Perspectives
A. S. Kline
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2000 A.S.Kline, All Rights Reserved
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CONTENTS
Sing To Me
Softly Of Earth.
No Mind.
First Light
Winter , Night
, or Both.
Nocturne.
Ex Nihil
Hedges of May.
A Path in Trees.
Gorge.
Quarries.
The Green Man.
He.
Creatures.
Aquarius.
Be in Me.
Dream..
Be.
Season.
Winter Walk.
Pissarro.
How To.
Pressure.
The Garden.
Talking To The
White Goddess.
Invocation.
Rowan.
Care.
Touch.
Moon-Song.
Based on an Irish Song ( 7th Century )
Three Anonymous Rondeaux.
Three More
Anonymous Rondeaux.
New Moon.
In You.
Song.
Ardour's Tower.
Alphabet
Alternan.
Fire.
Bird On Briar.
Heart Be Still
'Irisch Kind'
See.
The Goddess.
Cen Áinius.
Rose.
Adapted from
the Gaelic.
Starlight
Various.
She.
Mermaid.
Fifty Dragons
For Shen Lung.
Three Pines
And A Buddha.
Six Shunga.
Index Of First
Lines.
In
the gold desert flowering after rain,
in
the blue desert, no Mind watching us.
Hedges
dark-scented.
Lanes
where stone steps glisten,
where
the wind quickens. No Mind.
And
no Mind watches now as we walk back
towards
the past ages, free of gods, full of feeling.
Under
the sky where no-one knew us, we knew ourselves.
On
the grasslands, the savannahs,
on
the steppes, the prairies,
as
the creatures flowed past us. No Mind watched.
No
other life, no hell, eternity.
No
sin, no fall, no grace, no redemption.
No
dim confessional.
No
ought, no outer meaning.
No
given, man.
No
free-will, no direction.
No
destiny but form and breath and choice,
the
endless view scaling out in distance.
No
victim and no eden, wheel or eye.
No
rebirth, and no snake coiled in the dark,
head
flattened against being.
No
call to us, no cry.
The
sky
like
the first white of sky in the first dawn.
Winter , Night , or Both
of
unrelated magnitude's coincident glare.
It
is the glimmer of time, unstartled by humanity,
arriving
at the human.
We
watch ourselves, while Nothing else watches.
Form
in the unplanned world is the sound that air makes
to
our ear, without sense of beginning, unfilled
with
our absence, carrying no message but origin.
makes
something of the minuteness of the real.
It
flutters and is fluttered by the mind.
Galaxy
and eye are fluttered.
Moth
climbs, through falling light,
through
the white gravity of how things are.
in
the pale dawn of deserts
spirits
softly moving
the
slow human commerce
the
freight of earth-seas.
Mind
learns a complex waiting
of
snowed trees in winter
the
cold of ice boughs
that
have been there colder
in
the stand of night
and
holding out for a light
glittering
with thaw not snowfall.
Mind
waits. Are we waiting
for
more than our survival
among
leaves also waiting ?
We
are Mind and no mind made us
out
of the nothing beyond us
or
the nothing inside us.
past
the indolent stream and the dead thorns,
on
above the level of the uncivilised streets,
up
the bare slope to the pale hedges of may.
Burning poisonous white in the afternoon.
Burning pit of action, hope, desire,
of sense and memory.
White abyss in the inward of the eye
that seethes on nothing.
Burning of the body, of the mind.
The town sterile on its hill,
the blind houses
looking back at abyss.
The vast stifling of a civilisation.
The future naked, offers no consolation.
Only the burning bonfire, only fuel,
the mephitic perfumes of decomposition,
the wild, slack, beauty of corruption.
White fires, white banners blowing,
and we too, living fires, we men and women,
still flesh, mind, spirit.
We live and are not defeated, we the silent people.
And we shall be hedges of may, white hedges of may.
What is there you do
not doubt, the self, the line
of meanings taught knee-high, the purposes ?
A path in trees may take us who knows where,
despite all mapped imaginary symbols, air
of gold and pine-filled resin, dark and green,
unsure, a siren-space where men can be unlimned,
a stream with no grail-cup below the surface
below the neutral, iced, untainted grey.
