|
A Twentieth-Century Album
"We don't have where to go….Here is not for living anymore."
From an NPR interview with an Albanian Kosovar
still trapped in Pristina two weeks after the bombings
started, after the murders became more common
than spot-checks on summer turnpikes.
The easiest part (maybe) was always deciding
story-line -- learning to see
the innocence -- that something beyond the hills
and grazing meadow horses--
where the silence burned / the minutes ground
in metronymic registers.
Now there's this ash -- this toy -- this history
of place made merchandise -- this
drawer full of patches sons fold into albums
and make off with -- display
while the buses wait with them -- where
this one bus waits -- axel-deep
in field snow -- made
late the way
a bird or blink
arranged it.
Even these same two dogs explore a slope worth foraging.
And the cameras show
where winter's been / where the houses were --
before the walls and eaves
took fire / the growing green all over
brought the winter
to some ends.
Maybe the envoys were or weren't impressed
with training skits. And some nights --
when peril's enough to choke -- original as maw
and mystery -- some nights
accustom hearts to matters hearts could never grasp --
with the persuasions falling again
on instruments -- weighing some
modest knowledge / some
little history / some hearts by gravity
and co-authored portfolios
/ by all that's been drained
and left of cellar stills
or vinegars -- drawing
the old men in to taste
/ the young men
in
to study.
It's harder some nights -- to remember
the requests -- the evenings
when some left tunneling -- inflecting
the winter woods
in winter rags held
sensibly.
Then it's these ten / these thirty and more years
afterward -- and these suburban groves --
sleepily naïve -- where cyclists mount
and ride -- having searched the earth
and left at loss for memorabilia -- because
the poems dissolved / the quarrels
lost themselves -- in ancient documentaries --
because the cyclists -- with
legs of their own to outrun virgules
in the rearview --
think of the words as housed -- set
in the foam-sealed dark
of any other century -- when
so many wishes summed
so many antique
vanishings.
PRISTINA SPRING 2
Haven't we all been here before -- sucked and seen --
composed our surveillance options
/ our peace with personnel -- rewriting our names
as seasons / years spin over us --
evenings when sound sleep follows the sounds
of hard things crushed? No wonder
the requests! No wonder the manic weaving sparklers!
No wonder the songs heard once
have once again held interest -- the permissions
minds have thrilled to be the source of --
aroused -- in that common schooling -- and coming
to terms / to prophecy -- to the blunt
and straight-away of our desire! So candled homes
go dark and decades stretch to poles. So
kid guerillas fraternize. So sleepwalkers splay air
house-to-house in search of night-fires --
and Pristina's whispering -- ending another week
with panic up its sleeve -- where
there were snows and snows to come -- sifted
by boards that had no future
but the fires -- for all of the noise around Belgrade --
the satellite communiques
and penitential diction / the midnights broken again
by ordonnance. And here -- in the hills around --
in eyes that watch the season deepen in the arbors--
in the miles / memories / the primary cries
and coos -- to sighings simplified -- over the hills
and homes and the snow-minding
casseroles -- her singing ended and was missed --
as the roofs came down -- of their own will
or under power -- and the right eternities
/ the models of believing -- absolute
as holidays -- left flames for answers
we've kept up with on the grounds.
PRISTINA SPRING 3
Seated on earth ( cross-legged ) in the pictures
their men ventured -- the women
look to us -- look down in their skirts -- at loss --
behind / ahead -- toward
the cold poles of the century -- leaving
the child alone to see --
to say how they'd joined in one
and more uncommon
berryings.
But what will the pictures tell -- the eyes
as they gaze dead-on -- cast
down in skirts while brides make whispers
to their fingers -- the grand-daughters
begin to tell -- left to this time named afterward --
this moment named before -- where
hands they had purpled once -- in any other
summer -- must now be
ghostly thinned -- as hollowed and tinly grey
as evenings overhead -- as the bowls
made blue with a season's
wealth of berries.
And here -- where the women sat -- where
the men had come -- she's looking
for signs to say the fruit was plentiful -- walking
where women walked -- lace-booted
and grown now -- and hearing what must seem
branches snapping over her --
to listeners miles and states away -- imagining
what uncles were -- alive
as they were to her -- and nothing less
than knightly -- and not but the ways
they were -- the ways they will seem
in a far decade -- coming again
at dark -- and leaving behind
the small turned plastics
of arrival / the same trick
decks and precision
surgeries.
