In Amber



I sing of him whose heart had hung
	 Above all struggle or wonder
	 Of our broken woes. Far oh far
Beyond our little lays he'd sung.

Yet here's no death, no reason, and
	 No loss. No loss? No loss but less
	 Of friendship than I'd lief confess,
A faded castle, fallen sand

Built up upon imperfect hope
	 Toward another sky. Lost, the dream;
	 Lost the meaning once deemed more firm,
The promise more than swami's rope.

We'd had heaven's ascent held fast:
	 What we'd reared in reckless dawn
	 As though God's own brave secret shown,
Looms a gibbet now dawn is past

And sunless exile welcomes me.



== == ==

I craned from pole to pole, with pale
	 Hurrying ear I sought the sound
	 Of a friendship I had unfound,
Lost in the maelstrom, in the gale.
 

A song no longer sung, but known
	 Down in where the singing starts, soft
	 As an infant's finger held aloft
To hold where the wild wind had blown.

Where my limb was cut there grew
	 A pain; where my shadow'd followed soft
	 No image of myself now crossed.
What I was was lost, was through.

No zone of knowledge could commend
	 Discovery of how I'd begun
	 Nor tell me if I'd lost or won
In this struggle without end.

Now I knew I was lost; lost.
	 Uncentered in the storm that blew
	 Through all that was of me, all through.
Lost is what I was- at last, at last.



	== == ==

Is it a death to know you gone,
	 Separation's wail at the verge
	 Where tide on tide may pile and merge
While I sigh unsolaced, alone?

It is death, or death's live semblance
	 To trade high love for sorrow's hole,
	 To peer in pits for the absent soul,
Braver laughter, a brother's glance.

Yet others before have I lost,
	 Their unsyllabled all made death's,
	 Pilfered lives that in coffins rest,
Nor can I reckon up the cost.

 

	== == ==

But, yet, I've reconciled such loss,
	 Made grief my dish and my dessert,
	 And lived to love again and cry hurt,
Heedless of my passive loss.

The hearse triumphal in the rain
	 And heaven all one weltered bruise
	 That threatens tears, nor offers dews,
Takes hope from throats, gives hymns of pain.

The author's pen cannot note the deed
	 That seared the author into ash;
	 He only sings how feels the lash:
The sting, the wet, the heat, the need.


	== == ==

I found little upon my mount
	 That mattered, neither goods nor goal;
	 Sharp hurt came sharp upon my soul:
A little arrow; it little meant.

My eyes centered where they were sent,
	 Zeroed on that nothing 'All.'
	 Some nadir in the sphere, some pall
Kept light from my looking yet.

I was the shadow cast down at noon,
	 Crushed by the heel that casts it;
	 Weary of my little life unlit,
The dark I knew knew I was no one.

When a friend departs the sunny vale,
	 When a cloud rolls over the hill,
	 When water past pebbles ribs and spills,
When sun beyond one sunset sails,

Whose grief shall give that going song?
	 Whose voice vaunt such diminishment?
	 Whose richness re-give what had been lent?
Whose keen increase such goodness gone?

	== == ==

When I am of my little life
	 Bereft, and my soul in plumes
	 Of darkness goes, as through a catacomb,
None I leave behind in life

Shall weep as I have wept.
	 For I have known my second soul,
	 A far braver, brighter soul,
That looked within me, turned, and left.


	== == ==

To rob a grave not yet stuffed
	 With friendship, only full of woe
	 For one no longer friend or foe
Or anything, though breath still puffs

And somewhere past horizons dim
	 He lives on like a mute reproach
	 In caustic quiet, silently loath
To burst with bounty I need from him.

Unanswering wall, unhuman hate
	 -Or so I paint him, as I must,
	 Who have no knowing from old trust,
As though Christ transfigured my Greek fate.

I stand before the empty hole
	 I lay myself within the dirt
	 I say a prayer for my hurt
To maggots, and my breath is stale.

If I were all of misery made
	 And could confound my final hour
	 With a tear, then no more power
Would he have than a shade.

Instead there's lodged the sovereign sting
	 Of hope betrayed, hope that will not
	 Die, though hope's death and gory rot
Would stop the hole of my being.
	 
	== == ==

Hope that thrives in everything alive
	 Susceptible to inward gusts
	 And outward groans and manly 'musts,'
Hope that moves what cannot move or strive

Keeps crimsons bright around my wound,
	 That will not heal or cleave to kill;
	 Damnation is: I was born to feel.
Hope bathes these horrors with new words.

Still, if he comes, even to curse
	 The whole acquaintanceship of our days,
	 No growling hour's pinched of praise
Save when absence is our discourse.

Come again, thou ravaging tide
	 Who had a slope of easy friendship,
	 A lope like a gull, a lazy hip,
Till you rolled away and tore my side.