A random walk, whose landmarks, curious,
impress on mind, the unbounded and unpurposed,
doubt's certain centre.
Paths do not end, and do not own, divide.
No possession is implied by your walking.
No knowledge of what you walk from, promised,
or what you hope, unpromised, this floor cares
for no betrayal. Dark, where a bird, unseen
softly calls, or riven with light, edge-brightening,
looking down, a path that climbed.
abandoned pastures petrify, stone crumbles.
Unpossessed abandoned land is best, unpossessed peoples.
Un-history of places, lingering life, the human
essence of inhuman spaces, a silence without centre.
Flower-shelves, dark overhangs, constituents,
molecular dead inheriting the soil, intensifying
the yellow of starlike flowers, the pale of turf.
An atom here or there must still be there. The mind
abrades, but time does not erode, erase all traces.
What we hold back is our particular power over death,
the private mind, the voice of the aftermath of talk
of quiet places, the inner logic, the consonance
that other sounds fragment. This landscape also,
a continuous self, untouched identity,
the best of places, uncultivated, clear.
green water welling from stone, pale bays of air,
split flakes, unweathered, scattered on the grass,
sinews of silence, where the deep call of hidden birds
falls through lassitudes of air, and pine-tree height.
Here nothing demands our presence, breeze on breeze,
loses itself in showers of light on leaf.
Easy to vanish here, to evaporate outwards,
into the unknowable otherness of the earth,
into air, rock, soil, the insect labyrinth,
the darkness, lichen-lipped, of broken walls,
the undisturbed, unkempt, the undeclared,
the shelves of anonymous stillness.
World must miss us later if not sooner, and if self-love
is what this love is, greater than human longing,
that makes some live more in the solitary mind
than in affection, though they love deeper or as deeply,
love that is also the losing of the mind in things
that are, that we must lose, their revelation,
which taken inwards is then carried inwards
speechless, dark, goes deepest in those least
well equipped to return its gift, through delight,
joy, feeling and
affection, but still the prime
mover of that traveller who vanishes into self, into his
own.
These shelves of rock nourish the isolate self,
its solitude - are loved for what they are, neutrality
and not indifference, having no stake in humanity
neither facing towards us nor away, unimplicated
undirected, pure of all intent. These bays of time
are like the miraculous curves of the sea, they
are filled with grace, are launchpads of the spirit,
and in them our profligate pulse of transient process
grows fainter, deeper, calmer, until it shades
into the mirror of space behind the skyline.
Not ours, but some other power digs down here
into the core of the self, creates as it destroys.
the human staring out of living stone.
Reality resists knowing and remains
in mouths that strain, in leaves that coil,
is curve, the singing flute, is Marsyas.
God of headlands and millenial light
heavy from his journey. God of masks,
saying god is not love, only presence,
a waiting in the moment, of the air,
heavy-leaved Orpheus of the foliate crown,
oak, laurel, birch, black poplar.
King of the dark, slave of this murmuring wood,
Janus bi-face who arrests the mind
with terror and with pity. What is between
an age that lives by vision, and this age ?
What tongue moves in the severed head ?
In
all these forms he rests, and is fettered.
Formless,
only in form he finds himself.
Willing
himself in all forms is his freedom.
Free
of our prison he weds himself to being.
Endlessly
being he reveals himself.
Through
all these forms we would be free of,
In
this bondage that constrains us,
He
is the spirit of the head that's severed.
Where
he sings no time passes.
He
is Bran, Orpheus, and is Siva.
Through
all these forms , silently, he plays.
of
the soul, in the depths of the mind, beyond all gods
transients
of feeling, mystic names
where
meaning glimmers. Our naming, and our touching.
Out
of such grace, such life, such beauty comes
of
what in us is source, is inception,
the
bright fires of feeling, voiceless flames,
in
the consonance from which our being came.
Why
then are they our shadows,
still
beyond us, in a past we cannot recover ?