PRISTINA SPRING 4
Hands turn stone / and stone the drop-leaved
European tables. Then one more sentence jewels.
And faces the centuries reveal -- like blades --
appear through silk -- like blades fall hard
and heavy-handled as desire -- with stories enough
to tell / to share with the air where senses linger
like the switch-plates -- afterward / before -- where
women imagine men might reimagine absolutes --
the beds of stones where strangeness bedded-in
with interests. So faiths / so infidels. And fathers
dead because they're young / because they're fathers.
So translations spool -- from one more round
of witnesses -- and constellation-glutted skies
turn magazine. Somebody's forever wrinkling.
Somebody's forever wincing -- afterward / before --
with the smoke that lifts in strands through kitchen light --
with the brandies / coffees washing down the suppertalk --
remembering the words and every other way
of saying them -- stories that never ended clean --
looking away / ahead -- describing the losses
run through ramifying families. Until there is nothing
like the song -- nothing at all to sing -- about
the ways of human progress / the fields marked
with cairns / the woods they've marked
in many rounds of encores / the places where seed
cost more than one could count on after yield. And
there -- on one among the billioned-fellowed stalks --
this lone crow sits -- changing the stillness
to something crows might wish from stubble --
wish from these shrubs or any measure of responding --
until the changing's generous -- until the heart
can stand itself no more and reconsiders --
ignoring the oldest filigrees / the nails her small hands
bent and drove to claim a place for pictures -- for
weeks when hearts at loss lost every need to visit.
Afterward / before. And the nails yet -- pricking
the air another half-millennium will build on --
bear scenes she'd made in place by her desire -- and
the names she gave -- to name creation's
many faces -- that had only hoped to find
July in the spring weather -- having lost
the touch / and the taste for things
hands scraped from winter earth.
PRISTINA SPRING 5
Pillowed on arms to sleep in rain
another night
and ill beyond sweet dreams --
the children believe
the uses passions make of them --
if only the rains come down
off snowpack through the tent walls --
and something like sleep
insisting other ways to mend. But
after the orthodoxies
/ the ordeals of becoming -- what
should we say
of scenes gone wrong / should we
begin to say --
that something like light restores
the light in air for them -- where
all they had wanted once -- all
they allowed's reduced
to roadwear and high water -- to
these more formal
masques / these thugs appearing
in the faces of spring chill
/ entering their whispers now --
through this darkness all
assurance fails in?
PRISTINA SPRING 6
And the rights-watch footage -- sparing us
the worst -- asks us to think
of otherwise -- to think what will be
when rules mud made
grow tiresome -- will be in the sad places
where laundries dress
the wires / where keeping neat
for weeks
in the same clothing
asked for
dreams.
There's no point wasting argument -- proving
the darkness less -- or -- note
by note -- the coliseum seating -- deciding
what's spent to startle
when billions might be fed -- what misery
to end the misery -- what speaking
will be when brides will bear themselves
for husbands -- remembering
the formal disciplines / the formal
cripplings -- wondering
what's left to praise -- and
who will sing
the praises.
Hunger may be is not the only system here
/ nor the doubts lives share -- about
their human appetites -- come into these weathers
now -- to these afflicting dullnesses
/ these cuts in the land the size of maddening traps
on the pro courses / of maddening
luxury / of stillness -- no worse than flame
or automatic fire -- no worse
than the films and seasoned distances --
the undeniably bright charms
of fingers reaching through night cover --
turning the welds
and fitted seams
to misery.
And what shall the human seem -- the stillness
alarms will ask for them --
will the bistros seem -- the dawns
and cratered public lawns
and fissured tarmac -- the fields stressed
by history -- or these lit blocks
now and first desserts in seasons --
where the intoxicated
stumble -- having never
touched a drop?
No matter what children read -- or could have
read in schoolrooms -- what children
will make of toys -- after so many nights without --
remembering the hearts of praise
/ the terrible hearts of sponsorship -- what will
this canvas seem to them --
or the traps troops offered men inclined to arms --
but only the strangest dream
/ the strangest story-time -- a brandy-tired
twilight kids will wake from
with guitars -- after the wheezing's
finished with -- when
necessity means signatures
/ and signatures
composing -- the eyes
of the officers
installed / in all
that flinty
history.
