Robin Blaser

The streets are my body or rather the wish of the skin to put on the grass in a gold rain not vice-versa, the lips twisting to allow the tongue to play in the broken mirror on the floor Catches an arm a distance the light at the ceiling This kills the lift begged of a magical hand I have walked a long way traced in these pieces an arm a crotch     The queen of faerie guarded by blue-winged griffins Untouched by

so it is death is the condition of infinite form— the rebellion of particulars, ourselves and each thing, even ideas, against that infinitude, is the story of finitude—the dream of the children harvested in a harvester-machine there are the real voice and the voice imagined and both have a reality, but the latter is out of it the ladder of things never accept gifts from the gods —Hesiod’s bitter-sweet sense of it— rings true and doesn’t settle the sea-shore down to where the heart breaks or is bronzed ‘I am happy,’ the man said, ‘because the toad of the morning is the worst thing I’ll find today’ an d CBC’s TV c ritic says, ‘television is the Shakespeare of the 20th century’ red lilies fall on the carpet and Art Tatum, drawing his art out of hymns, wanted more dissonance perfect there are knives in the air all around the poorly loved their lives follow life back into stone and they dream a sweeter consonance at the centre the art of a screaming and demented oyster

dear dusty moth wearing miller’s cloth, Sophia Nichols’ soft voice calls wings at dusk across railroads and sagebrush to lull me to sleep, ‘Come to these window corners, come, rest on my boy’s dreams and flight, come tonight’ 2 September 2002

There is no salutation.     The harvesters with gunny sacks bend picking up jade stones. (Sure that Amor would appear in sleep.     Director.    Guide.) Secret borrowings fit into their hands. Cold on the tongue. White flecks on the water. These jade pebbles are true green when wet. On the seventh night, the branches parted. The other replied, How photographic.      Amor doesn’t appear on demand.   He’s more like a snake skin. If he fits, he lets you in or sheds your body against the rocks. I slept in a fort. My bed pushed up against the log enclosure.    At 3:00 his ankles pressed against each side of my head. When I woke crying for help he rose near the kitchen door dressed as a hunter. The other replied, Amor born like a cup trembles at the lip.   Superstitions fit into your hands. Thou has returned to thy house. The other replied, Torn loose from the eaves, the blood trembles at the lips. Nine fetters on thy feet Nine crossings of the street Nine suppers where they meet Nine words of loss repeat this and that Nine hunters cross the field Nine lovers yield their right of way Two came fighting out of the dark.

Inside I brought willows, the tips bursting, blue iris (I forget the legend of long life they represent) and the branch of pepper tree whose pink seeds lack the passion of most fruit. On my hands a perfume of pepper. Outside the rain walks. There were two. Their posture taken out of the wall- paper (a ghost story) Jack talked.    His determined privacy against my public face.     The poem by dictation.      A disturbance in the cone of weather. Neither of these is not making.     The comic is a matter of style as yellow hands mark the worker. The clown of dignity sits in a tree. The clown of games hangs there too. Which is which or where they go— the point is to make others see that two men in a tree is clearly the same thing as poetry.

the truth flies     hungry, at least     and otherous, of which—though it may be one—Kafka said troublingly, it has many faces it’s the faces one wants, tripping the light shadows of     its skin colours      of its wordy swiftness, angry and solvent, of its loud remarks as of feeding flocks                      one year, one, among the smallest birds in the Northwest, flew into the house     a darting, panic thought     at the walls and grasses     perched on the top right corner of the frame of Tom Field’s painting wherein adulterous Genji is found out—so Lady Murasaki reads from her blue scroll—and permitted me to take it in my hand     soft, intricate mind     honouring     and lift it out into the air and the next year, again, one flew into the house, almost certain, like a visitor, gold-crowned     winged floating about     odd discoveries     and alighted on the brim of the lasagna dish     my hand trembled as I took it up and moved slowly to lift it out of the window     into the air     a kind of thinking     like everybody else looking     for a continuing contravention of limits and of substance for Sharon Thesen