Poemunity — your poem community

From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward signs painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all, comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

The scientists are in terror and the European mind stops Wyndham Lewis chose blindness rather than have his mind stop. Night under wind mid garofani, the petals are almost still Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona, When one’s friends hate each other how can there be peace in the world? Their asperities diverted me in my green time. A blown husk that is finished but the light sings eternal a pale flare over marshes where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change Time, space, neither life nor death is the answer. And of man seeking good, doing evil. In meiner Heimat where the dead walked and the living were made of cardboard.

habitation, wooden crate in a nameless territory dented objects for gathering water plastic footwear two sizes too small, how the cracked heels hang over the vine suggests sweet potato but notice the cradle of thorns skiff ferry            militarized eradication’s resourcefulness speaking in a high prestige language jaundice shade of bombardment singed skin grapheme between ribs     what might be shale the mother who isn’t the father who isn’t ramshackle peony meridian bit in the mouth

The deer racing across a field of the same clay and tallow color they are—if they are: or are they tricks of the light?— must feel themselves being poured and pouring through life. We’re not built but become: trembling columns of apprehension that ripple and pass those ripples to and fro with the world that shakes around us— it too is something poured and ceaselessly pouring itself. February shakes the fields and trembles in each yellow willow. • The violin’s back is not veneer— the strummed wood shudders together. Undivided by caution each note is its own first thought. My first thought’s a kind of prayer that I might resonate entire— sometimes it’s such a meager portion shaking a little, as if it ought... Every day, the same desire to push myself through the door that leads to some bright place, brighter than the concert platform, where the whole self echoes together— the outer to the inner pleasure. • Everything runs together— the light smells of spring, the unreasonable brightness of this peg, this sheet, this line tethering linen between sky and mud as if the garden marked a pause in that eternal return whose looping trace is the blood hissing through the ventricles. What gives you life’s the thing that kills.

To be a bride of my own lamentation I wear a dress not of time’s poisoned quills but feathers of discontent — kingfishers ghosting in cornstalks, my field of frozen flutes. The edge of descent, digression’s highway brings a particulate ash to my mouth, starry metals of the meadow’s cold snap, ravens in the sycamore scorched to black. I follow their echo’s loop and chase. I master the map of never, raft its fragments, mouth the brightness of human’s leftover snow, details of fever-clouds where the convent dissolves in violence. I wear the canyon like a blank eye, lay before the never-returning light my silhouette, fossil of the drowned town’s scroll. • Here, where your ghost is always departing the ebb and flow of terrestrial tides, I follow your echo’s loop and chase, vortex streets of a cylindrical sound infinite in its arrangements of light. The evening veil, a partial reveal — how I appear to myself looking past this fact of being underway. Each day I stow my earthen materials in preparation for the never-end. In the snapshot of my dead friend, hanging in the room where loved ones refuse return: a gradual reduction of color. Running out of time, neck-deep in water, we knew no one was coming to help us in the same way one denies language to come from a picture. I imagine love a revelation, not of mind — the blue gauze of planetary motion — a tone-on-tone painting of a body floating on the sea’s shifting horizons. It is a question of legibility. When I became tired of depicting poetry, I became aware of another kind of plane, the kind good for dwellings and their narrative escape. Here children sit up all night by the flames — the orphan boy from blood-stained pottery who singed his head and burned out both his eyes. That was your life, a prefix for fire. Spider will weave a ladder to your heart, it is said, even though you are sleeping, intoxicated by abandonment, a bitter wind reminiscent of a wave. • In the last days of my marriage to god, I wandered his spiraled library to read in the dark blank imprints of trees. Relentless navigation through the stacks of shell-tempered mortuary offerings, sandstone saws recovered from the caves. I lingered on the stairs of the convent to write these things, to recollect myself. Around midnight the mountains returned. The clouds dispersed into semicolons and I with them, into a new language, its boat temporary, invisible. I knew I would be traveling like this for centuries. This was my first attempt at vanishing. I would return before anyone noticed poems to be found in the forest, not the mind. There’s a canyon between this version of me and the shadow in the corner that is mine. I wear this canyon like a blank eye.