PRISTINA SPRING 7
We follow as far as scripts
/ as musings let us go --
until there is noise alone
/ bootprints alone --
where there had once been syllables --
where these christs
appear -- walking the flames
of their own heartland --
another hog's throat slit / another
century at end -- shaking
the crumbs from cloths --and
crumbs like stars
the children gather round to wish on.
And then it's the same
between. And then it's the sighs
alone -- or wheels --
making away with them -- because
we have tried or failed to --
because it's the moment
/ nature of -- and
the ruins must do -- as measures
of the seasons --
the ice on the pass
where
drivers fell behind
and followed
hard.
PRISTINA SPRING 8
The cedars spruce might well explain
appearances / the scraggy stuff
the fires burn below -- explaining the news
behind our own refusals to be gentled
/ in the looks of kids who will not be kids again.
It's more than the rain and gusts
blowing the birds across and back / than
the flights begun -- over stubble
and worked earth -- the pilots with no place
to come down -- in the eyes of kids
who lost the nerve for dancing -- knowing
the costs of stars and years ahead
for them -- purse-hollow
at heart -- where survival's
just as much as candles
say to wish for.
*
Then the buses stop -- and the tractors pulling
wagonloads behind them -- grown
sons and cribs -- daughters -- masked
with injury -- suffering within
for other lives and currencies -- kids bearable
and less -- in the eyes of fathers
made to lie on other grounds -- and in the eyes
of boys the grandmas sped in drag
from village houses -- because they
would soon be soldiering -- because
they are here in air made solid
with their travels / made solid
with the uses strangers
made of them.
*
So what will defenses seem -- will ashes
/ Easters seem to Europe
they're the heart of? And what will the passions
seem -- settled on
as destiny -- with no place to come down --
and only this air -- as
unrestored as emptiness -- to hold them
in their lives -- hearing
the stakes men drive -- the snaps
of treated fabrics and
the plastics?
*
They enter the years ahead of them. And
the girls -- pinning their private things
to barbed-wire -- and the boys -- like pages --
snatched from stakes by winds -- boys
at the fences -- when the winds are over with –
when the daybright's mean -- and
mean preoccupies -- they'll have camp-marathons
and then camp-rivalries to move them --
camp infields and out-of-bounds -- even
this eye-lashed one -- who caught
the eyes of the lieutenant -- too pretty
to be found out -- too much
for a man -- so mired
in wrong -- to think
to pass on.
PRISTINA SPRING 9
Delayed at a rural rail crossing and, later, outdoors, hearing
the news-cast clarifying the earlier reports on Kosovo.
In this flagged slow-motion place -- where two
and two are family given distance -- the trees mark
boundaries -- and this news -- inclined to hill-blazes
and night missions. I've ample time for traveling --
remembering your calf and hip / the happy matters
of the woodbirds -- and more than I noticed once
or ever had the words for -- than this shallow-rooter --
more than winded over rails / these strokes of light
laid over mid-Ohio enterprise. And now that our lane's
let through -- these words by satellite -- something
like scents but unalike -- this country rides' tight sprawl
and someone's cubist scream of farmyard -- the pattern
of hubcaps spiked to sagging porchboards like intentions --
measured by toned words said -- the ways the sponsors
asked for them / the improvised and razor-wire analyses --
there in the dark flat-fit to passions in hill-country / in
these strokes of light let fill the lens of local circumstance --
bright as the bees and hummingbirds and finches
/ orioles -- as scarves on the throats of thugs
and torchbearers and gunners. This evening apart
Elizabeth -- after these eighteen days shared straight --
I'm trying to find the words for it -- for the miles / weekends
/ weekdays in between -- to say how that hawk invited us –
weighing the seed and wine and all the layers of unloading --
to watch as it straightened shrugged / turned from us
and rose -- chased by three crows north across pond-water --
where the next hawk rose -- from the woods crows
happened on -- where this heron lifts and works around
to glide -- as if the ring of pond were all at once
too small for him -- to cross their excited paths and ours --
where we could not but once resist considering
their phrases. Didn't the rubbing / walking off wake two
from dreaming then -- the tension I lightly traced --
desiring calm for you -- and dreams you woke away from --
turning to me with that / and setting the air to afterward --
inviting our motion then -- toward the alarm our patience
had the sense to wait for. The sky maybe's
more understanding cinema -- and the darkness gathering --
over this fenced suburban lot -- these neighbors indoors
remembering boyhoods in wild country -- summed
by these stars we're made to share over such distance --
until we are wave-walking and near / the miles between
are happy preludes to caressing / to waking and weekends
finally -- a Saturday's prime-rib / shrimp / pinot --
hearth and cabernet -- the high and owl-wide night-time
over us -- and this wick-light shared -- where
we are satisfied out loud -- and asking again what we
might make of our good humor -- of this noise
as mean as many noise-makers had called for.
