We were alive together once.
I thought it was that way from the beginning
of time. And I sang
my songs for him, and he rocked,
squeezing and pulling the accordion in his lap,
while his eyes glistened, shining.
a thrush is caught beneath the glass ceiling—
must be a she because of the irony, plus
her coloring is nothing fancy. The racket
woke me at 5:20, I thought a horse
West of the handsome house the land descends
sharply, levels off in a broad flood plain
above Antietam Creek, and then becomes
its sheared-steep bank. The house and land are mine.
For three or four days following the battle
the Creek ran red, from thousands wounded, dead.
You imagine yourself the simplified figure
in this future person’s false romantic idea
of the present moment. You’ve even stopped
believing you know where the sculptures end
and the furniture begins. Well, bully for you
is all I can say—that, and have a good one.
Tentative, the finger of the mind
Dabbles the water, future. The water wavers,
Assumes all shapes in seeming, but, being water,
Releases all, remains yet undefined;
He who would frame the corded lyre must take
Not of his bone, but some more steadfast thing;
There is no bended rib of body’s make
To stretch such string.
Then from the bowels of the abyss boiled up the big waters;
Each wellhead spewed wide its wild-racing torrent;
No bank but burst apart, by river or pool;