Little mattered, and much pervaded The antique living room too much sunlight had degraded; A little heartache burned beneath his cassock, And holy daybreak shattered at the blinds. 5 If Christ defied his fashions And strode untemplated and rude, If Hitler really killed them all Then how dare I intrude? My voice imparts and falls, toils and tolls, 10 Its happenstances and romances, its passions Its trances of a certain evening in a certain loll And on into dawn prepares some further wrong Inconsequent, yet beckoning, a passionate Lark backspread against dispassionate clouds. 15 (I have stood upon the Arctic zones and poles Of certain yellow unlighted rooms.) Among the wasted cigarettes and torn pornography I have sifted and resisted so many Facts and truths that harshly glare in so many 20 Wasted one-time afternoons. Holding, holding Our hands beneath the spider's pall were golden. The hackneyed painter's ennui endures Formulas of snow and absence, building sets; 25 Nailed in the aurora's tonic light, and stiff, My red shoes stand steadied on a cliff. (I sew my fingers backward that sew my shroud.) And I have wandered lost and wondered found And in a crossed broken shadow drowned; 30 (I have lived my life while floating upon the rood.) Chastized eyes Chastized eyes Glare no more on inward wars Accreted dusts that sharply crept 35 Down the pale defiles at midnight, Or assembled dust tumbled from untouched dresser drawers Spilling golden dirty light over all. (I have seen them all, and touched them all And thrown them all away already, 40 Golden crowns cascading to a wastebin. I have touched the molten blots that blot within. I have rearranged my clothes upon a hook.) Here's some argument's half-misapprehension, There, the moronic posture of a gesture 45 Gilding the broken indices of fate. A look, a moment's condescension Gazes back from above a moth-eaten bureau To fall upon the blankness of a wall. And I have longed and I have lounged, 50 Taking nights apart to tack the day together, And still the terrorist dawn arrives, inflicts Green and golden, and obliterates my weathers. O fol de rol de rolly o My bloodless feet are skirled in skeins of snow 55 Daybreak snaps the blinds. Bored, it leaves Out through exhausted windows where I have thrown How many tired glances into airs unknown? And they are tired, emptied by seeing, Glancing netherwhere, seeing, recoiling, 60 Seeing the thousand toiling hours of neglect The glazed eyes of weary aspect, Hollow yet disdainful, and rolled upon a bulb Or blindly churched in the long, squared Eternity of a ratty book that blazes 65 Trashed Byzantiums in footnotes obscure; Or restless finds itself still climbing To some even more forgotten shelf While a quaint, antiquarian transcendence Cool and numb 70 Floods moldy light upon the moldy carpeting. And still the snow inquires And still the day expires Answerless, if my foot shall daedalus the fresh. (I have killed and I have died for less.) 75 ---No, no I haven't been. Is it near here? What's it like? Is it extraordinary? Oh, its full Of quiet shades, thoughtful darknesses. ---My, there's no end to things in the heart. 80 Is there now? Now is there? No, no truly; There is never any end to things. And the squeeze of nights, the evenings Where so many eden days have sank entranced, 85 Collapsed so charmingly about an aborted heart In so many unheated ochre rooms alone! Oh I have seen and mourned the fabled light Disastered in a rucksack crease of dirty pants. And yet, how shall I begin, and how beget? 90 I have looked through ochre eyes and hollow rooms Undeceived, and yet, and yet.... I am scarred and I am mastered in the garden, Near the wisteria, iced by the moonlight's Porcelain glances. How many years and days 95 Has it been, how many, since first, in moonlight, We traded sudden glances? Roses had maddened us, and we were glad. Here, balancing the wisteria on a fingerend Pointing past my agile nose to oblivion, 100 Cold leaves rustle in the ruined fountain; Water's memory in the concrete bowl Scratching over the water's ancient course. A thousand points of light conflict In a thousand parted dooryards; 105 Conflict, flicker, and then resolve Focused into a single momentary glow. (My eyes and I contain A thousand portions of a thousand parted souls.) O fol de rol de rolly o 110 My bloodless feet are skirled in skeins of snow
From the collection "The Rose Lasso"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.