White
moon rising in Aquarius,
return
us to the first unknown freedom
the
first exquisite freedom of the Earth
We
are so unfree.
There
is another truer clear dimension
where
poise matters, and affection,
the
first dimension where our life began.
Now
with all our knowing, we could be tender
Now
we could love Earth as never before,
as
the first men loved before knowledge,
as
the first women loved before possession,
their
spirits alive in the dry grass oceans,
before
we owned earth, time, each other.
The
old earth, the oldest universe,
alive
in the pale sky, the evening cloud.
Now
we could love the glow of earth,
naked
on the threshold of being,
and
the Present, clearest of gifts.
No
more greatness, so unfree,
The
Past not delimiting, the Future not unfolding.
Waiting
for the flame of life, till it comes again,
when
it comes again, waiting.
It
will come again.
mind's
outer echo, dark surface of feeling,
over
which thought of you passes.
In
me, not possession but relation,
silent
without intention, clear
of
memory, of word.
Be
and become, deepening challenge,
force
always new, always beyond
that
which you think you are,
weakened
or bounded.
In
me not as you know yourself,
but
as I know you, outside the limitation
world
creates in its creatures, wordless now, free
Be
the image, created as if without love,
so
truly loved, that in the one declaration,
love
pours out of the anonymous mouth,
from
object to mind, so that all possible truth
murmurs
inside it.
Be
in the final act wholly yourself,
You
who unknowingly granted all this to me,
all
overflowing - You the all-human
standing
against space and time, as a statue
freed
by the hand stands against stones,
itself
half-emerging out of its alien world.
Be
both the ache and the sweetness,
dread
in the veins, shaking with lightening force
the
crown of the tree. Be beauty and fear.
Sing
to me softly of Earth, that brings us forgiven
back
to our source in the heart.
Sing
of necessity greater than pleasure or pain,
purpose
or understanding.
Sing
to me softly of Earth, soothe the dull heart.
Declare
all is to come, over and over,
again
and again, Mind and its lover
Body,
their book, new and unbroken.
Show
me the silence that comes
when
out of pure giving, suddenly spirit becomes
subtle
and tender, when sex touches on sex,
like
star within cloud, or moon
in
the inward mirror touching on light.
Dream
of
what man is.
(
Mountains of light, staring out
across
the dream of desert.
Empty
earth, of being without self-knowing,
of
mirrors without reflection )
There
are three things to unlearn.
(
Mountains of dawn, silent under morning,
above
the white smoke of our footsteps)
Not
to believe.
Not
to follow.
Not
to own.
Be,
in eternity.
Be,
in the silence that the world leaves.
This
is the only thing you are.
This
is the passing hour.
This
is the meaning of life's mask.
Love,
and in your love be true.
Know,
and in your knowing pity.
Remember,
in your heart, remember.
dreams
the cold fountains and the frozen streams,
the
stone grass, the ice earth, the statues.
There
are figures there, Goya's doll faces,
the
blind-man's-buff of movement.
No
touch, no taste,
under
the crystal, clarion,brilliance.
This
season now, where we are most at home.
that
makes firs sigh greenly together
is
like a bent rower with the sky on his back
rowing
through the depths of the wood, through time,
is
like Gauguin's bareback rider of riversides
who
crouches under whiplike branches.
Space
roars but we come down to the small meadow's,
sunlit
silence. It is like leafing through
Breughel's
towers , hells, landscapes, and coming
across
the drawing of human figures, on paths
of
light, flickering among trees, where at last
individuals,
walk, and talk, and the silence waits
for
time to flow, for Rembrandt to begin.
The
truly-loved, concentrated on
becomes
our own image of our existence.
Place
by place remembering what is loved.
The
pure technique, in having no observer,
no
desire, free of time's claims and its obligation,
speaks
in a place beyond that movement teaches,
a
place of light, and light's delerium.
Fearful
touch, like mouth on mouth, or arm on arm
ensnaring,
in the undemanded future.
A
space, of something seen by love
its
silent eye.
Mind,
centrifuge of flame, still circling
the
fall of light on walls, the leaves, the roads.
