found photograph, gold leaf, conceptual calligraphy. In private collection.
Transliteration
Have you not, through
sound alone,
Learned to see what has fallen.
Do not speak, yet listen
To the noise your eyes make
As they turn to the window
While I am urging my words
To be the branch that snags your sleeve.
I wished at first
To unfold my cloth of thoughts
and cut you an even patch.
With a silent thread of worlds
I would winterize those rags
You were in snow.
Precise no voice, I tore
Both fabric and soul
Until something made me turn
Flickering candles
Shadows of an illness... a moon sailing by.
Hasn't your skin protested
In words untouched at the reach
Of one fond of your dreams
'Til a calloused heel tells
All one could ask to know.
When your heart and legs sigh
At yet another step from
Bed to slipper to floor
Do their murmurs not also
Disturb the air.
You inspire a chaos
Which you expel as fear.
I have watched you blanch at
The sound of crystals ringing
And like the waves beneath an ocean,
Your tearful cold rocks
A weeping echo.
If you could learn to ripple instead
Of break, I would soothe you
Oh so willingly.
But you cannot whisper
With half a though -
Even your silent moments hold
The unmistakable, unmistable rumble
Of manic trains attempting to fly.
You did not reach me last night -
Or so your thought - and it is true
There was nothing more.
But I swear I heard
A wingless chime
Darting through a thousand wires
And wouldn't I have answered
That hour of need.
This time was kind not to
Present you to me again and again
With a water-filled plate announcing
Your personal discovery, now
Of the Adriatic floor.
Concerns of the earth not necessarily
Are those of men.
What has engaged you lately
Was it women of an underworld
With golden legs so completely
Crossed. Was it need to stare
To their knees
And wonder
Of their unbounded peace.
You answer that it is a matter of
Life as well. As what you dare not
Reply
The last of my gifts long discarded
I sent you breathless from my rooms
And though quickly
The door was shut I saw
Before I heard, the moans
Your steps are known to make.
These halls did weep because of you,
Your trembling lies did give me shiver.
But today outside
The garden shines emerald green.
