from The Spring Flowers Own: “This unfinished business of my / childhood”

This unfinished business of my childhood this emerald lake from my journey’s other side haunts hierarchies of heavens a palm forest fell overnight to make room for an unwanted garden ever since fevers and swellings turn me into a river the streets were steep winds were running ahead of ships . . . There was indeed the death of birds the moon had passed away. * The morning after his death pursuing him beyond his bitter end his mother came to his grave: she removed his bones out of their pattern and ditched them into mud: women came at night and claimed Rimbaud their own that night there was much thunder      it was awesome * Laurels and lilacs bloom around my head because I stood up to the sun You see     the Colorado River runs between flowered banks I repeat my journeys to seek the happiness that overcame your absence I was happy not to love you anymore until the sunset reached the East and broke my raft apart there were other rivers underground covered with dead flowers it was cold it was cold yes it was cold. * Under a combination of pain and machine-gun fire flowers disappeared they are in the same state of non-being as Emily Dickinson We the dead have conversation in our gardens about our lack of existence. * The gardener is planting blue and white flowers some angel moved in with me to flee the cold temperature on earth are rising but we wear upon us some immovable frost everyone carries his dying as a growing shadow. * I left the morning paper by the coffee cup the heat was 85 like the year and I went to the window to find that flowers had bloomed overnight to replace the bodies felled in the war the enemy had come with fire and ruse to stamp the names of the dead in the gardens of Yohmor It is not because spring is too beautiful that we’ll not write what happens in the dark. * A butterfly came to die between two stones at the foot of the Mountain the mountain shed shadows over it to cover the secret of death. *