If all is one,
Why do I torture myself
With Illusion?
If a child’s scream
Sears my heart
More than a mountain stream,
If the despair of love
Kills me more
Than the promise of Spring,
What good is redemption?
If the longing
Endlessly lingers
If the forlorn
Beg for my embrace
What use are tears?
Is there a kind of one
That means many?
Or an illusion
That means now?
How curious
That from boundless unity
I have built heaven and hell.
You are here
Where is your soul?
Behind those ancient mountains
So dreary unseen
Or what terror claims your heart
You cannot tell North from South?
Where does that thick reddish road
Lead to your left?
What cities await your slow withdrawal
Still urging still purging
Stillness
As yet unreached horizons
Clearly labelled
Just beyond the water
Are yours
You can’t reject them
Can you?
The clouds thickened and cracked the planks of heaven
Heaved overboard their burden
And crushed the green and brown spring in pale dunes
Robins puffed to pigeon size
Buds disappeared beneath white-laced wings
Of earth-shackled trees
No one about but Cossack girls
With speckled jeans and high boots
Pulled along on bright orange leashes
Their dogs resolute and patient
Sniffing remnants of bygone colleagues
And sprinkling messages in the snow
Long ago such snow shrouded mysteries
What was it I imagined?
All of life and death I suppose
All of longing all of waiting
All smothered ambivalence
All new and green erupting from stagnation
I’m moving this blog to this site from blogger. If you’re familiar with it from there, welcome, you’ve found it! If not, welcome all the same and I hope you’ll browse through the 58 or so poems I’ve imported from the old host. Nothing is missing except the tags.
I’m partly still a bit under construction here. Expect some changes in the next week or so, as I adapt to the new environment. Wish me luck!
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.
exiles child 