Act I: The Provocation
For Emerson and Stevens
The rodent in the swamp went running toward
a ghost. The autumn day was breezy and
was cool. The swamp bubbled and bubbled——Yes!——
but nothing shimmered true. Looked up the rodent
in the thinning dew——but: No, No, No!——face-
to-face:
so shallow, so unfathomably
meek; un-undulating mass of undone
rhythms, of hidden notes unspooled; slithering
(jolting the rodent’s spinal hairs upright);
the reeking, reeking passivity.
Become
alive! Upright fool, so utterly tepid
and smooth. Come, rend your sackcloth and rue your lovely
fate! I’ll burn your things to black——Become
Act II: Said the Ghost
For Thoreau
I curse and bless the road that led me here:
the breeze, the seasons’s final understatement,
demands a sudden change of chord. I wear
clothes, and I wear seeds drifting on flower lint
making no noise. They shudder with the breeze.
Perhaps some other faulty song was sung
by birds who learned to mutter “Why?” as they grieve
their lovely fall. How many are in One?——
I think I know, yet wonder “Who is right?”
(Or is that “was”; maybe “will be”) This place
said something strange to me… but from such height,
it rarely, rarely, rarely looks me face-
to-face. My feet are soft, pressed to the rock——
a dozen suns are rescued from the clock.
