The brittle graying wind sputters its last,
Get low, get low.
The aimless darkness, red to the last,
Too tired, too tired
So let us celebrate
Nothing to lose
Nothing to win
Clean, free blows, all unawares,
Open heart,
Open sky.
Joy for stale weeping buds
For springing green steps
For all the blue dizzy climbing
For all increase and debit
Here it is, here it is,
You don’t even have to take it.
I first posted this 4 years ago. Here’s a reprisal in honor of Bob’s Nobel. After “Song to Woody” by B. Dylan
Hey, Bobby Dylan I wrote you a song
It ain’t very short, on account of it’s long
‘Bout the songs that you wrote when you were a sprout
And the trouble it was to figure them out
So here’s to Dave and to Eric and the rest of your buds
And to the bottles and pints of delectable suds
That you downed with your pals all through those years
I’m surprised you’re still with us after all of them beers
Well I wonder what “Maggie’s farm’s” singing of
Or what “statues made of matchsticks” have to do with true love
I’ve often suspected that most of the time
That there’s nothing you won’t do for the sake of a rhyme
But, hey, Bobby Dylan I know that you know
This stuff I’m a-saying is pretty dang low
Considering how many folks you’ve inspired
Though exactly for what I’ve often inquired
There ain’t no good reason for another damn verse
But I said this was long for better or worse
Here’s my big chance for a Bob Dylan rhyme
So the graveyards and box cutters, all for a dime
To speak too much of grief
To talk of feeling the pierced hearts
Of other lives, of vanished souls
Isn’t this just a bit suspicious?
Isn’t this the worst kind of beggary?
I imagine I would chain myself in bed
For fear of causing you such agony
Oh, I could eat a peach, but I could not feel
The sting of a thorn bush
The torment of the dying sun
The pale sweating brow of death
Unknown and unknowable
Each sting would plunge into your heart
Each death would be yours alone
(Though I would gladly claim
Each incarnation)
“Every man’s death diminishes me”
A poet said
Then each birth engirths me more
Till I outstrip the sun
Richard Lionheart’s heart has been exhumed, and, although to dust it has returned, what remains is mingled with creosote, frankincense, and numerous other fragrant herbs. The point seems to have been to preserve it and make it more attractive to God, who, as everyone knows, is easily fooled. Inspired by my friend Elaine Stirling, I thought I’d write a short poem in 12th century style, a low bar to clear, judging by this fragment:
Right, then:
King Richard had no heart so pure
It could be sent to all anon
As unadorned as baby’s bum
For God to fondle as He choose
It lies in France unaccidental
But in such company as befits
A king whose heart was torn
Twixt kindly deeds and murder
All tars and herbs the nose to please
Surrounded Richard’s organ
To no avail it seems
‘Tis naught but reddish dust these days
Maybe Prometheus could pull it off
To swindle Zeus with fatted bones
But God these days is wiser
Having seen enough of Europes’s kings
One soft-winded luck-drenched
Park bench afternoon
While dust motes drifted languidly
In and out of sunbeam streams
Eyelids too closed to bother
I dreamed of life
Of love-stained moons
Lake-bound loons and the stars
And a vastness so supreme
Only a poor cosmic ash of a
Barely dim spark
Could comprehend it
I dreamed of the gravity of gravity
Of the long loose distance
Between here and now
Of the slow dip of the long journey
The road moves easily within
And without the fortress skull
At a whim
At an ungrim wager
With vaporous fate
I dreamed of how in old age
The bones of our deciduous dreams
Absurdly seductive
Still nudge us toward the impossible
Having arrived at which
We stare longingly behind
exiles child 