	 	== == ==

What resolution will recompense
	 His companions for the pang
	 Of his departure?  What chimed gong
Will make his going make new sense?

How after harrowed grief resolve
	 To live whole again?  Does the leaf
	 Shorn from the trunk that gave belief
Ever re-ascend to former love?

Here's no parable to mumble;
	 We make our dying sounds above
	 The grave that garners all our love:
The open door unable

To accommodate return.
	 Let us gather where we are blown;
	 Let us hold what we do not own
But a moment, and make return.

== == ==

How many hours had snow blown
	 In at the unattended window
	 Snowing in to no more be snow,
To flood the floor like thoughts none own.

An echo came beyond the fall
	 Of welcome foot or voice gone now;
	 I followed soft to the night lawn
-The street was empty, and the long hall.


== == ==

An ache beneath the pain of  years
	 Brings pang and poignancy to the fore;
	 What I feel was felt before
Dear earth brought forth her sufferers.

As when a dove shakes off the rain
	 Whisking silver mists to haloes
	 Suspended in cool fogs of woe,
Thus softly I stand in shine and pain.

== == ==

Told I would not come to be beloved
	 I cried an unrecovered tear;
	 Told 'death' was all I had to fear,
I wept;  wept to be so beloved.

To've been in wind and run in sun,
	 To've slept in shadelight til all's one,
	 Doubling frolic with unbecome,
Is love enough when day is done.

If all into oblivion
	 The body goes, trailing gestures
	 Of absent soul in redder rose,
I'm content to have once begun.

Nothing did as I did expect.
	 No quiet council of surmise
	 Left me other than most unwise;
A life grown rich in retrospect.


== == ==

When the briar brave entwines my grave,
	 And heart, kept cold, is fallow laid
	 Beneath the green and twisted braid
What rose will come to show me saved?

What rose from all the horrored heart
	 Will fly harried from the dour hole?
	 What emblem of the buried soul
Will rise to tell my harrowed part?

If twixt rounds of panting fight or dance
	 All is 'catch our breaths' to kill again
	 And love is all love unspoken
We're but two tigers in a trance

Who pace and leer and wait to leap
	 Who've lungs for roar yet none for love;
	 Who toy and tear the departing dove
And too late let our anger sleep.




== == ==

The book is closed and sleep has come
	 To lie beside me as I lay
	 Thoughtless at the end of thoughtless day,
A blessing of oblivion.

I dropped the book that had told me: read,
	 That had made a wonted offer
	 As if neither knew the better:
Knowledge is sorrow, living or dead.

The mind too worn by day's report,
	 The day too wronged by mind's own war,
	 Apprehensions made real by fears
That had lain still in latent thought

Now wild as waking woes
	 Ascend to startle sleep itself
	 And mold from nothing nightmare's self;
With silent step they come by ones:

Wind at the casement inks with creaks
	 What I had kept in lightest sketch,
	 Through all the day of 'do' and 'fetch'-
Wind at the casement makes bold and bleak.

Pale and leery, alone in bed;
	 Alone in bed, pale and leery,
	 Unawake and lively-weary,
I hear a tune that tums with dread.

The untended hurt, pushed away
	 By strong strife of mind all day
	 Tweaks and twinges as I lay;
A small voice says what it has to say.


== == ==

Forgotten friend!  forgot beyond
	 The soul of solace in the cold,
	 Friend whose tale is yet untold
Resurrect! and before me stand.

Let memory chalice the ghost
	 Spilled to rumors beyond recall;
	 He lives yet, he did not fall,
Yet his bodying has no host.

What is this absent creature then
	 Who lives to others, shares their views
	 Of russet sunsets, yet eschews
The gravid face of his old friend?

Damned by discord, torn in twain,
	 Yet present to the fervid pitch
	 Of inner sense, a lively nothing which
Makes all mem'ry the mem'ry of pain.

Reveal!  From shadow, gloom and gloam
	 Stand forth!  and be again alive;
	 Here, where your memory still thrives,
Your dear self has yet a home.


== == ==

When the windowpane fills with light
	 Sepulchral as a ghastly sail
	 Full of dead wind that will not fail
Despite the dark, despite the night,

And skin and breath half swell with sweat-
	 Though in itself that has not been
	  My own experience of sin-
Some knot inside the soul relents....

There in the insistent mist
	 A burning mast in a gull-grey shroud
	 Churns water and divides the cloud
And rides the tide as I did insist.

Be you friend or be you fear,
	 Palely limber in the halflight,
	 Almost fiction in false midnight,
Stand pale beside my bed, be near.

What you have to say, I would hear
	 Who, rash and rough in life before,
	 Sent from out this very door
Your solider emissary.

