Liquid melody and the misty earth
a palace juts above the forest
perched tenuously on rocks
suspended
in an airy delicacy;
A chime of resonating wood
a ringing ache
like rain
on a tin roof dinky dink scoop plink
suddenly I return to the funeral
the fear of death
the hole one's life falls through
suddenly liquid melodies and fluid words
I see a woman with fur around her wrists
she moves away to a dark place
here is the landscape I fell asleep
the rain on the radio plays a rhapsody
Chinese but in its way very English
each word spoken in the voice of an English God
into the darker hall over there
the rich underworld evoked in strangeness
where we wander in our way
bargaining with words of appearance
creating our worlds of want
wanting the world this way.
There are no short cuts on the way to the worthwhile
a wise saying on the blackboard menu of the Lazy Hog
that's where you went after work on a Friday night
to meet with old friends to gossip to be easy
to relax as they say to be what becomes you.
Always I see you in the golden grassy fields of summer
by the lakes of hot dry central
are we really most ourselves in the love we reserve for others
measuring these gaps of self these claims of the good and beautiful.
Is the mind that cunning
a psychology of loving who we or are not
words'trespass words'intermediaries
fixed to find ourselves in love
to reset time to revise hope
to hold against terror
to delight in tenuous balancing
to cultivate the moment of death.