Shrugging shallowly down, burrowing in beneath the heaps of plumped cork- and sallow- brown leaf, beneath the oak and the brittle bean- dripping locust and the still so innocent fruit trees—bare-boughed and newly blossoming—skinnily shadowing the frost-seared grasses, I and my “now” [in this pictured perfect] four- year-old daughter, huddled, hidden, lie low. I remember hiding in the fort too: bedtimes once how snug among books and the plush beasts we spoke the speech of angels. Now the world is huge- ly hushed. The winter sky is hard, kiln-fired blue. The cherry wood retouched with buds. And small, untimely flowers like blood-drops on the snow. • Time lapsed. Time dwelt. There was nothing apparently to those rumors of rescue or reprisals. Absence only emptied the mind. The fond heart felt light—likewise lifted right and justly up to praise the day as it was to high heaven. You were a “find”: rare, rose- lipped, hennaed, ochred, kohled, long black- stockinged O like one of Schiele’s urewig girls, flashing a shy semaphore— spelling eloquently out the f- word, tenderly revisiting its history. Lust—like love lost—was the catalyst: exquisitely expedient, unchanged.

[De Vulgari Eloquentia, I,I] “We will endeavor, the word aiding us from Heaven, to be of service to the vernacular speech” —from “Heaven” these “draughts of the sweetest   honey-milk”, si dolcemente from the language we first heard endearments    whisperings infant song and revery a world we wanted    to go out into, to come to ourselves     into, organizations in the sound of them verging upon meaning, upon “Heaven”, hermetic talk into which my range of understandings was to grow    for love of it portents and adults expounding controversial doctrines, personal science fictions and rules of order, but our own “is that which we acquire without any rule”    for love of it “imitating our nurses”

The fair wind failed. The wind dropped. Winds were unfavourable straightaway. The favourable wind dropped and they were beset by storms so that they made little progress. Then the wind dropped and they were beset by winds from the north and fog; for many days they did not know where they were sailing. The fair wind failed and they wholly lost their reckoning. They did not know from what direction. Driven here and there. The fog was so dense that they lost all sense of direction and lost their course at sea. There was much fog and the winds were light and unfavourable. They drifted far and wide on the high sea. Most of those on board completely lost their reckoning. The crew had no idea in which direction they were steering. A thick fog which did not lift for days. The ship was driven off course to land. They were tossed about at sea for a long time and failed to reach their destination. We embarked and sailed but a fog so thick covered us that we could scarcely see the poop or the prow of the boat Then the wind ddroppe and they were beset by w inds from then orth and fog for manyd ays they did not know where they were sailing Thef air wind f ailed and they wholly l ost their reck their reckoning did not not know from what direction D riven here and there The f og was sodense that they l ost all ss ense of dirrrtion and l ost thr course at sea There was much fog and the w inds were light and unf and unfavourable They driftedf ar and wide on the high sea Mo stof those onboard completly l ost l ost l ost their reckoning Th ec rew had no idea in which direction they were ststeering A thick fo g which d i d n ot l ift for days The sh ip was driven offf course tol and They were ossted about astea for a longt ime and f iled tor each their destination We mbarkt and sailed but a fog so th but a fog so th but a fog so th th th th thik k overed us that we could scarcely see the poop or the prow of the boa t str  ght w   Th  f  r w nd f  l d Th  w nd dr pp d Th  f v  r bl w nd dr pp d  nd th   w r  b s t b st rms s  th t th   m d l ttl  pr gr ss Th n th  w nd dr pp d  nd th   w r  b s t by w nds fr m the n rth  nd f g f r m ny d ys th y d d n t kn w wh r  th y w r  s  l ng Th  f  r w nd f  l d  nd th y wh ll  l st th  r r ck th  r r ck n ng Th y d d n t kn w fr m wh t d r ct  n D r v n h r   nd th r  Th  f g w s s  d ns  th t th y l  st  ll ss  ns  f d rrrt  n  nd l  st thr c  rs  t s   Th r  w s m ch f g  nd th  w  nds w r  l ght nd unf  nd  nf v   r bl  They dr ft df  r  nd w d   n th  h gh s M  st  f th se   nb  rd c mpl tly l  st l  st l  st th  r r ck n ng Th c r w h d n   d    n wh ch d r ct  n th y w r  stst  ring   th ck f  g wh ch d d n  t l  ft f r d ys The sh  p w s dr ven  fff c  rse t l  nd Th y w r   sst d  b    t  st    f r l ngt  me and f  led t r   ch th  r d st n tion W  mb rkt  nd s  l d b t   f g s   th b t   f g s  th b t f g s   th th th th th k k  v r d s th t w  c  ld sc rc ly s   th  p  p  r th  pr w  f th  b   t  f the b  t of the b  t the b b s t b  st rms s  th t th   m d  l ttl  pr gr ss Th n th  w nd dr pp d  nd th   w r  b s t by w The sh  p w s dr ven  fff c  rse t l  nd Th y w r   sst d  b  t st   f r l ngt  me and f  led t r   ch th  r d st n tion W  mb rkt  nd s  l d b t   f g s  th b t   f g s  th b t   f g s  th th th th th k k  v r d s th t w c   ld sc rc ly s    th  p   p  r th  pr w  f th  b   t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t go t go off t go off course t go off course hafville t be lost forvillet hafville Ache come off course hafville Did not go where I was knowing hafville Had fear wildering hafville For a minute there I lost myself Totally at sea lost myway tossed misted lost mywill in the fog hafville hafville my love Major Tom hafville Li Bai hafville Rimbaud hafville Shelley hafville Amelia Earhart hafville Jeff Buckley hafville Spalding Gray hafville Virginia Woolf hafville Albert Ayler hafville Reinaldo Arenas hafville Hart Crane hafville Ingeborg Bachmann hafville When you rise from the dead,when I rise from the dead,the hangman will hang at the gatethe hammer will sink into the sea Kom ut av kursen hafville Secgan at come hafvillur ok darkens ok myrkr ok hafvillur ok þokur ok hafvillur Cannot pokker see through this þokur Hwær hwanon never knew hu how to steer out of this rook this moss droomly wetter stoutair mattersea thick dank shadoway Lost lost all reckoning the sea coagulated All wats not-light all wats not-dark Déadlockit Beat bells! Blow foghorns! Storm the ceiling! Set my head on fire! Lightup! this d arkness for a bearing thour pis halla Beat bells blow foghorns! Gebangbang for rumbly lowe! When will the wind come? Where will the wind from come? Will it come from the naught, bringing phobias and rationing? Will it come from the soot, bringing droughts and epidemics? Will it come from the feast, fleeding crops and arteries? Will it come from the waste, bringing seizures and military uprisings? When will the wind come? Where will the wind from come? Will it come from the clog, causing jellyfish fission shutdown? Will it come from the leak, bringing mass dispersion radiation? When will the wind come? Where will the wind from come? Will it be an empty confusing windup? Will it be a tempestuous hooley? Will it be a blippy huff ’n puff ? Will it be a good proper piner? Heigh Ho and up she rises! Heigh Ho and up she goes! Beat bells! Blow foghorns! Loud metal gebangbang for rumbly love!