Wait, ghost, do not fade or fail!
	 What you speak I will not unsay
	 But hold in holy memory;
I would hear, would feel, your tale.


== == ==

Voiceless the vision vanishes,
	 An untenanted guest again
	 Far gone along the moonlit plain,
Sourceless as our dearest wishes.

I stand untongued beneath the blank,-
	 At the balustrade, reach for dark,
	 See nothing there to hand me back
The loss of hope that's left me blank.

Piteous moon, shed tearlike light
	 On those who live below the clouds,
	 On us who circle in our shrouds,
Though no thing's worth its being bright.

Better still that grief... grief has come
	 And tears the hair and scrapes the eye,
	 Better we ourselves should wish to die
Than no feeling at all should come.


== == ==

In my heart, a false fable starts
	 That 'tween two friends, so fair, so fast,
	 No rill of envy could ever pass,
No trickle winter could make crack.

Our summer was a million days
	 That on two shared pulses shone;
	 What was thought in the heart of one
The other's tongue found fit to praise.

Autumn's harvests had us chasing feasts
	 In distant dales neither knew;
	 The same sun and moon we saw
Overlooked our separate trysts.

December should have seen us come
	 Sharing triumphs round the table
	 Laughter-laden as a fable,
Strong in joy to a single home.

Too-far our wayfaring had swum,
	 Crests and valleys and the green roar
	 Held us apart forevermore,
Derelict, adrift, who had clung.

Iron frost the great granite breaks,
	 Too-cold sap splits the broadest tree
	 In solemn singularity;
Alone falls the proudest rock.

 
== == ==

If some grave power left us here,
	 Solitary seekers in  the night,
	 Lonely voyeurs of the light,
Shall we blaspheme what strength appears?

Far better, broader, more intense
	 To see the sign of good in things;
	 Amid haphazard waywardings,
Love what loveliness may commence.

If ever a bright butterfly
	 Has brought you unsuspected joy
	 Neath the canopy dark destroys,
Bless its shimmer and bless that sky.

If ever before brown defeat
	 Some glower gives some hint of glow,
	 Or all you are's not all you know,
Listen still to that heart, that beat.

If ever when wind's against us
	 Snarling sails that'd happily snapped
	 You feel amidst the clip and clap
One soft kiss blow, then don't resist.

If higher than twin towers' crowns
	 Your hopes have ever heralded
	 Only to be trapped back and barred
From achievement and from renown,

Listen still to what hope had heard,
	 Lift aloft for the light you saw
	 In premonition of your fall;
Seek heaven though it be in shards.

More lies in our looking there
	 With lovely eyes, tho' full of cares,
	 With hearts that have not ceased to share,
More of consequence than despair.

== == ==

Though parted by pernicious fate
	 And left no solace when you left,
	 By your absence of solace bereft,
Yet still I loiter by the gate,

Looping hopes on echoes cool and slow
	 Of your departure seasons past;
	 When you went, you went at last
By going where you had to go.

Still I beside the gate am left,
	 Still I lean and lick the dust;
	 Still I wait, as still I must
Until some change unpains my breast.

The agile curfews of the night
	 That wipe away the palest day
	 And light's burning words lightly unsay
Cannot cross out what you left bright.

The moon that trod old empires down
	 Or saw two loves woo, two loves despair
	 Casts no changeful spell on my care
That carves the ages on my brow.


	== == ==

Electra longs for her lone ideal
	 Impatient with passion on her stoop,
	 Unarmed before the vicious troop,-
Cries from poor girl's woe for her weal.

Antigone, tender to her core,
	 Going round and round in grief
	 Mills herself but sad relief:
To kill the state with grief too pure.

What value vaunts from remorse, or worse?
	 Justice, with adamantine edge
	 Turns crystal from a shaken tear
Solidified from sighs, or worse.

In a breast gone god-abandoned
	 What good does grief reveal?
	 What idol does a tear revere?
I have not earned what rosaries condone.

Never another lie to 'get along,'
	 To manipulate the powerless,
	 To add confusion to their duress;
Never deception from the strong,

Never after venial convenience to strive
	 But all must be benign transparency
	 And facts alone the obduracy.
I resolve to struggle and to live

With difficult fact and effortful truth.



	== == ==

I looked at life through stainless panes.
	 My friend and I then grew rife
	 And in clumsy love had strife:
Life's transparency in the littered lane

Lay sharded. Never again
	 Would sky suspend its peerless blue
	 As though some heaven loved we two,
For we two loved without sin.

Each sweet self-enmansioned soul
	 Came to battle in dire array
	 But would not fight, yet would not stay
-And each departed for obscurer goals.

What finer, more enlightened path
	 Might Life lend our wandering ways
	 Than sheltered friendship as a stay
Against galled wounds that make us wroth?

