885
Insomnia's edgeless hour
Weighs sun on eye,
Where present from itself is pressed
And time unwatched freely winds
In labyrinth.
.
Cross the dusk sky
Bird by rule--
A skein of memory,
Seeming-self,
In sleep surcease.

884

883

882
When the knife comes
Is that the edge and it must
Ever due that point
And division blunt,
It is an air of stone
Noumena of absence,
Of what is and will not be.

881

880

879

878

877
Past without memory
The old photo,
Of happed evitability
Comprised, an eye,
Hand, unfettered by a moment's leash
To mark the epoch of a stranger.

876

875

874

873

872

871

870

869

868

867
Oh longing-- it is as breath drawn--
What did the tree dark speak of dusk--
One strains to hear, not listening
To shadows that may be giant--
Such a pulse! Is it hidden there?
The branches vein of paler night?
It must be you so far away.

866

865
In the morning glass of trains'
Affinity for reflection
Is nature alike in held and holder--
The narration's stuff for author and actor;
Mirror's flash of sun for the other.

864

863

862

861

860

859
Too mortal for this frame,
That boded sky so lightly,
And busied once this winter tree
With all-present contention--
Now--pristine feather--
Is it warranted to say,
After this death, no other.

858

857

856

855
The haze at sundown slant
Break that shape anew;
The dryness and the dust--
The fucking dust in every glass--
And hell's term intercalated thus
With such fine grains
As richly inutile as my handed means
To render death its gravity.



[image of Matthew Brady photograph]

854

853

852

851

850
That parenthesis the shadows--
The venetian whisper
Congruent to air touching light,
As if a thought in brackets
Tense for motion
Resides in a shimmer
Complicit with calculation's hidden eye.

849

848

847

846
Of circumstance but a part,
Sufficient to a consequential hour's
Span occult--
One infinite within the next,
As primes countless but subsumed--
As end of means precedent.

845

844

843

842

841
If prose were possibilty
The words might trickle Up
To topple at one thought or two
And fill a smallish cup.
A simple vessel would suffice
To hold a liquor odd--
Of sunlight or eternity,
For toiler and a god.
Intoxication with what is
Unseen by daily eye
Is possible's distillation--
Sensibility to descry.

840

839

838

837