PRISTINA SPRING 10
Cold enough for snow it feels like.
But the buds say leaves -- limbs
with their coming leaves hiding nests all over --
wearing the season well -- as I
this driving time -- behind the pig-movers
and horse-trailers -- coming to you
Elizabeth -- as we / the lengthening light
and warmth of a night's fire -- ending
a week made adamant -- with its ordinary gods
full stride in Kosovo and Littleton.
And since it has all seemed possible -- as
real as arms brought on -- and
arms brought round about -- there's this
to be asking still -- hearing these voices
splitting terrible lengths of kiln-dried stuff --
or reading the rust-hued rorscach
far sides of the billboards -- imagining
the face screwed down -- weighed as it is
by news and by the programmed densities
/ by this ghost-line of rigs -- in
the maturing lane ahead -- slowing my way
to you -- numbed by the week / week's
rhythms building summertime / the week
with its shields / shells -- its short-span
loads -- memory stressed in the course
and curse of human promise. I think
of the dawns ahead / and of the dogwoods
coming on -- seeing this hawk intent
on something up the highway -- imagining
the dark and thirsts / night sky
and officers / the children waving / winking
from their cart-beds -- reciting
the names they'd worn -- when friendships
asked them in. What might they say to us
by way of explanation -- wooed by the hurry
say -- by the imperfect telling
and retelling of their exits? And how might
the bees / the kids agree -- warmed
as the moonlight falls around them in the backseat --
or the dogs -- once they've begun
to stretch themselves -- agree to these homes
/ these lawns -- silvery or brightened now --
because the spring's ambivalent -- seeing
what bees intend in taller older wood --
believing these roses now -- recovering
from weather -- with only a few leaves
drawn -- and so many coming back
to light -- as even the children might --
despite a single ashen gesture --
find their ways through killing frosts
to freshenings?
PRISTINA SPRING 11
As much as I can I go on listening -- given
the humming bowls / the vibrations
walking tables over floorboards / the words
like shock-waves building in --
and not the last words here -- over the soups
and sausages / the bags of loaves
ripped open / blown by the winds northeast
of Pristina -- until we can think
of miracles -- until we can find new ways
into the heart of a fresh sentence --
another use for sounds / for the housebands
/ five-some harmonies and dancing.
Whatever the guerrila chat-lines / the weekend's
talking heads / the husbands ( finished )
say -- to formalize their study -- spending
their sperm like bark-mulch -- raising
their wooden armies up -- there'll be children
afterward -- traveling largely with carved guns
/ these young men afterward -- having traded
their game-legs in for wheels -- who
had assumed their training's all the jobs ahead
require. And what we will say of it depends --
what men will save when men have saved
their neighbors' children -- thinking
to find themselves another image to move on from --
in the spaces doubling -- spiced
with the latest noise -- with the blades men drew
across the faces of the new year. What
we will say depends / what lovers will tell us here --
deep within the shadows of the pinewoods --
finding the words for it in films / the words
for their hands and hurts / for
the shooting off and all the graceless exits --
the ditch-lines and spider-holes and
burbs beyond the suburbs where they settled --
for all the shamed fields / bricks
and brimming field-mounds remark on --
where they were brought to knees
by what might well have been the music --
and left to the stillness then / to
the uneven earth they think
and think again of legs
to stand on.
