the tsunami of 2005]

We seem to be so far away

From all these sea-born floods of death;

Sighing, giving, we cry and pray

As we watch scenes that catch the breath.

But all of us, in varying ways,

Know death may come to us like this,

In beds, on roads, or tranquil bays—

A sudden flood, and no last kiss.

Tarn

That summer, floating on the mountain lake,

Dark as the tarn in Poe’s tale of the Ushers,

Was an initiation into reflection. Lying prone on the air-bed,

Looking into your face, you could see you were nothing

But a skied image on the water, the halo

Of gums and wattles around your head, a fragrant

Wreath sent up from Hades. The lake was a sermon

On the truth that the way up and way down are the same.

When a goshawk, tailing finches, passed, looking down

Into the tarnished mirror, you could see precisely

How high he was. The sun you noticed was dependent

Upon a cool-quivering void to cherish its fire.

Upward staring water-lilies found reflections in cumulus

Blooming in the deep blue. At evening

The swallows fell from the west and tore

At their doubles with thirsty beaks. And once,

As the full moon rose from the eastern hills,

I watched her twin wash her sun-flush in the shallows

And grow ever brighter as the dark water deepened.

Broken Loose

She doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, old heart.

But ox-dumb heart is thick and won’t be told.

Reason frowned and argued from the start:

Her skin is fine bone china, and you’re old.

But ox-thick heart is nothing if not bold,

And paws the ground and snorts and doesn’t care,

And foolishly refuses to be told.

Stay in that pen, you beast, and learn despair!

Reason ruled as the conference went to air.

Six weeks unseen, I watched the screen in dread

My hope she’d dress in grey with tied-back hair.

But her black-hair was down; her top, pink-red!

That’s when my ox broke loose, now I can’t stop

Him running wild in reason’s china shop.