A
spring and autumn landscape of the heart.
And
colour, like a god, humbly passing.
How To
Terror.
Courage is to be our own firmness
a
pillar of fire.
In
the cage of History, one more or less.
But
to be a voice, a mind, a pair of eyes.
Pressure
Tongues
press greenly on the word.
White
foam in the sea's bowl is the spine
of
the silent minotaur's emerging.
In
mind is the pressure of the mirror,
the
unbreathing night darker than a stone.
What
is this beating in the cage of bone ?
O
round white mouth forever searching.
the
animal eyes,
where
we are.
See
now, there,
the
Nothingness flower,
contain
us.
Acknowledge
body,
mind, process,
discover
the sacred.
Examine
how
silence, stillness invade
what
no-one made.
Consider
the
empty garden now.
Attend.
tender
in faithfulness of light
how
shall I touch your perfect fire ?
Suffering
that breathes above me now,
beyond
obedience to be,
Beauty
will you itself allow ?
Peace
of these constellations' calm
night of the mind that must
endure
harbour the love in us from harm.
Power
to the very utmost keep
the
loved, the loving from despair
drowned
where they lie in Eros-sleep.
Moon-creature
precious of desire
faithful in tenderness of light,
how
shall I touch your perfect fire ?
the
blackbird's way.
Delicate
you throw yourself
from
the high rock.
Bruised lips part in the arms of sky
on
arms of stone.
O
centre of the circle,
and
sacred second letter.
Eyes
of the future open
in
your arrow-shaped leaf-blades.
Care
Heavier than
air my care for you
but
lighter than leaves the wind blows through.
O darker than night my care-in-love
yet
brighter than breath of light above.
O
sharper than pain my love of you
but
sweeter than that delight that through
the body sends its fire.
"Trop me regardez, amie, souvent "
your sweet looks are caught by all men.
Heart that would love in sweetest heaven
(too
much you gaze at me ,
love, often )
should not reveal its love to all men
but should guard itself from
treason.
Too much you gaze at me, love, often
your sweet looks are caught by all men.
Three More Anonymous
Rondeaux
(Translated
from the Medieval French)
“Toute seule passerai le vert boscage”
since company I have none.
If I've lost my lover by my own hand,
lonely I'll wander in the green woodland.
I'll send him a message he'll understand
that I'll mend what I have done.
Lonely I'll wander in the green woodland
since company I have none.
"
Ne me mettez en oubli "
my
sole comforter, my good
who
of all the world I would
love
the best of all I find.
My love gentle, true and kind
if my heart you've understood
do not put me from your mind.
Let us be of one sweet mind
that is what I ask of you.
Since with you I chose to bind,
do not put me from your mind.
" La fiance que j'ai en vous "
my
only friend, my chosen one
makes
me forget my martyrdom
and
all my great suffering too.
One day we'll meet again we two.
What is it that makes me say so ?
The faith that I have in you.
We will, by god, despite those few
who would have wished to say us no.
None but god can hurt us though.
This is the root of all my good,
the faith that I have in you.
New
Moon
new
under the dark, collecting starlight.
Pale
beauty, loveliest of all.
White
stillness that frees me in the gulfs of time
for
inner journeys to the kindest source,
the
sweet heart of the Earth.
New Moon rising from the dying sun,
new life returning.
Softly you passed the shadows, safely came
open into the new beginning of the spirit,
into the birth of the gentlest aspect,
the conjunction where mind and feelings meet
I knew you there, hidden,
and then seeing you born suddenly beyond the earth,
curved again like a woman taking
the universe into her arms.
Through the dark space you came,
of time and distance, healed and whole
from the sun's warm giving,
from the places of loss and departure,
risen again to life.
Moon fixed in memory where my deepest feelings
touch, intense the sphere of your circling.
Secret, careless child of our unknown
and unknowing oceans of the spirit.
Well of compassion. Sensitive bowl
of the electric shadows.
Reborn again. Moon of mind's seas,
now setting swiftly following the sun,
to come again in the new life,
in the heart's bright renewal.
What sense remains where I in you am drowned?