PRISTINA SPRING 12
As much as I can I go on listening -- struck
by the use of sounds / by lines laid through --
to change the ways of saying things -- these voices
assaying the sorties / the custodians of state
assaying all directions of the nightmare. Any
weekend's just another start on things --
equipment driven into hills / over the ridges
and sown margins in low country --
until we have worked through / listened hard enough
/ and the grocers pharmacists
are ordered home or vanishing. So the apartments
chase the building emptiness. And much
as I can I go on listening -- imagining the lilt
as snowmelt runs through rock
to the low places / the stacked wood stove length
where the winter's been -- and useless
after all -- with the precision arsons Mud-things
left us at their going -- withdrawing to the cold
and further cold at their own borders. So the poets
chalk their lines / the professors boards --
adding the numbers up -- while the families
slip through woods and body-cover -- rising
earlier -- sleeping on the run. But here is not
for living anymore. And albums burn --
turning keen air something less than scenic
with their ashes -- now that the power
fails / deepens accustomed light -- obscuring
/ occluding where to go -- leveling the live air
/ the glassy places lively lingered in -- sipping
the neighbors' dreams and the idea's currency.
No reason to think the last words here -- not
with the chill men deal -- depending on blood
when their election rides on it / on kids raised up
with their equation-editors / with anthems
wide around as oxygen. Now they are packing
with the beat / with these songs so loud
you think you might not think again -- sleeping
below / behind the noises around them
/ overhead -- now that the Mud-things traffic
and the Mud-things break away / the
powers follow and rise up with refugees. You
follow the hauntings -- counting odds --
finding the things they've left behind them
in their credit -- turning the clock's hands
manually -- or burning the chairs for supper fire --
remembering the songs the children's playing
seemed to be -- of the hummingbirds
/ bee-balm -- songs trailing the way
songs will -- above the coming
April fields.
PRISTINA SPRING 13
Friday's 70 / poisons the land will filter down
to beverages / these fogs in the lungs
and private parts of refugees. Would candlelight
implode / dance wildly? Would
voices too thirsty now to curse cry anything?
Think how the pop mind retrogrades --
when power inclines -- assumes the families
as they're called for -- crying
proofs as if the sun itself commanded it
/ settling to brandies
and strong smoke / to fears
nobody would mistake
for miracle.
Hadn't the old men / young women / thugs
lived long enough? And here --
near the route's-edge shrines -- they're finding
these traces and terrible runs of salt
on the stone faces -- with nothing to say
but miracle -- nothing but the dark
and orders of virginity made wail -- with nothing
to ease so many lifetimes
gone in motions -- following the birds
across cross-weary fields
and through pine-woods -- daring
the moon / moonshadows
all at once to
detonate!
So what will become of poems / will the middle acts
become / the leisure and tears behind
our well-advantaged ironies? And what would be worse
than meals hurried or meals missed
/ than dreams and then -- and still no theater
to stage them / these eyes
as kids look up -- afraid of the noises overhead
/ of the acrobats and dusters
/ the oldest crazies in machines -- chasing the wires
and topmost limbs -- reminding
the locals it's only Ohio practicing / Ohio
and June ahead -- and
the reservists counting options -- June
and the starburst stadiums --
warm-weather rides / guitars -- and
the performance vehicles
/ the surrealism griefs
will summon up
and execute.
PRISTINA SPRING 14
So many yards made blank. So many nights
at large assigning restitution. Buttons
of flame stand up more lively on the chimneys --
and more as the trucks arrive -- bright castles
threading / idling among -- until
the wrinkled light and indirection fascinate.
So many apartments simmering -- and so many
sleepers home where they have squatted now
for decades -- so many days like spring enough --
with the top leaves building in -- but mallards
nowhere -- not a trace -- and only a phrase
or paradigm -- where somebody sits stock-still --
sits with his lights clicked low -- looking
for riders still -- even as games break off --
declining to chips and beverages. He sits
and sits by doors the weekending noise
preoccupies -- sits poker-faced as suburbs --
peddling stock in the old music -- empty their rooms
to him -- to all he has figured pat -- descending
to rawer minimals -- changing the faces smoked
with days and second guesses -- changing
the looks of hills spared renaissance. And who --
thumbing his texts or parables -- who is to say
which jealousies -- and leastwise which fatigues --
which soil grassed in and lot fenced round
will come to look like properties -- which
levers will move which worlds now -- now
that it's revved again and cranking numbers out --
the Milosevic motorcar / the feral cabriolet? And
who's to say who takes whose place -- seeing
the carts upturned -- and the dead with treats
the children will not stand for -- with their eggs --
like dead -- among these apples everywhere --
and who's to say who's lost -- where product lines
have failed -- where products -- and the things
they make of us -- leave behind such scares
and pools of drizzled chemicals
/ harder choices cats with dollars
bring about?
