Eclogs

Prefaceix

a bull pine that had collapsed upon itself.1

when I suffer the angels rejoice2

the vertical cladding of the barn,3

a window frame without a window,4

reaching out from the forest,5

bodies of poets swim through sunset clouds, 6

schooldays, the sky is ever a white pearlescent7

a bleakness that is not a resolution8

I washed my hair this morning. The growth9

impoverished circumstances, the deliveryman,10

I have become the woman I was, a sensate mass11

Der H¶lderlinturm am Neckar in May,12

the felt lining soaked and torn,13

descent stresses muscles differently than ascent. 14

H¶lderlin took pains to work his lines15

the baby boy lay on the embankment,16

his fingers were yellow with poppy dust.17

after years of discipline18

a pink camel entered his brain from19

a photograph of Jack London in his office 1916,20

bronze spear points flutter among grass stems, 21

I write the date on a scrap of paper because it is important.22

that was my village. The kids in the garden.23

Porphyry says that honeybees seek sea caves.24

if Ellsworth Kelly's art is art, is it also an art that earns25

compressed layers of horizon through which the sun descends,26

somewhere among the constellations,27

the figure in the tower is my brother.28

as he rode his bike across town ice pellets pinged his face.29

under the seawall, mothers feed their fawns,30

is there a need for transition among elements,31

the trenches were laden with corpses dressed32

my father's body was found at the bottom of a well33

because I am not worthy, because I am not. 34

thoughts of Prince Edward Island, 35

a touch, a smear, different hues, an instinct36

images spin in the backwash of time. A fragment37

wrote by lamplight at 3 am,38

eclog by David Melnick,39

the level of brutality indicates premeditation.40

these are the final months, the poet thought.41

draft after draft, a dray horse42

place-discipline43

in this watered land, on these watered rocks, stream44

clouds have lowered themselves, immobilized45

looking into heaven's throat as I lay upon Malvern Hill,46

scent of fresh popcorn47

street doors three stories high.48

assaulted with green dye, in the confines of an artic cell,49

a withheld Arcadia fell from the sky,50

in this valley they chose to raise children, 51

rapacious Zionism. Arabs and colonizers 52

knots and cracks53

black arcs, wire thin, lay over blue-gray slabs 54

the elongated body of the violinist in blue,55

another immortal has left us. Footprints56

we old men with scruffy gray beards57

a landscape about returning home,58

...and more.