menagerie, once again

STILLNESS ... THEN THE BAT
FLYING AMONG
THE WILLOWS
BLACK AGAINST GREEN SKY

KIKAKU


KNOT

Watching the close forest this afternoon
and the riverland beyond, I delineate
quail down from the dandelion’s shiver
from the blowzy silver of the cobweb
in which both are tangled.

I am skillful
at tracing the white egret
within the white
branches of the dead willow where it roosts
and at separating the
heron’s graceful neck

from the leaning stems of the blue-green
lilies surrounding.

I know how to un- ravel
saw- grass- es knitted to iris leaves knitted
to sweet vernals. I can unwind sunlight
from the switches of the water in the slough
and divide the grey sumac’s hazy hedge
from the hazy grey of the sky, the red vein
of the hibiscus from its red blossom.

All afternoon I part, I isolate,
I untie,
I undo, while all the while
the oak
shadows, easing forward, slowly ensnare me, and the calls of the wood peewees catch

and latch in my gestures,
and the spicebush
swallowtails weave their attachments

into my attitude,
and the damp sedge
fragrances hook and secure,
and the swaying
Spanish mosses loop
my coming sleep,
and I am marsh-shackled,
forest-twined,
even as the new stars, showing now
through the night-spaces of the sweet gum
and beech, squeeze into the dark
bone of my breast, take their perfectly
secured stitches up and down. Pull
all of their thousand threads tight
and fasten, fasten.

Pattiann Rogers


GIDDY GRASSHOPPER
TAKE CARE ... DO NOT
LEAP AND CRUSH
THESE PEARLS OF DEWDROP

ISSA

A GATE MADE ALL OF TWIGS
WITH WOVEN GRASS
FOR HINGES ...
FOR A LOCK ... THIS SNAIL

ISSA

the wave, part IV

AT POPHAM BEACH

Haze of wave spume
towards Small Point,
Seguin Island Light like
a whale's spout--
maybe life washes itself here,
cools off.
It never comes clean.
See all the sails up
and full in the windy parade of skin
and sand and brine.
Soon the rocks will pluck
each wave's feathers.
Soon the beach
like the moon, waning,
will be 1/8th its size.
somewhere else --
maybe Ireland -- the tide
will bottom out then.

For now the sun
blesses the bodies at home in theirs,
and those less so,
to ruin and ruin's aftermath --
whatever that is --
and the waves rolling in,
little snowplows,
nimbus in miniature; how
the beach fishhooks east,
one child -- is that mine,
or some spirit I was one more
usher of? -- face up, arms and legs
scraping a temporary angel in the sand.

© 2008 Thorpe Moeckel

PRELUDE

I know only the bare
rocks of today.
In these lies my brown sea-weed,—
green quartz veins bent through the wet shale;
in these lie my pools left by the tide—
quiet, forgetting waves;
on these stiffen white star fish
on these I slip barefooted!

Whispers of the fishy air touch my body;
Sisters, I say to them.

© 2008 William Carlos Williams

PROJECTOR

Light takes new attribute

and yet his old
glory
enchants;

he shows his splendour
in a little room;
he says to us,
be glad

and laugh, be gay;

waves sparkle and delight
the weary eyes
that never saw the sun fall in the sea
nor the bright

Pleiads rise.

© 2008 H.D.

BLANDULA, TENULLA, VAGULA

What hast thou, O my soul, with paradise?
Will we not rather, when our freedom's won,

Get us to some clear place wherein the sun
Lets drift in on us through the olive leaves
A liquid glory? If at Sirmio,
My soul, I meet thee,
when this life's outrun,
Will we not find some
headland consecrated
By aery apostles of
terrene delight,

Will not our cult be founded
on the waves,

Clear sapphire, cobalt, cyanine,

On triune azures,
the impalpable
Mirrors unstill of the eternal change?

Soul, if She meet us there,
will any rumour
Of havens more high
and courts desirable
Lure us beyond
the cloudy peak of Riva?

© 2008 Ezra Pound

(not the first time the wave has shown up here -- check it out -- this time inspired by quiche's fascination with it.)

The Long and Winding Road

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

The long and winding road
that leads to your door
Will never disappear
I've seen that road before
it always leads me here
Leads me to your door

The wild and windy night
that the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
crying for the day
Why leave me standing here,
let me know the way

Many times I've been alone
and many times I've cried
Anyway you've always known
the many ways I've tried

And still they lead me back
to the long wind- ing road
You left me waiting here
a long, long time ago
Don't keep me standing here,
lead me to you door

But still they lead me back
to the long and winding road
You left me waiting here
a long, long time ago
Don't leave me standing here,
lead me to you door

John Lennon & Paul McCartney

solstice VI

PSALM

It’s not the sun
making the day sacred.

There have been other days,
brighter and less holy.

There have been mornings
as clear. And with no pain

of being, no sharp joy.
And if the sun

has a transparency now,
how could you feel it

were it not for the leaves
illumined to that clarity,

the white table, the rushes
by the road, in the pond,

and the jay’s body, its flash
among elms, clattering branches,

each carefully telling you
what it knows about light.

Patricia Hooper

from Other Lives © 1984

and yes, still

BOTH SIDES, NOW

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way



But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way



I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As ev'ry fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing
when you go
And if you care,
don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feel- ing proud
To say "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads,
they say I've changed
Well something's lost,
but something's gained
In living every day





I've looked at life
from both sides now
From win and lose and
still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Joni Mitchell

Copyright © 1969; Siquomb Publishing Company

alchemy

FAVRILE

Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab- gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term

for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized

atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,

fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,

copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;


surfaces burnished
like a tidal stream
on which an excitation

of minnows boils
and blooms, artifice
made to show us

the lavish wardrobe
of things, the world's
glaze of appearances

worked into the thin
and gleaming stuff
of craft. A story:


at the puppet opera
--where one man animated
the entire cast

while another ghosted
the voices, basso
to coloratura -- Jimmy wept

at the world of tiny gestures,
forgot, he said,
these were puppets,

forgot these wire
and plaster fabrications
were actors at all,

since their pretense
allowed the passions
released to be--

well, operatic.
It's too much,
to be expected to believe;

art's a mercuried sheen
in which we may discern,
because it is surface,

clear or vague
suggestions of our depths,
Don't we need a word


for the luster
of things which insist
on the fact they're made,

which announce
their maker's bravura?
Favrile, I'd propose,

for the perfect lamp,
too dim and strange
to help us read.

For the kimono woven,
dipped in dyes, unraveled
and loomed again

that the pattern might take on
a subtler shading
For the sonnet's

blown-glass sateen,
for bel canto,
for Faberge

For everything
which begins in limit
(where else might our work

begin?) and ends in grace,
or at least extravagance.
For the silk sleeves

of the puppet queen,
held at a ravishing angle
over her puppet lover slain,

for her lush vowels
mouthed by the plain man
hunched behind the stage.

© Mark Doty