PRISTINA SPRING 15
No wonder the clouds strip down to wardrobes
then to less -- and the clouds cry out
the coming green well in advance -- shocking
the grey stones / shrubs -- where
so many hungry come you can almost picture them --
climbing the stairs straight way --
remembering the early blooms / the condom
wrappers left behind when the men
scattered -- when even the weathers winced --
and the stairways opened straight away to cumulus.
After awhile's hard to touch. After awhile
feral's a self-made accident. And the stone
/ the shrubs -- the stone with its small bouquet
the spring doe left behind her going --
too quick / too real / too freely first across
the flame-cut trails from still water --
the stone and the shrubs speak up for life --
but not a soul in sight -- where
there were many once and many were expected --
where they had said the dreamers
were behaved and entertained -- but not
a soul in sight -- as if the dreams held back --
and the nightmare knew the shame of its advancing
/ knew they would not be back -- given
the industry / the wounds before the stackfires --
where monster toxins ooze / leach
in the scarred land -- and the set screws rip --
too hurried and flawed to start --
and leaving the worst scars following. Maybe
the missions were really far too mean
/ too dangerous -- with far few training flights --
too risky for high-end weapons built for risks.
Maybe the children / the children's wardrobes
never stop -- the slippered mothers come --
repeat / repeat -- until the stories they tell
are only good for vegetables -- source
of the fears and husbands' smokes and then
the husbands -- fathers set off by moods --
as many moods as creekstones moved around
by frequencies -- and in the bone-percussing
/ in the ceramic blurs -- always a little off --
as if they were blown off their stoops --
as if they were young like that / were squinting
just so long -- and now in the tribal waters --
looking for love again / or wrinkling or regret --
given what light and water
and obsessions make of them -- in
the glass-smooth waters -- where
the first expressions clear -- were
surprised and worn away
and featureless.
PRISTINA SPRING 16
So borrowers fail on the strips / hackers
position themselves against the State.
And -- now that the bombing's finished with --
they're traveling again with maps --
sleeping beneath the stars -- remembering
the sorties -- and the dangers inventoried --
catalogued to specs -- the obscure persuasions
giving every kid a chance. And now
that the dust's dispelled / the aristocrats
accede to all the changes in addresses
/ the official lingo guarantees the harmlessness --
the faces appear and go more lightly
round the pumps -- extractions say -- beaten
restored / respectable -- paying
so much to make live entrances and fashion --
remembering what springtimes
meant to them -- the lightning -- no worse
than thirsts -- than anthems
that made the choirmasters wince -- and more
as the mimes tramped home --
with only a little less to track / to suck
from the bitten lip / to say
for the weight of theater / the diamonding
and sharp-edged
particulars of being / the ideologies
of private / and more
private continents.
*
But what will become of large
and even larger vehicles
/ the heaviest and decisive carriers --
of horrors that paw the doors
and ache to be a presence -- where
fables attain the weight
and more of living pictures? What
will become of dust
and the envolumed mealtimes -- of
words that went up like dust --
under so many moons and wingings?
The darkest fronds / the coming blooms
and sirens keep closest company --
asking so much from words
we must approach them cautiously --
believing the sounds
could stud the collar of the monster
/ that words we believed
had only been the bells of the first roses
will pay and pass / take up
their place among the last sweet brandies
and the porch brag. But summer's
too close / passion's too close / too
deep for any understanding. And
the music of locales / the voices drone on
and polarize -- even as ties
come off -- and the last of the insignia
/ the last of the hungers now -- in
the presence of these left-overs -- setting
the tones for news-shots
/ moods and documentaries. We're
stepping in and around
the spots / the landmarks -- remarked
alike by travelers and locals --
remembering the sorties / the aerial shots --
blown up and scoped -- revealing
the minds of mercenaries / the hearts
of children made to flee
/ the business crowds must seem about --
in eyes that look for something less
in the crowd pictures -- even as history
declines / as an idea ( concretized )
burns away the calendars.
