A.S.Kline ã 2001 All Rights
Reserved
Contents
we shall see
what all this being-here meant,
not the dark god
trembling in shade,
not the transubstantiation,
the sift of dust,
of ashes that once were hearts,
of sand that once was bone,
nor the absence
or presence,
but something else,
process of mind,
that which we really were,
moving
with insubstantial things,
in the sea of time,
and not now among angels,
or men, but out there
with the earth
and its creatures.
Constructing a crystal of light
elusive
deep in the heart of the process,
a way,
so that each mouth, kiss,
memory, becomes
mind and its flickering.
You say this is loss. I say
it is what we are,
and will be,
and no longer flesh
on fire for stillness or stars:
so in the fragments of light,
looking back,
you will see with
the eyes of the dead,
what we are,
how we are,
the elusive signs
of our being.
two shadows
closed together,
lock together their other-time
place of arousals
with fire and joy images
sealed
in a similar site.
Joining of clocks and light.
Hands of mind
encounter,
climb
at the core of the sworn sea,
finding a moment.
Not till I clasp you in darkness
lie down
in the bed of grey clouds
on the hills,
not till I sign
the covenant of gold,
and the dark of your hair,
will the god sink to a halt,
his rod on the ground,
to regard the man
in seminal dawn.
In the dark joined
to the height of a tree,
body is mind,
the prayers are known,
the response,
the alphabet’s letters are known,
each one has its place,
the stars change constellations
in time
to a sharper line,
we see each eye in the dark,
see how it works,
what it sees,
the amazing pain, the strange
unworldly slots, voices,
the chain, the beaten gold,
the flesh, the core.
light-burst and burden
of flower
is the silent
growing of what
comes to be
from itself beyond
this bounded knowing.
And the world opens
a glove
to show us a hand
that is empty
world in the core
of ourselves
the shiver of light.
Who knows from what
meaning we come,
birds of no passage,
found here, rootless
with no nest
and no tree,
only this space,
and pure time.
In the tree’s flare
of white, in the ditch
where the thorn tree explodes,
in the bare field,
the lines of mute earth,
I wake: we wake:
you wake: and they –
all the white hedges.
And where they stay
flickering, dying,
we move on
into a further process
another becoming,
lost in it.
You are an eye, a mouth,
a word, O, a word,
and I am
a mirror
where pain
and joy
sing.
for us, silent,
it shines,
over the ancient face, over
stone, chest,
column, root,
hedge, or the source
of the water.
World gleams for,
in,
itself,
empty of time. We,
we are the process,
of time,
unwritten text,
un-pressed wax,
the bud, the unopened one.
World, light,
in the deep dark
flickering and stirring,
so that mind touches
mind
and flesh touches flesh
and we
become
for a moment
the columns of fire.
Brightness rests
in the object,
the word,
in the careless possessed
that, un-possessed,
lives beyond us.
We should be joy,
our fate is not
to be encased in this Earth.
Live. Live beyond.
World will not wait
for us, but always, waits,
always, there,
its silence, power
still soft, vibrating,
to daze the heart,
make us find
the love, that shakes us,
for inanimate things,
and so
prepares us
for the animate.
owns this existence,
sweet nature’s complex,
manifold, twist
of idea,
bright wisp of inner light,
solid, to hand.
Loving the line of mountains,
cloud, valley, air,
distance as open,
this human shape
rendered small.
What sight, trembling, the weight,
powerlessness, outreach!
You without reason,
you yet exist,
sweetness, a human
sweetness, an incandescence.
brought to mind,
Khajuraho, Ajanta,
where no-one
is object.
Reconstructing,
black, white
on the purer glass,
I entered the mind
you once had, and saw,
the light falling
over your nakedness,
not unclothed,
your openness,
not revealed,
girl in the dancing.
Sexuality fired in you there
like the burns of a high jet,
but I say you search
through the given,
and undressed gazes,
for the other text
for this poem, your life,
this moment that is no
thrust of bafflements.
It comes away clean, clear.
I help you say it: shape it.
don’t mouth it silently
as though our species
could claim expediency’s
moment of non-forgiveness.
All the lives of the creatures,
thrown down carelessly,
hidden silently,
scattered secretly,
these objects, commodities,
these not
the images we
cultivate: beauty, an
unsullied innocence.
What we do to the creatures
unforgiving, is, un-forgiven:
it haunts the true mind
the tender, the clear one.
will not save us,
our story, or applications,
incoherent forms, our texts,
or arcane arguments,
our hive, our bee-song,
fragile cultivation, sparse,
of the long-damaged garden.
But in the roar and hum,
where light fragments,
in the slow distress
of unrealisable dreams,
I ask a finer setting
for you, clear one.
What we, what you and I, make
is finer,
a name, a substance
we know
cannot save us,
but is pure,
and is ours.
in the heart of the bush -
do you know it, slender,
in winter, or spring,
before leaves
break out of the wood?
You must split the branch open
put silence to your mouth
taste it, smell the deep fragrance,
feel the damp sap
on your lips,
the cool flame
of its presence
over your fingers.
Its value is being,
it does not subscribe
to this substance of ours,
cities, laws, powers,
what corrupts, and objectifies.
It is itself, and its species,
and has no name,
you need to know,
recognise it by its fragrance,
always, there.
the openness,
the gate,
this absence that others don’t see.
We go accepting void
naked risk,
precise engagement,
without cover, or defence.
It should be shining there
when we walk by,
the clear portal
through which we pass and re-pass,
miraculously, through which
our hands meet,
transit, return,
this doorway
this place we go, to be,
in which we do not
seek a strategy, or make a move,
outwit, out-think, out-flank,
but touch, infinitely,
touch, endlessly.
the shade-tree,
starred dark,
pierced mouth of fruit,
fragile light-bearer.
I know how
eternity ticks through you,
leaf-clock-hour,
you pour all-colour’s silence
make
the electric nerve serene,
its quiver of blue
turned to me, face,
pure shape,
what we are
poured over you,
white seed
of the far place.
Fruit for me.
Rest, weight
in the lost palm,
my leaf
fleck,
your night
with gold, red
buds of birth,
each with