Path

Near the open road
And woods under the snow
A point that lifts the night
A lamp keeps watch
Upon the white face
the lowered eyelids
Upon the bare wall
the closed shutters
Ruts in the soil come together
The bridge nearer
And cubes all about
Shapes
Objects
The mystery of doors
We step across emotion barring the road
And without turning we continue onward
The house will not follow
The house is watching us
From between two trees
its red topknot
and white brow
Silence lingers

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To Double Lock

I am so far from the voices
From the festival’s distant murmur
The foaming mill wheel turns back
The sob of spring water ceases
The hour has painfully glided
Over the moon’s great beaches
And in the cramped warm spaces without a crevice
I sleep head upon elbow
In the calm desert within the lamp’s circle
Terrible time inhuman time
Hunted along muddy sidewalks
Far from the limpid amphitheatre that declines glasses
Far from the decanted song born of leisure
In a bitter tussle of laughter between the teeth
A faded sorrow quaking at your roots
I prefer death forgetfulness dignity
I am so far away when I contemplate all I love

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The Deeper Shadow

Not they not anything not even He
Stairs in the branches climbing the clouds
You can’t find the number or the street or the name
of the blue roads traced by roof corners and by
straight lines of balconies
But the wall stretches from the door to the ramp that
mounts swiftly without stirring
The same motion makes us bend toward smoke that
distorts stiff houses in the foreground
And my gaze falls from on high over the city where
streets all conform to the same pattern
Sky hangs crooked over the water
We have to be ready for anything
At this still untidy point of the horizon
A magnetic steeple draws a dark bird wheeling with
night
A cloud passes a little lower and an airplane as
lithe as a wave and a horse leaps noiselessly
And men in hiding animals that gaze the drooping
trees even stones come asunder
Then the huge bird flies off once more
Swollen with the wind
His wings wounded by stars

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