The drowned self is beyond the body's sense.
The end of all my self in you remains.
The self remains when sense is drowned in you.
You are the sense of self
where I am drowned.
What is the body's sense where
self remains?
I drown in you where all my
senses end.
a
sweetness and a sighing.
A
transient of light,
love
is, in the night.
Love
is just a dying,
the
descant of that song
we
cannot suffer long,
the
closeness, the denying.
Love
is just a dying.
Love
is just a dying,
the
mystery's untying.
A
miracle of light
are
lovers in the night.
Love
is just a dying.
I
climbed with secret heart on fire,
among
bright
winds of night
that
bring the light.
Sweet
flowers of May,
now
are gone silently away,
in
mind,
blown
memory's
done
ecstasies.
Pure
winds of night
from
our deep fears give us respite.
In
Ardour's tower
we
stand
at
midnight's hour.
Alphabet
Shoulder
of moonlight.
Shoulder
of the holly.
Silver
of moonlight.
Silver
of the birch-tree.
Fountain
of moonlight.
Fountain
of the willow.
Shadow
of moonlight.
Shadow
of the alder.
Secret
of moonlight.
Secret
of the apple.
Sweetness
of moonlight.
Sweetness
of the rowan.
Delight
of the moonlight.
Delight
of the hazel.
Wisdom
of moonlight.
Wisdom
of the reed.
Spirit
of moonlight.
Spirit
of the poplar.
Slenderness
of moonlight.
Slenderness
of aspen.
Whiteness
of moonlight.
Whiteness
of the blackberry.
Beauty
of moonlight.
Alternan
Little
tree of wisdom over clear water.
I
will remember you for ever.
Sweetness
and grace and the knowledge of pity.
Little
hazel-tree in the green silence.
Little
tree of wisdom over still water.
Fire
Love
is the flame that sears the ground.
Love
is the light that blinds the eye.
Love
is the pyre on which we lie.
Love
is the shirt of pain that burns,
the
unbearable knife, the body that yearns.
Love
is the maker, love is the form,
love
is the reed in the howling storm.
Love
is the river, love is the night,
love
is the sea, love has the right.
Love
is the talon that descends.
Love
is the guardian, love is the friend.
Love
is the unattained desire.
Love
is the jealous eye. Love is the liar.
Love
is the music, love is the rhyme,
love
is the final hostage of time.
Love
is the dark fire, Eden's fall.
Love
is the light, that raises all.
Bird On Briar
(An
Anonymous Lyric from The Medieval English)
Nature
comes of love, love to crave.
Careless
bird, for me, for me have care,
Or
make you, fair, for me, make me my grave.
I
am so careless-bright, bird on briar,
when
I see that fair hind, hind in hall.
She
is white of limb, lovely, true.
She
is fair and flower, flower of all.
Might
I her willing, willing , have,
Faithful
of love, lovely, true,
from
my pain I might, I might be saved,
joy
and bliss were for, were for me new.
never
returning, mind, returning.
Life
of the will, make, life of will,
not
of body, of body's burning.
Her
form fills the eye, eye on fire.
She
is lustre, of lustre, bright.
She
is all of joy, joy's desire,
light
of dark sea, dark of night.
Mind
be still, mind, mind be still,
light
on the mountain, mountain moving.
Cloud
on the hill, cloud, cloud on hill,
love
in the mind, love, ever-loving.
'Irisch Kind'
courting
danger, always leaping,
throwing
yourself to the other side of being.
Open
the black hill for me, the high fall,
the
peat's depth, the sad lough, the bath of the sun.
Open
the side of the dark slope for me,
the
heart's pool, the deep waters.
Give
me the shadow lane, the copse, the dumb thicket
where
the blackbird flies.
In
the teeth of the wind from your homeland,
show
me your mermaid-hair wet with the sea, the leaping, the dying.
Cry
out the spell for me, hazel-bush, may-thorn,
white
in the blossom, lost, bound by air's silence.
Call
the deep drowning.
See
touch
that is light as fire
beyond
all thought or care,
lips
of a sweet desire.
