"Ne te quaesiveris extra.": January 2012

I think I am bicycling across an Africa

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from
The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;
I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields
Always, to be near you, even in my heart
When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you
Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to
The place where I again think of you, a new
Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow
Of a ship which sails
From Hartford to Miami, and I love you
Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun
Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

Kenneth Koch, "To You"

featureless idling strews the wintry strands

Each waking I conclude erotic dreams
private mass entertainment. There’s
no joy in this, nor do I spend desire
that things should be so. Otherwise I read
of matrimony on your foreign planet
but cannot find the language. Otherwise
featureless idling strews the wintry strands;
woods bare their clutter; sea birds appear
to boister the waves, to wrench themselves
windborne. The soughing moon-tide’s hulkingness,
massive passivity, works in gnarls of light.
Further I cannot judge
whether to go, or stay; or tell how one
might stay, another go, far flung, bereft.

Geoffrey Hill, "Chromatic Tunes"

the whale's acre

My mood 'mid the mere-flood,
Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.
On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,
Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,
Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,
O'er tracks of ocean

"The Seafarer" trans. Ezra Pound

udders of glass

4

Ice hangs down from the roof edge.
Icicles: the upside-down Gothic.
Abstract cattle, udders of glass.

5

On a side-track, an empty railway-carriage.
Still. Heraldic.
With the journeys in its claws.

Tomas Tranströmer, "Six Winters"