and if it hangs in loxton like it hangs
in stellenbosch, this unfull moon, this old
obscurer, then may they afflict (these pangs
of wholeness) you. and you, as me, enfold.
if fathers were so armed
she would be striding into the breakers
as into her father's arms.
this is a mere sea,
this a walk to its own end.
when that salt life or this, insipid, ends,
when ordinary ruth has been deployed
and while the tame dogs dice for dividends,
some corner drunk will slur into the void:
he was, like me, an old habitué
who loved, and tired of, the red café.
... which was so resilient an hour ago,
which insinuated itself into my voids
and constructed there,
of the nothing,
houses-for-grandchildren
and wooden-legged bunnies close-held
to the chest
... which made of the silences
between our words
something lighter than air,
than having to be.
the vine is stripped, the summer's sugars rot
in well-lit sheds: jan boland throws the latch.
sad mothers, where their dull-eyed children squat
in private, fumble with the autumn match.
he is hard as headlines.
she shoots him still and climbs the threads of his eyes,
unravelling him into the void of the night.
seen a man standin' over a dead dog by the highway in a ditch.
he's lookin' down kinda puzzled, pokin' that dog with a stick.
got his car door flung open, he's standin' out on highway 31
like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run...
[bruce springsteen, "reason to believe"
from "nebraska", 1982]
he never had to pass this station, wave
in sad acknowledgement of absent choirs
lining bleak unbusy platforms... save
your laurels: this gift too, today, expires.
the wives have claimed the kitchens, commandeered
the cockpits (not their oumas' oubliettes)...
this thirteen spanner and this greying beard
must muscle what the married mind forgets.
how well you've polished out your body's soil
and combed your teeth of every fecund word.
see! hermes's squeaky loam-shy heel is (if not
wholly resurrected) disinterred...
the rose is uncorrupted, and the greying
lung is harbour to no treason. chance
be praised for arbitrarily delaying
raw inevitable circumstance.
as if the broken bread of galicia
would be unbroken here. asof die skewe
been die pad sou regtrap. he would be a
ginsberg of the heerengracht... sy lewe,
weg en waarheid stol, and he appeases
tame incubi, this straightup square queer jesus.
[for claire]
she hasn't asked for easy anchors, pins
dropped from the gunwales of her womb to grasp
homesoil, its thyme- and tidemarks on her shins,
the staple's quick conjunction with the hasp.
she charts her course by no-one's reassuring
and when she docks she'll be herself her mooring.
[for claire]
wise women shrink back meekly when the bill
presented them exceeds their honour's scope.
tender, fool, your coin (untenable):
the indefatigable curse of hope.
the clarity he woke to spans the west,
a low midmorning cloud obscures the bay
uncommonly, and threatens to ingest
his light. he sees he'll labour through this day.
[for claire]
she's learned the winds in order to betray
the winds. today she drifts less frugally,
this unknoxed, disencalvined, no-god's-prey
whose spirals widen centrifugally...
so this is where they roost? between the pages
of our m'aidezs and our cold july,
in the unyoung plumage of their ungreyed ages:
anni nostri sapientiae.
