48 Time poems

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, or sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Swift and subtle The flying shuttle Crosses the web And fills the loom, Leaving for range Of choice or change No room, no room.

It is not pain that holds me back, but time With its sad prefigurations and smell, Its flowers and echoes, rivers and crime. Even now, without a future, I tell Myself lies in future tense. As my hair Thins, I collect combs. When clocks chime, I groan. The falling world finds pleasure in despair Because to suffer means to be alone, And I suffer through all the accidents Of change as though I were settling a score, As if to disinvent what death invents. I once built a castle, now I do chores. To pass the time I rearrange my things. To fall asleep I recite names of kings.

constant change figures the time we sense passing on its effect surpassing things we've known before since memory of many things is called experience but what of what we call nature's picture surpassing things we call since memory we call nature's picture surpassing things we've known before constant change figures experience passing on its effect but what of what constant change figures since memory of many things is called the time we sense called nature's picture but what of what in the time we sense surpassing things we've known before passing on its effect is experience

In the warm air of the ceiling the footlights of dreams are illuminated. The white walls have curved. The burdened chest breathes confused words. In the mirror, the wind from the south spins, 
carrying leaves and feathers. The window is blocked. The heart is 
almost extinguished among the already cold ashes of the moon — the hands are without shelter — as all the trees lying down. In the wind from the desert the needles bend and my hour is past.

i. Not to go backward, not to watch the women peddling in reverse past the church, the priest in his black habit receding from the chapel door. Not to go backward, the bones of August becoming the bones of March, branch of dogwood picked clean by frost. Not to say Yes when asked the question all women wait to hear, Are you anything like your mother?

The stems of  the sun bent over the eye The sleeping man The whole of  the earth And this head heavy with fear In the night This complete hole Vast And even so streaming with water The noise The peals of  little bells mingled with the Clinking of glasses And bursts of laughter The head moves On the carpet the body shifts And turns over the warm spot At the slipping feet of  the animal It’s that they’re waiting For the summons of the shock And the signal of  the eyelid The ray relaxes Sleep Light And what is left shines at the edge of  the white rock

Orange peels, burned letters, the car lights shining on the grass, everything goes somewhere—and everything we do—nothing ever disappears. But changes. The roar of the sun in photographs. Inching shorelines. Ice lines. The cells of our skin; our meetings, our solitudes. Our eyes. A bee careens at the window here; flies out, released: a life without harm, without shame. That woman, my friend, circling against her life, a married life; that man, my friend, solitary, anarchic, driving away from home; them driving, to each other— I know, the hard, half-lost, knowing will; the cold first loneliness again, outside the commonweal, unmoving; But to say, I know —is there any touch in it? The words in my dream: “actuarial file.” Actuary, 1. A registrar or notary, who keeps records of the acts of a court ...