Poems for Persons of Interest

Virgil I Did you see me fall like lightning, Virgil—surveyor of the heavens? I came To play a profane chord for man, Or so the gods have said. But Virgil, Virgil, I dreamt you spoke In tongues with words I could not form When I sang to them my anguished tales of pain And my hymns to Dionysus— Hymns of mourning and of mania, my veins all ice And napalm. I dreamt the sun was black, I dreamt the sea was blood, I dreamt The earth was splintered, I dreamt of Satan's men. II Show me the gorge and the waterfall. Beguile me with scents of lilac and damask, Of mountain woods and olive groves, And with Poseidon's endless tide. Show me the synagogues of Cordoba, And sing me an Andalusian lay. Show me the minarets of Cordoba, And share your hallowed strains with me. Show me the high priest and his blossoming rod. Show me the pillars in the temple of God.   Originally published in The Lyric

  Tithonus in Autumn: A Fragment Perhaps were I to stand where once I stood, Where once I walked, the blue of days gone by Would part, recalling me to my lost home, The happy cottage of my boyhood years, With pleasant wattles, and with waters calm. Perhaps the bread was never quite enough, Nor were the fields of wheat quite e’er so high As we could wish; nathless, when autumn came, The stooks dotted the fields like pilèd gold; And we would fill our table’s twisted horn With berries slight, and warty gourds, and leaves, And hail that little, hollow, half-filled thing As our best prize, a cornucopia Copious with plenty, amply spilling The mellowed sweetness of the world’s decline— Sweet to behold, and sweeter still to taste.

  Elite The golds in their greengold sheathes. The regencies in their diamond swaddles. All the fin de siècles sharp like caudal fins. I could have rejected the pale one, the one Light filtered through like a redundancy of sun. Like a ribbon of snow, I walked Through the cold thick as the plumage of an owl. An owl in the Tyrol’s could have slit My wrist then broke it to the very marrow. I could have fallen and been unable to grab The nearest anything to get back up. Killed by an owl in the Tyrol. The talons of the Tyrol. The Rolls Royce of deaths. The rose filters through snow. Like a ribbon of snow, owls’ Feathers cinched my throat. Snow fell the plush of a chamois. Each crystal started to sting. Powdered glass fell all around and on all of me and inside. My insides got extremely red: What could I have done than die. The death as one gets led to one’s dying and The dying itself, the never dead drama. I did not stay still: like a caesura not a comma. I died—I died hard—but I did no...

  When He Was With Us When he was with us, we would stumble, we were  As children in our errors. But he would guide  Us right, his bit and bridle were a comfort,   And his pale hands were gentle on the reins.  The day then came when he was taken up.  We implored, when will you restore your family?  The tremors in our limbs will thwart your purpose.  Already our hearts yearn for your reunion.  He said the time was not for us to know.  Then darkness fell. Blind now, as everyone  Is blind, we hold each other close, and see  Shadows cast, as if from invisible  Light, high above. We share with strangers what  We can. The gnawing absence grinds its teeth.