*
And the aristocrats ( we think )
will never lose the urge
to flap and fascinate -- for getting
their mugs on film -- their
grown lives -- as woods and air
enable them -- raised
by elections still to still more bloody
relevance. They come
from the bachelor / from
the long-married places
flames have made away with / from
so many night-times
made to sing -- in defeat of harmony --
with so many moons receding
from old albums as we watch --
pouring the concrete on old forms --
encouraging the ancient rides to light
for show and tell -- and
only a breath from primitive / only
a breath in this tracked land
from cliff's edge and bottomline
/ from the embedded holidays
/ the impromptu traces -- satisfied
( almost ) to form -- but
lifeless almost -- as worlds lost --
as the faces lost
and spooky physics of mid-century --
and the cadet's broad grin --
in an instant skeletal -- when
the helmet shattered
and the precious tether snapped --
sent -- like these
fierce diplomacies -- airless
/ adrift and weighing
on forever.
PRISTINA SPRING 17
Even these earliest cool last dawns of reprisal
there's no kidding history -- no
snap-shot's twist or invitations to the sacred --
no leavening or reprise
uplifting memories and regrets -- no breakfast
or evening walk -- eyed by
alliance officers -- to say how the moods scaled back --
here -- at the center of events --
and what it had been to speak / to believe
in beauty -- according
to one kind / one note -- and the next notes
stretched -- arranging
the gathered light and resurrecting layers. For
all of this air-brushed history
/ these conversations turned upon the limits
of ideas -- had there been other ways
but this -- conceding the mind / the heart --
according to exposures --
revealing how beauty's slain -- and beauty's
traded on -- as if the gods / the minds
were no less perishable -- and the short-strap
histories -- settled again / again --
were no less perishable -- with these
god-sponsored thugs
/ god broken innocents / these sportsmodel
christs and crusty loaves
we might have marched with -- rebuilding
the ruins on ruins -- with more
of the ruined materials?
*
Even as chefs return they throw away
old recipes -- following
the saints against temptations to nostalgias --
and signing away
their martyrdoms -- refusing their own
sky-hued and short-span
forfeitures -- until it is much / too much --
these canvasses -- and
figures empowered to bleed -- till some --
who received the saddest homes
against the horrors -- who had wept -- could
see through it -- how
the inscripted walls / the gold and cobalt-
filtered sunlight / the prayer-sifted
sunlight loomed unkindly over them --
and how the icons
/ histories / the holiest lawns / niched walls --
cleansed of their abstractions --
flamed succinctly afterward -- given
this light the living
seemed no longer good for -- having
assumed the programs / having
given up their rites.
*
Once the realities of some careers have settled in --
the folders and stapled sheets --
/ the tapes with single-minded witnesses -- what
will the accents seem / salutes
/ the faces of women -- with smoking sticks
and painted candles -- raising
the arms they've draped in many-patterned veils
/ fingers to rub the stones
or worship instruments? And the eyes that winked
/ eyes that wept as action
tore back through their roses -- remember
the place they'd stopped --
to strap back sheets on wagonloads -- the voices
that whispered hymns
they'd learned when they were girls / whispered
the children's blood -- or gratitude
for breadcrusts -- they enter this moment
after all -- shared by the goatherds
now -- with winters ahead for them -- by
families in wagons and sedans --
queued for the borders and ancient shrines --
victims of myths
that emptied neighborhoods and common spaces --
as if the mind / history
could never change its tastes -- and the earth --
for all the sky's triangulations --
were no more than earth -- asking
as much as pockets have to show
for fingerings -- and asking for
even more than afterward.
*
So which of the statues bled / which plaster robes
were moved by winds
or their own power -- which of the canvasses
/ the altar images seemed to weep --
exciting some loose talk still -- making so much
of what were seasons and good faces?
