I read but a line from a Rilke poem
(“I want to become like one of those
who through the night go driving
wild horses.”), and I am struck dumb.
St. Paul thrown from an ass, voice
scaled like eyes at the sound of racing
hoofbeats.
I go without sound to the village
of Damascus where I fast and pray
and wonder that words can ever come
again. I move my lips. I run fingers
through the dirt at my feet, shaping syllables
(Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) but not even the simple
beauty of one Rilke word. I’m a rider of asses
and can’t voice the dazzle of wild horses.
These Arms, These Shoulders
They should be in a cast.
Perhaps they are. Morphine pouring
into this body disturbs everything
I think I know. The only certainty
du jour is that all bodily extensions
are blanched Bryce Canyon stones,
as my mind runs, pressing through
labyrinths of unknowing, finding Milton
here, Rilke there, Dante’s Hell everywhere.
“Could I have some water?”
“We’ll have to raise your head, a 45 degree
angle, at least.
“I’m a runner. Just pass the water to me
as I run by. I’ve done it many times.”
“No. You’ve forgotten where you are. I must
lift your head. I’ll hold the cup. Drink slowly.”
“Never mind. I can’t waste time. I still have
eight miles to go.”
And I run. I’m breathing hard. Beauties of high
desert reds now lash my eyes, and it’s Kierkegaard
I hear speaking of the individual alone before God.
I am alone as I run in my full body cast.
Nausicaa
Nausicaa was his great danger. Poseidon pitched Odysseus over roiling Aegean seas,
but it was Nausicaa who lightly touched his hand when he stepped from the sea’s edge naked,
alone. He would not sleep that night, tossing and turning, as if captive at sea to some goddess’
slender-fingered whimsy.
He lay at night among the Phaecians, eyes wide, thinking of home
and Penelopea. Dreaming (brief moments when eyelids would not defy black night) he’d fondle
the lissome legs of Nausicaa and frolic in his newfound kingdom as if with his wife.
Scaramouche
It looks almost playful:
Punch turns almost quickly about, lands
a wheelhouse right smack in the middle of
Scaramouche’s big nose, for no good reason.
Judy cackles like a startled hen, children squeal
gleefully as Scaramouche yelps his bobbing rag head
off, from deep inside rag-made lungs. It’s all in fun
in this box of a world. He laughs his alleged laugh and calls
the world mad.
But, other Scaramouche skirmishes flair
in a container world: they come with sleekly-polished,
sharply-honed blades of French Revolutionary swords
as our once playful and dull victim, Scaramouche, swirls his body about.
A fearsome panache, plunging a glistening blade into a Punch-like
enemy unknown to him. Scaramouche then laughs his laugh saying,
“The world is mad.”
It is mad, in places little known to skilled geographers, and here, too,
we play our little games of territory: “This part of the box is mine,
the much smaller part, yours.” And we laugh.
Colors
Lighting on bright thistles, aster, and joe-pye weed,
a diminutive Painted Lady thrust an even brasher color
on her world. A flash of orange against prickly reds and
purples.
Morning incandescence unmatched at the sun’s rising.
Though it’s flamboyant orange you first see, mistaking the
black
bruise-looking patches for dark leaves on which she rests,
the light of clearer day shows murky colors with bright—
fearsome beauty.
Someone has said dark stains streaking the butterfly’s wings
come from the male’s violent love making and serve as weights
to keep
his Painted Lady from flying away.
What Night Questions
for Pop, 9/20/05
He breathes complications of night
