I
                                                                                                
there is no greater, more
constant exchange between
ourselves and the world
than our breathing

no sooner have we
sown the skyey seeds
in our lungs
than reaped their fruit—
discarded their chaff

breathing is an agriculture


II

but to what lofty tides
we subscribe!
the sky remains infinite—
too proud for form


III

we have outgrown the ocean
outgrown the earth—
perhaps we will outgrow respiration
and become like the elements
the dead seas
the unmovable mountains

breathe consciously for a moment

breathe as slowly as you can

you are a petrified forest
you are the ocean floor
you are Fuji


IV

but with my deepest breath
I cannot swallow the sky whole
I cannot crack the edifice
or bend the arm of a single tree

I am but the fleeting scent
of a spice wafted
and splayed
on the endless
wind

This is no spring that wakens at the dawn
what should have been awakened all along.

I feel the warmth of winter through the breeze
stay buried in the bone of sleepless trees,

whose buds are fat and seasoned with the salt
left waiting for a snow that did not fall.

And should they waken now, how they would find:
capricious spring has left them all behind.

Boggy dark peat buoys
atop hot

swells of blackening water,
under a pale froth

of warm, bitter oils.

Dear Swinburne, how fell you if Death felled himself?
Did the wind not last, had the running sun stumbled?
What knocks the stone from the clifftop shelf?
What rocks the sea still since the high tide humbled?
If all that remains remains all that that dies
And immortal soul lies forever relieved,
What am I left that your lyric decries
But bereaved?

The same words grow from your garden grave
Where the thorns of the wrought lead roses jingle,
But rocked by the roar of the wild wave
The words disperse and forever mingle.
Time can unravel the thorns and the weeds
And the wind and the sea and the sun and the rain,
Unravel Death and destroy his seeds
And remain.

I pray that your song stands stable and true
Through the covers I turn, on my lips when I sing
As the first day your meter upon the page drew
And your rhyme first ascended on nimble a wing;
If not, let you molder with meadows of roses,
As lovers are buried by solitary men,
Till I, upon every couplet that closes,
Read again.

Kiss upon my lover's nose:
It is for you the blossom grows.
Notice now it fans itself
Beyond the bough and hither flows.

Or else the scents came forth aroused
Not by those lips but by their boughs
Who shook and left them to the lake
With whose waters we are daily doused.

But could we shake the scent from trees
And drink the petals' milk as bees,
We might not lead our lips astray
And plant wet kisses where we please.

Single hair left in my bed
Remind me how the rain is shed;
When in old age, do cloudy tufts
Surrender from the skyey head?

"No, no; the drops like rice are stuck
Upright into the paddies' muck
And being pulled from one hillbrow
Are in another gardenbed tucked."

I disagree; when clouds are blown,
They hold their weight as seeds unsown.
It's when we let them lie with us,
The clouds, the locks of love are grown.

Tender feet, who hither sneak:
It is for you the floorboards creak.
Notice that the swollen wood
Is made to shift, but not made weak.

This summer swelter seals the drawers,
And dampness locks the bedroom door;
It keeps inside the sound of feet
Padding on the humid floor.

No cold fingernails can pry
The wood we warp each time we cry;
We, the doors of different shape,
Can open only once we dry.

Fancy in my lover's eyes:
It is for you the cricket cries;
Notice how he sinks to sleep
Each morning when her eyelids rise.

Or else the sun chars off his legs
And sends him drowning to the dregs
Of consciousness, whose cup is deep
And fits him with ethereal pegs:

Alas, they let the cricket fly
But cease to sing our lullaby,
Or drenched with dreaming, resonate
Not while we sleep but when we try.