And what will disturb her once she's climbed --
since she must wait for all of them -- must
serve herself the millennial places and charismas --
lucky ( she thinks ) despite the time-lapse
sense of it -- now that her sons come back --
and men -- from their strange goings --
but less than the lilts / the lavenders -- and
less than the earth-cold / creek-cold pours
over cracked glazing / the wines and toasts
and cards / bloodkin in Budapest --
whose weddings invite her still -- recalling
a life ago -- before the worst were
breaking crystal -- before the brandies
/ the tarry coffees and tobaccos
were asking the same from
makers and the likes
of figurines.
PRISTINA SPRING 18
The guitars play cheap
and just as long as memory.
And the sashaying stars
-- over unshaded open land --
the dark
with its cards and company --
would never
have seemed so possible
-- the swallows come quick
and quieting
-- as moonlight in rooms
/ and moon
in empty April fields
affects
these organic glints
/ builds
on the blood-wave
/ and into decades
tidying / the half-lives
scrubbed
in any ancient physics.
And hadn't she eaten
as kids did?
And isn't she
scratching cards
to see who's homeworthy
or walking --
agreed
to her share of lottery
/ to what had begun
with stars
/ with the green-gold
/ brushed gold buttons
and pearl snaps
-- and now
to this hesitancy
to dress
-- that these smears
/ and less
than smears
might be forgiven
/ these
sleepwalkers
painted up
with booty
and old news?
*
Cold enough for snow
it feels like.
But the buds
say leaves
/ limbs hiding nests all over
-- wearing
the seasons well
-- as we
the lengthening light
and warmth
of a night's fire
-- this usual driving time
behind the pig-movers
and horse-trailers
-- coming
to you Elizabeth
-- ending a week
made adamant
/ a week with its gods
in Kosovo
and Littleton.
And since it has all
seemed possible
-- as real
as arms
brought round about
-- there's this
to be asking still
-- hearing
these voices
split
so many lengths
of kiln-dried stuff
/ reading
the rust-hued
rorschach
far-sides
of the billboards.
*
It's ended as yokes
/ bone-tools
-- in young men
pumping scripts
for the home market
-- in so many cuts
and hands
made warm with luxury.
And what's
to propose
but keep awake? What's
to be heard
but guests
-- but these fruit-bowls
set beneath
the anniversary petals
-- heard
in the toned reports --
except
for the post-dead cinema
-- aroused by
the brandies now
/ the berries
and apples
/ peaches
chilled
since she arranged them
-- maturing
with lives in front of us
-- sharpening
their reach in time
the ways
the films envision -- piquing
their tastes
for berrying
/ for climates conscripts
and enlistees
seem at home in
-- clocked for
reaction times --
in these rooms
where smoke
and cosmic mambos
make us squint
/ where
the retellings –
microdisksful!
-- play
-- where even a slap
might seem
a gentle start
on parity.
*
So many bearded girls!
So many
husbands
faking shapes!
So many line-drawings
and shaded forms --
saying
what kids' eyes saw
/ saw scrapped --
with all the forms
of body heat and pleasure
/ the forms
of the human promising
/ proposing
such homes again
as kids might be
at home in. And you
-- Shit! / Poet! --
believing your poems
and spinning lights
-- comfy
with cigars
and moving phones
and smokey leathers
what will you say
of personnel
/ report to us
song by song
-- film by / poem by
film by poem
recover
-- to reconstruct the efficacy
-- think
to the largest print
-- to sheets
as large
and blank
as the spring fields?
*
And how will you know enough
/ have learned enough
to tell -- capably
clutching light
-- adding these levels
to grey light
skewered overhead
-- believing that hole
could be
another doorway / window-view
-- a sign
of the hands at work
-- except that the flames
leap out of it --
leap from the wounded deer
-- from that stag
full flame --
candling
grey-bright Pristina?
How will you look away
and see / look away
and keep your person
-- even
as time goes on
and works its ways
on other bodies?
And what shall you ask
of kitchen shapes
-- ask of
your daughters / wives
but one more plate
or beverage --
of households of women
made to serve there
in their kitchens --
because
you have grown used to it
/ and used to her face --
who could
/ who would not flash her nails
-- and
much more
remembering
-- the faces of the women
blinking back
splayed goats and alcohol
-- back
clumsiness at heart
-- the techno-sweets
and plastics
men were good for
-- when Mars
mishandled
what was never
handled well.
|
