| ||||||
|
Arts & Entertainment  BooksComics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
Current Click here to read the latest stories from the wires. - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Books stories, go to the
Books home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Books Reviews Reviews Reviews - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Five poems to make you swoon | page 1, 2
I did not get this from any book Also Today Fools for love I did not get this from any book I got this from sleep, I got this from waking I did not get this from any book I did not get this from blood, blood I got this from mind that muscles I got this from mushrooms, I got this from sitting at the table I got this from leaves and spine I got this from necklines I got this from paper, please listen to me even when I danced at 4 in the morning call a life an open book I did not get this from any book
I love to wake to the coo coo of the mourning dove the structures of everyday. It makes what's darkened unworkable For that moment, and that, as someone once said, is grace. But this bird's a different story. Dawn in the Umbrian hills. a watery kind of music, Extended improvisations, liquid riffs and breaks -- But not to me, pulled like a dead weight From the riptide of sleep, not to me, Depression's darling, history's hand job, not to me ... --------- Twice, now, I've heard the nightingale. First in the first light Of a dust-grey dawn, And then at midnight, a week later, Walking my friend to the parking lot In Todi, moon vamping behind the silted cloud mounds, A pentimento of sudden illumination, Like bird work or spider work. Senti, my friend said,
Shhh,
El'usignolo, the nightingale, easy as watershine, Ripply and rock-run. Silence. No moon, no motorbike, no bird. The silence of something come and something gone away. Nightingale, ghost bird, ghost song, Hand that needles and threads the night together, light a candle for me. --------- Swallows over the battlements and thigh-moulded red tile roofs, Square crenelations, Guelph town. Swallows against the enfrescoed backdrop of tilled hills Like tiny sharks in the tinted air That buoys them like a tide, arrested, water-colored surge. Swallows darting like fish through the alabaster air, Cleansing the cleanliness, feeding on seen and unseen. To come back as one of them! language without words, Ineffable part of the painting and ignorant of it, Pulled by the lunar landswell, Demi-denizen of the godhead Spread like a golden tablecloth wherever you turn -- Such judgement, such sweet witch-work. --------- This mockingbird's got his chops. west or east of my final hurt? In North Carolina, half a century ago, Bird song over black water, Lake Llewellyn Bibled and night-colored, mockingbird Soul-throated, like light, a little light in great darkness. Zodiac damped, then clicked off, cloud-covering-heaven. Bird song over black water. I remember the way the song contained many songs, As it does now, the same song Over the tide pool of my neighbor's yard, and mine's slack turning, Many songs, a season's worth, Many voices, a light to lead back to silence, sound of the first voice.
--------- Medieval, prelatic, why silence, omit, omit, silence, The afternoon breaking away in little pieces, Siren's squeal from the bypass, The void's tattoo, Nothing Matters, mottoed across our white hearts? Nature abhors originality, according to Cioran. help me to lie low and leave out, Remind me that vision is singular, that excess Is regress, that more than enough is too much, that compression is all. salon.com | April 14, 2000
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