What against gauche chance may make amends?
	 What but friendship has the power
	 To wipe the brow in feverous hour-
What else may ease us ere the end?

Nothing else has friendship's function
	 Nor can solace the absent pain
	 Of friendship gone, not come again,
Friendship faded to a fiction.

	== == ==

Echoes of some diviner love
	 Reverberate a quartered heart
	 Confusing fonted loves with lower wants,
Donning longing robes of doves.

There is something then in something gone,
	 A talisman to shake again
	 The index of eternal pain;
A hole in every good thought won.

The grief, the grief is fresh to me
	 As yestereve when enduing mist
	 All the upswayed landscape kissed,
Showing in shining deep tears unseen.


	== == ==

Can friendship live when friend has left,
	 When keel and sail are rudely stripped,
	 A smiling skull without the lips,
Love of its softness unpossessed?

What new faces shall my face seek
	 That found these fellow faces false?
	 What mirror mimics faces lost?
What redemption beyond such breaks?

Does that departed friend, unseen,
	 Unknown and homeless who's home's in me,
	 Stop his step and think what we
Once were, on all that once had been?


	== == ==

Then politics spilt its dirty milk
	 And still its deadly little tread
	 Marches across my wounded head,
Itching the sutures though of silk.

As though one caustic loss, relentless
	 In its riptide on my pride
	 Were not hurt enough, my side
Was laved in vinegar and piss.

The hand that'd helped now held my throat
	 As though to show me how naive
	 One ever was to believe
In friendship's blotting antidote.

So he fingered his own quaint cause
	 Until his heats gave fervid birth
	 To a dogmatic cross unearthed,
A cross whose crosshairs sought my source.

 

	== == ==

Enemies made by mild reproach
	 Never twice discover love
	  (Like God, gone missing from above)
Since the sin itself was mild enough.

So I stare and swear in lonely rooms
	 Filibustering dust bunnies,
	 Each summation a swift surmise,
Readjusting juries in the gloom.

There is no answering passion
	 In fractious pastimes of the mind
	 Twirling and untwirling twine
While sown unseen grow meaning's lesions.

I am a shadow in a weft
	 Of darks, a nullity who his own
	 Nullity long long has known,
And now no nothing here is left. 


	== == ==

Life's a marble in a bowl:	 
	 All agony but a rolling chance,
	 The bullfight no longer a dance
Of misdirection toward a goal.

Life's a story with no moral;
	 Condensation's circles yet
	 No ring of meaning can beget.
Race to rail against the choral

Loves hossannaed by the mass
	 Of men, who see their circle
	 Flout timid time and weary wrinkle,
Whose dreams go buried by the grass.

Know that your own nothingness
	 A nothingness stays, a felt
	 Backdrop or dead pelt
Stroked by hands half calluses.

There's no lesson to be learned
	 From all the tarnished marvel
	 Of our mayhem, still the larval
Stage of chaos for we damned.

Impotent in the pouring wrack
	 Of disaster's icy hail
	 Stripping deep with red-hot flails
Splintered skin that'd been my back.

I stand in draining anger,
	 Half-aghast to understand
	 Myself am likewise but a man
Dreaming Fate is not a stranger.




	== == ==

Was it for those echoes alone
	 That your proud shout came and went,
	 That my near airs with your name were rent?
Was purpose pipping in the bone

Ere clear breakage lamed the story,
	 Castling attacks to faulty defense,-
	 Recovery all the recompense
For our having augured glory?

Unsmiling in slings and crutches,
	 Fools blown brown by windy time
	 Who'd been sheer kings of summertime
Grimacing at lightest touches.

Solemn cortège of cannons mum
	 Roll evermore in breakless line:
	 Wavy Life a funereal sine
Unending, and airless, and come.

Tacit disaster's stripped to trim belief,
	 Memory turned to slave to serve
	 The forward unknowns of our curve;
This is given with what gives grief.


	== == ==

You have moved in love to others,
	 To new unnull pursuits you go
	 In restless faith those whiter flows
Follow you to fuller waters.

My faith's poorer, my grasp infirm
	 Upon the tugging rudder
	 That guides me to my uttermost;
I fear I sail far more in harm

Than in health.  Where is your dear hand
	 Steady on the trembling tiller?-
	 Steering clear to vaster endeavors
Beyond horizons, past sight of land.

Where I go's no more than where I am,
	 Nor faith nor hope proffer roses
	 To blank the claims of fear's supposes,
Or dare me greater be than man.

May bride and child and wealth be yours
	 And all the winnings dreams suggest,-
	 If I were but an infrequent guest
I'd deem myself the treasurer.

	== == ==

	
	

Poems in pieces

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