373

372

371

370
In the morning kitchen the floor is barred with the partners
Light and dark bipolar,
Eyeless in extremity.
.
To pace the span to natured end, or put elbow to rail in pre-silence,
Were self-construction
In duplicate purpose.
.
The best of dark and bright
Seems birth-ordained illusion,
And disillusion then a glass, the world beyond.

369

368
The sunday august pale street morning
Furling out the flagged mats slap
Gainst the post, car cleaning,
She swung them shaped in her swinging
Woman be so nor emblem nor other
In her hip curved cleaning
Of the car.

367

366

365

364

363

362

361

360

359

358

357

356
A silence as if its medium were gone,
The key depressed the skin caressed
The answer drawn away
In solitudes of many rooms
On trainless platforms waiting
Being is it, stepping shadow to light
To shadow constructions
Of fear and elation; it is itself merely.
In rain the water pools uncollected.

355
The boundary turns with the turner,
And a far stir of sky dusts a sandal.
The methodical air treats with but one observer,
And the memory of a distant other,
With eyes raised up, apart
Conjoined in the circumambient sea.

354
White stone in a field smooth to softness,
Fellow to the waves in time and chance grace,
In my palm warm with confederate urgency;
Extrinsic to none.

353


"What swimming person, provided he is not about to drown, can help being in excellent spirits?"
--Robert Walser

352
Tended heart, if it waits,
Waits for death in its beating
Conjugation of days and hours
Years marking, being, time.
Untended middle, first, last,
In single strand unfated.

351

350

349
This mind garden is stillness, yet hush the north sea:
I'll not hear it for fear, or love, of thee.

348
This over-reaching sky tells the smallness of our haste.
Still this touch, still leaf, flower;
We've spent this hour in three.
The sky's moment descending admits our arms' vast sweep,
Our eyes' myriad compass, one breath a life,
A handclasp become a thing incorporate.
In this uncustomed place our thought is voice,
Our dream and fear undoored as an empty room.

347

346
Summer in still empire
City in barred noon segmented
Light; columned cell wall shadow,
Or 'neath a slatted porch on the sea.