CALCIFICATION

It's getting dark

                        Outside
this evening's rain
writhes against the hill
the color of an alcohol flame.

I don't want any other face to appear
any other voice to save me.
Here I swallow coarse salt. Sour wine.
I don't let the eagle fly.
With down from my wing, I kill the swan.
I haven't watered the fig, and I fell asleep
under the acacia.

And I've lost my humility.
                                    Perhaps - also -
the keys to the Garden.
And I don't know if sand returns to stone
or the bud dry from the buttonhole to metal.

                                    It's raining harder on this side.

I'm going to light the lamps
and leave them.           Let them burn.

Let everything be consumed.
                                          Everything.

Even the oil of your name.

CEREMONY

We brought our cheeks together
not to feel each other's breath,
but side by side, to join as one
the beat of the blood
in our temples:

                            Three times three.
                            And the ninth beat
closed the Temple to the world.

                        And you, masterfully,
touched my shoulders:
                                        right
                                                      left
and I hardly felt the weight of my forehead.

                        And falling backwards...
                        toward a deathbed
from which I am saved only
by the strength of your legs
                                        in mine.

NEITHER WITH IT NOR ON IT

I always needed shields:

Three drops of tincture of amethyst
under my tongue
to give me courage.
Dry herbs
on a tin plate
for my asthma.
And wet clay on burns.

                                    Now, rum.

And the only amethyst
is the ring of my eyes,
watching the smoke of the last cigarette rise
to a neon sky
leaving a faint scent
of tobacco
                                   
               and lies.

from The Knight of the Island

The rider's soul
and his horse are one thing.

                        Ruby horse: live life
                        Blue horse: understand life
                        White horse: transcend life

It rides poems
as it crosses the oars
- with such grace -

one over the other
lovely over lovely, natural.

The crown of its mane in the distance.

                        The splendor
of the dance in the wheat fields.

Communion.

Dawn Psalm
coming across the silver-blue
laurel slopes.

Gazelle's eyes. Moist jewel.

The threshing floors and hay cut in the mountains
- air so sweet, warm like charity -

The amber and purple hues of evening.

October and November afternoons
when the high dominions
sustain the world soul
and people watching the sky, lying
among the copper stalks of grass.

Certainty of good.

Trust like that, pure trust, between two people:
                                         like a warm bowl of oatmeal
                                        on a cypress chest.

                                        Given, simple
                                                                Just so.