Before winter comes,
Blistering— beauty so bright,
  .  .  .  Cold grey is the veil.

In the dark room
Sparks fire—
Whispers of the sun
And silence blankets the sky,
I was born amongst the ruins
Of gentleness and wounded love,
By the dug kurgans of the Amazon,
The brands of rains ever burning
And foils of hope, fated, turning,
An outer beast eyes and howls,
The merciless stars ever sweep
And cowl in coldest sparkle flame,
Merest minded words, fainted, stab,
Drop in the down volumes of space
Evaporating under the brooding
Mortal emptiness.

Fresh days on beaches,
Sand writ words of betrothals,
Tides washed them away.

Her fine hands are gentle
With lithe and spiny fingers
Of bone and fin.

Her eyes are opal,
Essence of emerald and topaz,
A hoard of treasure.

Her hair is sea gathering
And dances in the blue currents
Deadly as the sea snake.

Her skin is coral,
Made of mineral and sorcery,
A fatal beacon.

Her lips are urchin,
Set in a whirlpool of face,
A spiral of doom.

Her voice is dream,
Rocking the lost wrecked ships,
Ground into sand.

Her long tail is fable
Of paradise, beyond faraway seas,
Cyclones and waves.

The morning world in mist dissolves and under,
Towed to heaven, we, a plod below the death
Of clouds, sing mute, where they trumpet-glide
Flashing into peace.  Three-toed slabs, parched
Of orange, web the stars over the wine
Dark seas and chalk the churn and twining earth
Into gloaming.  In rapt stillness they,
Are import and income, parables,
Echoes of the innocent song sung to a spire,
Gilded hutches, to those who heap on brightness
Swans are brighter even more with blackest
Eyes, they pierce the silent shroud all starry.
I wish that we were like two swans my love,
Neck of nape, embracing without touch.

So seductive, she,
Never saw the coming stones,
Last cry— Lorelei.

I have lost my sun,
Though I still orbit in a strange attraction.

I have lost my music,
Though I know my heart sings sound.

I have lost my vision,
Though I see in dreams an impossible beauty.

I have lost my sense,
Though this world has never tasted as sour.

I have lost my purpose,
Though aimlessly, I write in the pale drear of twilight.

I have lost my reason,
Though I chart dangerous courses without a crew.

I am the last falls of the loveliest red proscenium
curtain.

I am over, undone, a foundling, lost,
Without you.

She prolongs agony—
Razor lips cut so sweetly,
Can we be just friends?

The fly makes his way through the house.
Its tongue, like billions before, is tainting  
All it touches.  The fly has wings to spread  
His mess, and though he has innumerable  
Facets to his eyes he cannot see  
The swatter coming.

The house surrounds the fly and is sacred.
As the great blue world beyond is sacred.  
And the fly is spreading fast, flitting here  
And sticking there trampling his own  
Shelter, spreading pollution and excrement  
With a rolling tongue  

That spews and spits upon his own home.  
And though he is happy while he soils  
His house his eyes are two dead worlds  
Barren and still, born to die by the hand  
That flies even higher, so, the fly cannot  
See the swatter coming.

Buzzing, like a burn, through the innocent  
Air he dreams of vast minions rooting  
His world with legion hands.  The house was  
A garden that led him in, he cannot  
Wait for his seed to fester, all's he needs  
Are God’s green plants  

And clean water, some fresh air to conquer.
This house was made for him he would have  
Himself believe.  But when all has dried  
And all is soiled the fly would wish to move  
On, if only he could, trapped as he is  
In the earth and wooden house.

He could taste it all, oblivious to oblivion
In God’s green wooded world— all spinning,  
The sands are running in the sacred home  
That he himself has always defiled,  
As he has never shown any grace;
The swatters hand is His  
Own hand.

Love, in garden rose,
Her little hands twining tight,
Heart rapt in tendril.

And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.

In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.

  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   ­ .


Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.

I am weary . . .  I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.

Shall I build upon the strand?  Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.

I do not think they will give their skin to me.

I have known them gliding beyond the seventh wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.

We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.

              

                                        ­                     ­­                                               — after Elliot

I am alone with you.
A fire burns in the distance,
It lights our faces
As before in the empty cinema,
Where we arrived, at some beginning,
To watch a foreign film. Our eyes,
In new utterance, murmuring subtitles,  
What words could never speak,
The tips of seats, rows of air
And the moony screen,
A tableau of feathers and cloud,
Two of us, alone, as one,
Rapt in the spread of wings.

Later, alone we dine in the Café  
Campagne. Our conversation  
Deafens a burgeoning crowd,
Coffee was nectar, our words  
Were whispering petals.
Dearest Blodeuwedd, I saw the sweetest  
Sorrow on your face, the green ocean
In your eyes, I was cleansed  
By your tears.  I have always
Known you.

Across the border on the far island,
You stepped into the waters with me
And when you disrobed you lit the stars
And the stars and my eyes kissed your skin,
Your slender legs, columns, tilting
Toward heaven, in the age of Helen,
Touched the water and the sky,
I saw the milky way that night.

Síneánn, I am your Pablo,
We are two white birds sailing
Over the foam of the sea.
Solvent to my stone, you are the hinge
To my casement world.  Rain petal
Voice, lithe, alabaster woman,
I am lost in your Sargasso eyes,
I hold your skin, my Selkie,
Sweet Niamh, I have lived  
One hundred years this week.

It is warm in the distance,
In the country of the sun,
We end at the house in Umbria,
In the autumn, there is no word
Siberia, my light Rosaleen.
Now is harvest time.  
At the great table we feast  
With family and friends  
And I am not alone with you.

Raven haired woman—
Bathes in lake with sinking moon,
Black swan drowning light.