Once
to the heart it comes,
burns
the mind as it dumbs,
once
and then not again,
touch
that is ache and pain.
See
if the body holds
touch
that is pure as gold,
over
the hands and hair,
body
of love's despair.
See
if the heart can keep
touch
that is lost in sleep
further
than furthest light
of
the mind's dark goodnight.
The Goddess
To
others speaking her secrets of utterance, never uniquely.
To
each merciful, pitying, renewing, repeating.
To
all various, hidden, wild, concealing.
Of
each indiscriminate, taking her lovers, coldly.
Over
all, victorious, tyrannous, tender, yielding.
Beyond
each, careless, wondering, unsurprised.
To
each cruel, gentle, fierce, demanding,
spreading
her favours, asking , taking, needing,
mocking
jealousy, pleasured, from all receiving,
owning
with each enacting, soothing, sating,
goading
each, driving, bleeding, tormenting.
From
each learning, all knowing, seeing,
true,
easy, wordless, unsated, pliant.
In
each trusting, to each holding, defenceless,
defended
by magic, sowing. By each held sacred,
by
each honoured, cursed, cried out on, embittering.
Over
each arching, under each cradling,
into
each flowing, beyond each sighing.
From
each distant, warmest to least known,
turning
on nearest, declivities revealing.
From
each asking, thanking, wishing, gifts
piled
forgotten, wealth vanishing ,crushing,
drawing
the core, dragging the root, spending.
To
each one faithful, faithless, impartial, smiling,
each
one absorbing, holding, lying, watching dying.
From
each learning the spell, then binding,
in
each finding the vision, then blinding.
Mermaid
of mirage, sybil's echo,
white-browed,
gold-haired, red-lipped, long-fingered.
For
each the one voice, various, compelling,
innocent,
loving, darkness, disaster ,dispelling,
all
fears, curses, hexes on wise men, wild
for
her nature's places, earth's swelling.
By
each charmed, shafts of her full quiver, giving
tremor,
unsigned testament of her lightning.
Naked,
incalculable, cautious, bold,
moon-opposite,
sun-quencher, star-delayer,
serving
hope, stirring envy, raising from chagrin,
the
dumbfounded lover. Unreasoning, proud
of
her lunar resilience, controlling, commanding
of
all her elements, aspects, figures, childish then woman,
touching
the infant, granting leave, witholding,
restless,
poured out, relinquished, flowing.
From
each asking the universe, yielding the earth.
To
each returning stillness, choice, by his will,
bloodied,
bloodless, leafy, lit, be-flowered,
intense
and momentary, easeful, eternal.
From
whom the silence, night, and the deep wood,
the
word of unknowing, the white-limbed whispering.
From
whom inscrutable truth, blind life, the hidden face.
Cen Áinius
(
From the 9th Century Irish - treochair metre)
Cen
áinius
In
caingen do-rigénus;
nech ro-charus ro-cráidius.
in
that deep vow I made for us,
cruel
to what was precious.
Graciously,
except
god came between us then,
I'd
given what he asked of me.
Unseeingly,
he
takes the road, away from me,
pain
now, but then eternity.
A
foolishness
to
turn that heart towards distress,
where
once I showed such gentleness.
I,
Liadan,
who
time gone loved Cuirithir,
nor
can deny the cherished man.
I
still will bless
the
time that I was at his side
and
treated him with tenderness.
The
wind-filled trees
were
my pure song with Cuirithir,
and
movement on the sunlit seas.
Then,
so it seemed,
no
crueller thing could ever be,
than
to wake us, where we dreamed.
Call
out to him,
that
if this heart loved any one
more
than all others, it was him.
For
me the pain,
of
what's inside, the hurt and strain,
losing
him - never whole again.
Rose
gentleness,
the
world crushes.
Dog-rose,
wildness,
earth
crushes.
Sweetness,
tenderness,
being
crushes.
Briar,
Briar,
rose of the thorns,
you
night
crushes.
Rose,
Rose
of
no-time,
light
crushes.
