Robin Blaser

let me get the vocabulary of this song right—the curious happiness of poetry— the word materialism dropped by the way side—its mereness of the other face of spiritualism—just two notes to sing— repetitious dualism— do — do —once in a while one squawks louder than the other, baby crows being weaned before the next batch— thus, singing, move from how it does matter— Oh!—a murder of crows 1998

one should never play martyr there are martyrs beyond you one should never argue apocalypse without your whole lifetime before you, which is impossible Pushkin said, ‘my sadness is luminous’—this is his reason Ralph flew to Bristol to see her she said, ‘You’re not in touch with Eternity’ he said, ‘Gee, that’s true,’ then later sent a telegram, ‘meet me in Jerusalem,’ since he was going

our suppers stunned on the table hold radios hold flasks of sound, sharp intensities bottled up for a time I taste your imagination, authors, and place it among cotton trees whose white stuff perches, cousins of the air if the manner could be political the high walls protect against disgust the lady of blue glass joined by Pierrot, a griffin,    papers, books, the chilled correspondence,     and another woman whose futurist shape suggests lines of the wind on my desk to awaken the traffic would have to run into the radio

the wind hits and returns     it is easy to personify a new place and language,     but the new body stings these men with green eyelids, drawing their worth, it was rumoured, from Egypt, knew the work is part of it     a power arrived at the same thirst he borrowed a head for a day but which head     the phrases tremble in the other mouth    it is true and false     the veil of her face, an old porcelain, not for the hand to comfort     she moved beyond the sop one gave for affection    ‘My success has been to keep duty and love alive’    she said her hand waved with the power of disease      Sophia Nichols of the orchards, the deserts, the flooded ponds and games wherein the moon sought our feet died with a mouth full of tumour      it is true and false   the moon flowers  ( that is Blake talking ) tonight it is the half blossom and the stars too above this mud are from the other mouth     this city untouched     the streets, Hotel Lyric have a foreignness, a place outside a window     a sound of bees pulling the lilac     above cement this wonder ( the other mouth ) that crickets were men once who so loved the muses they forgot to eat     now fed on thistles, the language must sting    the flesh turn to a dew ( the other mouth ) the loss,    some glistening blood on the leaves of the mirror plant    Sophia Nichols of the story, the goldenrod, of the snake that entered the cage and ate the captured sparrows, the telegraph keys, pale yellow paper,     of the Odyssey and the homing stories of the soul,     the sea imaginary, light and foaming green on the rocks  dark further out as the eye of the cat if she would be free from words, she would free me   even in the night there are birds summoned by words

the absence was there before the meeting the radical of presence    and absence does not return with death’s chance- encounter, as in the old duality, life or death, wherein the transcendence of the one translates the other into an everness we do not meet in heaven, that outward of hell and death’s beauty    it is a bright and terrible disk where Jack is, where Charles is, where James is, where Berg is  is here in the continuous carmen O, some things—di—breathe into—aspirate—and lead away— deducite! for the soul is a thing among many Berkeley shimmers and shakes in my mind    most lost    the absence preceded the place and the friendships    Lady Rosario among us    of Spanish and Greek rushes from the hedges around the gas station, swirled with Lawrence’s medlars and sorb-apples What is it reminds us of white gods flesh-fragrant as if with sweat    the delicious rottenness

It is their way to find the surface when they die. Fish feed on fish and drop those beautiful bones to swim. I see them stretch the water to their need as I domesticate the separate air to be my breath. These fish die easily. I find my surface in the way they feed. Their gathering hunger is a flash like death. No agony as if my mind had eaten death.

the poets have always preceded, as Mallarmé preceded Cézanne, neck and neck    that was no privilege, sweet and forgotten seated in chairs, the afternoon marches along with the shadows which are not bougainvillaea but northern    I have always loved shadows as long as they were northern and moved gently west    like the crack-up of books, their spines tingling with notes and stuffing most people remember the gardens with cement flowers and the house going straight up like solidified swimming-pools or lilies when you get to the top which they once called widow’s walk, you wait in nothing but your garden hat, beautifully otherwise naked for the wind-swept sea and the dying sweetness or womb,declaring the completion of philosophy

it is essentially reluctance  the language a darkness, a friendship, tying to the real but it is unreal the clarity desired, a wish for true sight, all tangling ‘you’ tried me, the everyday which caught me, turning the house in the wind, a lovecraft  the political was not my business  I could not look without seeing the decay, the shit poured on most things, by indifference, the personal power which is simply that,     demanding a friend take dullness out of the world  (he doesn’t know his lousy emptiness)                      I slept in a fire    on my book bag, one dried wing of a white moth     the story is of a man who lost his way in the holy wood because the way had never been taken without at least two friends,  one on each side, and I believe my dream said one of the others always led     now left to acknowledge, he can’t breathe, the darkness bled the white wing,     one     of the body of the moth that moved him, of the other wing,     the language is bereft

the root and mirror of a plant its shape and power familiar iris the light is disturbed by the boxwood leaves shining rosemary green, unblossoming (the earth is too damp) the eye catches almost a tune the moth in the piano wherein unhammered the air rings with an earlier un ease of the senses disturbed ( by Mrs. Arpan, wife of a sailor

for Dennis Wheeler there are shining masters when I tell you what they look like    some of it is nearly false   their blue hair but they are not ourselves   they are equivalents   of action    they compose forms,    which we hear sound within a context as if that action we are images of    used us the body becomes an instrument sometimes the harp pierces the body and a man only hangs on the strings I hear the airborne-fire, the dead rebels’ second speech, which follows their live words, and the rice, and the motorcycles but public life has fallen asleep like a secret name    the wrong-reader will say he has pity for others where the thought is born in hatred of pity