<div class="line">It was an adventure much could be made of: a walk</div>
<div class="line">On the shores of the darkest known river,</div>
<div class="line">Among the hooded, shoving crowds, by steaming rocks</div>
<div class="line">And rows of ruined huts half-buried in the muck;</div>
<div class="line">Then to the great court with its marble yard</div>
<div class="line">Whose emptiness gave him the creeps, and to sit there</div>
<div class="line">In the sunken silence of the place and speak</div>
<div class="line">Of what he had lost, what he still possessed of his loss,</div>
<div class="line">And, then, pulling out all the stops, describing her eyes,</div>
<div class="line">Her forehead where the golden light of evening spread,</div>
<div class="line">The curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulders, everything</div>
<div class="line">Down to her thighs and calves, letting the words come,</div>
<div class="line">As if lifted from sleep, to drift upstream,</div>
<div class="line">Against the water’s will, where all the condemned</div>
<div class="line">And pointless labor, stunned by his voice’s cadence,</div>
<div class="line">Would come to a halt, and even the crazed, disheveled</div>
<div class="line">Furies, for the first rime, would weep, and the soot-filled</div>
<div class="line">Air would clear just enough for her, the lost bride,</div>
<div class="line">To step through the image of herself and be seen in the light.</div>
<div class="line">As everyone knows, this was the first great poem,</div>
<div class="line">Which was followed by days of sitting around</div>
<div class="line">In the houses of friends, with his head back, his eyes</div>
<div class="line">Closed, trying to will her return, but finding</div>
<div class="line">Only himself, again and again, trapped</div>
<div class="line">In the chill of his loss, and, finally,</div>
<div class="line">Without a word, taking off to wander the hills</div>
<div class="line">Outside of town, where he stayed until he had shaken</div>
<div class="line">The image of love and put in its place the world</div>
<div class="line">As he wished it would be, urging its shape and measure</div>
<div class="line">Into speech of such newness that the world was swayed,</div>
<div class="line">And trees suddenly appeared in the bare place</div>
<div class="line">Where he spoke and lifted their limbs and swept</div>
<div class="line">The tender grass with the gowns of their shade,</div>
<div class="line">And stones, weightless for once, came and set themselves there,</div>
<div class="line">And small animals lay in the miraculous fields of grain</div>
<div class="line">And aisles of corn, and slept. The voice of light</div>
<div class="line">Had come forth from the body of fire, and each thing</div>
<div class="line">Rose from its depths and shone as it never had.</div>
<div class="line">And that was the second great poem,</div>
<div class="line">Which no one recalls anymore. The third and greatest</div>
<div class="line">Came into the world as the world, out of the unsayable,</div>
<div class="line">Invisible source of all longing to be; it came</div>
<div class="line">As things come that will perish, to be seen or heard</div>
<div class="line">A while, like the coating of frost or the movement</div>
<div class="line">Of wind, and then no more; it came in the middle of sleep</div>
<div class="line">Like a door to the infinite, and, circled by flame,</div>
<div class="line">Came again at the moment of waking, and, sometimes,</div>
<div class="line">Remote and small, it came as a vision with trees</div>
<div class="line">By a weaving stream, brushing the bank</div>
<div class="line">With their violet shade, with somebody’s limbs</div>
<div class="line">Scattered among the matted, mildewed leaves nearby,</div>
<div class="line">With his severed head rolling under the waves,</div>
<div class="line">Breaking the shifting columns of light into a swirl</div>
<div class="line">Of slivers and flecks; it came in a language</div>
<div class="line">Untouched by pity, in lines, lavish and dark,</div>
<div class="line">Where death is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,</div>
<div class="line">So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope</div>
<div class="line">Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.</div>


Ode to Defeat

I Have Been Counting My Regrets

Orpheus Alone

<div class="line">Not everyone knows what he shall sing at the end,</div>
<div class="line">Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like</div>
<div class="line">When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,</div>
<div class="line">Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,</div>
<div class="line">When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down</div>
<div class="line">No longer appear, not everyone knows what he’ll discover instead.</div>
<div class="line">When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus</div>
<div class="line">And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,</div>
<div class="line">Not everyone knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing</div>
<div class="line">When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.</div>


Linsanity

How It Feels

The End

<div class="line">To stare at nothing is to learn by heart</div>
<div class="line">What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself</div>
<div class="line">To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.</div>
<div class="line">Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.</div>
<div class="line">What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort</div>
<div class="line">Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux</div>
<div class="line">Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting</div>
<div class="line">For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—</div>
<div class="line">The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,</div>
<div class="line">Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there</div>
<div class="line">Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.</div>


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February 14, 2017The EndMark Strand

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February 14, 2017The EndMark Strand

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