Complementarity Pt. 9

Whose voices are these rising from the sea?

Are they refractions of the words we throw?

Are they new voices from new horizons?

Are they ancient sunken kingdoms?

Whose voice is this, coming forth without accent?

Is it an émigré who sings in this catholic timbre?

A new savage with utterly new eyes?

Is it an unsuspected familiar?

Knowing notes which were not learned in classrooms?

Whoever he is, he is loved briefly

All men take him into themselves

Even you let his spirit wash you

You welcome him from his curious journey

And hope for his tales to impart society to you

This voice is the same with which I at times speak

Not American, not of Niger, not of Samarkand

  of the universe, of real

Complementarity Pt. 8

I am far from you
And am fully contained
Somewhere in the periphery of your heart
 
Under the sea, life whirls
In the calming algae blue
I know the fishes here and there, I know them all
They began long hours before the sunrise
They struggle like you in the ever-illuminated sea
The sea which is always dark and filled with weight
The weight gives me form and flesh
The weight of the hammerhead smashing its meal
On the abyssal plain
Or of the brain coral slowly building from the detritus
Of the rich sea
 
Each man dying on the lips
Of his erstwhile friends
Loses first this weight of the waters
Then his own name
Then is no more found in heaven
And is at last banished from the heart of his loved on earth
 
You have walked under the sea with me
You have known what is my volume here
Perhaps this then will make me lasting as I die
As I continue to live
I am under the spell of this!
As the sunrise over the sea
 
And where have you learned to speak of death?
And where have you reckoned the end of things to come‽
How sudden and how far off‽
Do not equivocate the miles under the sea
For days or years, they are instant
At once alive and sustaining
At once murderous and inert

Complementarity Pt. 7

At length I am obliged to offer help

And so I take the train at evening

  and the gentleman next to me

Into my confidence

He is a teacher heading home to his wife

He loves her greatly and is buoyed by the prospect of rest

I engage him to unburden his ended day upon me

I am free and can carry the load while we pass under the cityscape

It is his passion which obliges him to unload

After he leaves the train we continue to converse

I go with him too

To his home on a quiet street

I am filled with peace as he enters the nattily attired cul-de-sac

You should have been there when I left the station!

How you would have loved the company of the workers at the docks

The salty stories told in the barely lit breakroom

I journeyed from there up by a lilac field

Where I briefly luxuriated with a friend

From which I wandered woefully towards

A park, watching the day rise with a vagrant

He watched me warily until at length I had coaxed him

I shared with him poetry and he

Shared the weary sensation of the cold nights

We sat comparing despair

As his retriever rested lazily on the dew

glory

Curious at the stinging majesty of life,
I begin to sleep less and less
until I am consumed
by the rain
in a fluid torrent.
As though it filled me
until I overflow
into the street
and wash down the road endlessly…
until
under the universal genius of the starscape
I am hailed
by conquest
by fire
by a minor miracle.
There on that quiet
beach or bed
or midnight road,
words fail
dreams fail
my own wearied hands fail
and the beauty of this ashen night
sings a hallelu upon my eyes.
How peaceful then is the night.