A concrete table and chairs set back from the road at the edge of a playing field — vacant, wide with light — where I step into the background of my imagery, this place in which it is all still to happen, the table set — plates and side plates, ranked cutlery, napkins in their rings, long-stemmed glasses under a hanging lamp — the same vine wreathes around its shade as is enchased in the lion-foot salt cellars, turret pepper pots — Landscape with torsos sunk into mahogany — pictures by the window, half-drawn blinds, a centerpiece grapes of wire and jade-colored glass, their bloom of dust — soon I will sit and eat — Now strangers wake in their houses. One by one they have vanished into that blank behind their names, this place in which the room rebuilds itself furnished each time with more of my unreality — The stone heaps lie around me and nothing is mine — A concrete table and chairs and gray-green weeds persisting here and out of cracks in bitumen along the fence line where a warehouse backs onto the street, self-seeding at the verge of what the mind makes scenes as if to say what the future will keep of this place will be its innocence, a hunger as undeliberate as rain —

Meaning “homeland” —mulk (in Kashmir) — exactly how my son demands milk. • Full-rhyme with Jhelum, the river nearest his home — my father’s “realm.” • You can’t put a leaf between written and oral; that first A, or alif. • Letters. West to east Mum’s hand would write; Dad’s script goes east to west. Received. • Invader, to some — neither here, nor there, with me — our rhododendron. • Where migrating geese pause to sleep — somewhere, halfway is this pillow’s crease. • Now we separate for the first time, on our walk, at the kissing gate. • Old English “Deor” — an exile’s lament, the past’s dark, half-opened door. • Yes, I know.Empty. But there’s just something between the p and the t. • At home in Grasmere — thin mountain paths have me back, a boy in Kashmir.