Adapted from the Gaelic
you
are whiter than the gull is,
you
are whiter than the snow is,
you
are whiter than the sky.
You're
the whiteness of the rowan,
that
subdues every anger.
You're
the white foam of the ebb-tide.
You're
the white waves of the flood-tide.
Starlight
mattress
of stars,
by
the blackberry root,
by
briar-white of blackberry.
Star
by the thorn.
White
star by the fern.
White
straw of stars,
four-fold
petal-form, six-leafed
flower
of the turf.
Star,
star, on star,
smaller
than eyes, eye bright.
White
star, white star, star in the grass.
Part,
to be part,
to
be part of this.
White
star in the grass.
Various
mistress
of invocations, jealousies, expert in delay,
drawing
tides in from her first slender arc
to
the white full, weaver of shows,
scattering
radiance, matching the light she yields
to
how the gold of sun shines on her,
discriminate
in angers, engendering illusions
to
bring all to her subtle ease and calms.
Buried
by fire, remember these are her ways,
immanence,
rightness, fury, time-driven transience,
deaf
to entreaties, then relenting, mask-wearing,
savourer
of subjections, waiting tribute,
giving
random play, spreading nets gently,
noosing
tightly, in show of love, in rare deceit,
cooling,
then warming, watching the nest of rivals
fight
to outdo each other, in the grass.
Blown
in the air, remember her beguiling.
Leasing
the night, losing all common kindness
is
part of her masque, her mistrust of words
not
of her silence out of which words are born.
Live
on hope unpromised, vows unmade,
signs
lost in the stream.
Buried
deep, a dead man, remember
her
seasons of light and her seasons of darkness.
Nothing
new the cold sweat at her deceptions,
liaisons,
pain of the knowing and the not-knowing.
She
is awareness, sower of dreams, maker of hesitations,
merciless
in all counter-recriminations,
yielding
inside refusal, a vortex of light and air.
Dead
man remember, all elements are hers.
She
the
triangular hill, the briared and berried lane,
is
white-thorn and the purple line of furrows,
shadow
of hedges, smell of festering ditches,
wood-sorrel,
meadow-sweet, the burnet-rose.
Glittering
she is light-shreds over alien fields.
Her
birds flight the shadows above white rock.
She
waits at the gate, by doorways, in the corners
of
unprotected, unspent spaces, astonishes,
is
joy, the strangeness that stares out from nature
through
visionary angle. She is the source's impulse,
the
spring from stones, and is absence, stillness,
less
than nothing, the worn and unworn threshold,
the
new and un-new moon. She shows herself
in
seasons, surprises silence, in dark of nettle,
in
sea of furze, bends down as birch, shivers in aspen.
She
is three ways, three trees, three parts of the year,
her
name is of three letters, air and light move,
where
she turns her head, earth and water
where
she takes in her lovers.
Mermaid
you
sit, your hands are bright.
In
the mirror of silence
white
gleams, red burns, gold glistens.
One
claims your comb,
your
skin, your hair in the light.
You
murmur of spray that appears, slopes that shine.
You
fill spaces, empty them, light as a wave.
They
yield to you soft mouths of whiteness,
the
salt-urns bitter with brine.
The
dark stone weeps with fire.
They
are ploughing your shining furrows.
On
the rock of silence,
you
sit, your hands are bright.
Fifty Dragons For Shen Lung
Keeping his counsel
in the green jade
that
dragon who knows so much about us.
2.
This clear night, brightest of moons.
Is it true we are parted
only by the Dragon of the Milky Way ?
3.
Your sleepy head
Shen Lung watches
with one eye closed.
4.
At daylight you leave
the dragon in sheets of cloud,
wearied from gathering dew.
5.
Through clear water
see the coiled dragon.
Asleep at last that snake of jealousy.
6.
Visible like dragon veins,
the deep love that does not speak.
7.
Suddenly hearing a voice
from the dragon boat.
Will you ever know her true name ?
8.
Over all the summer sky
red scales of the dragon.
9.
In the white porcelain
one sign for "blue"
and "dragon'.
What Shen Lung sees and knows
he can
never tell.