Steersman
7. The Coruscation Reassumed the Horseshoe Form
8. Numerous Stone Marks and Several Caches
10. The Translation of Her Indian Name Is Burnt Weed
11. The Shingly Point of which I Have Spoken
Letters From The Front, 1906 – 2006
Calendar
Now it is one era; now,
another. The sky
burns purple, unpronounceable;
the hours are a bristling
looped into your nerves.
And so, the rock-doves plunge and swoop;
sight strains to parse
their scattering into
verbs inflected for the future;
a hand like amber smoke casts
yarrow sticks, bundles them
promisingly; so many silvery cities
trilling in the solar winds.
Soon the oceanic clatter
of a talus slide;
soon the fluent stutter of guns.
The Abyss of the Birds
The hours flashed, flicked
their crests; I broke
through the scenery
to the eternal half-
smile of hooks:
I was a man
like a tree, walking.
Sparrows came in gusts,
cranes came, and hawks.
I held their cries; there was
a sound of leaves; I held them,
gave them back as smoke.
To the Counterglow
To the counterglow, to
the lesser darkness
barely shading
out from the greater,
follow the famine-
script limping across
the complicit plane
again and again. Against
a noctuary’s
petering out in ashes
set one human carpal
sailing backwards
with a few willow baskets,
a few amphorae
for the next trial,
your’s or another’s.
The Translator’s Dream
There are poppyseed cakes
cooling on the window sills,
there are horses swimming
in the rich grass beyond.
Towards evening, the sky
grows more primrose,
the mammulus clouds
yellow
