In homage to Osip Mandelshtam
I am sure I do
not believe we can
move a pencil through
a white field, pulled by
a team of upside-
down ox-head letter
As, and in real fact
furrow it. Poor old
page-earth — sized, cut, scraped,
ploughed with mule-pencils
or impressed by ink,
illuminated,
printed, obscurely
inscribed, and revered
or destroyed, revered
and destroyed, and here
comes yet another
walled-garden crop for
eye, ear, lungs, legs, mind.
•
The cranium dome
hangs from its own silk
conceptual thread
of thought, conceiving
its infinite in-
complete perfection:
its Zeno, its Zeus,
its Dante, its Te
Deums and freak shows,
frescoes, twine theory,
money, bread, bricks and
wine, six-syllable
abstractions, axes
and facts, its every
variation of
custom, including
vertical graves of
men buried upside
down without their heads.

•
(In dusk-lit, telling
ways, tell me, little
swallow, Tuscan or
T'ang or wrung somehow
from time: since I have
neither feather nor
wing, how I too can
go into a grave
made only of air.)

•
"For your sweet joy, take
"from my cupped hands a
"little glittering
"of sun, a little
"honey — for this is
"what Persephone's
"bees have commanded.

"A boat can't cast off
"if it isn't moored;
"no one can hear a
"shadow that wears fur
"boots; we can't best our
"fright in this dark wood.

"Our kisses — these are
"all that we can save,
"velvety as bees
"that die if they are
"exiled from the hive.

"They're murmuring in
"the transparent groves
"of the night; the wilds
"of mountain Greece are
"their motherland; their
"diet is time, lung-
"wort, pale meadowsweet.

"For joy, please take this
"pagan gift: this rude,
"rustling necklace of
"the bees that died, for
"these had transmuted
"honey into sun."