I looked beyond the glassy fever

I looked beyond the glassy fever
and awful mirror into the frail
burnt offering. She moved over
the soiled earth like a soft veil

of dark clouds imbued with disease.
I looked beyond the ancient healer
to find the deep, terrible crease
of time. She moved like an unreal

prophet, the prayer we all suffer
despite tradition. I am impure
and have no scripture to offer
that might present a final cure.

I told her that I couldn't sleep

I told her that I couldn't sleep

Without her there. Her auburn hair,

The sound of dreams amongst a deep

Mystery. She had a pair

Of eyes, of ears, of hands, of breasts,

Of thoughts that didn't know rest.

I told her that I couldn't keep

My heart for her. She didn't care

If I believed enough to take a leap

Of faith. She had to share

Her weariness as if the western

Sky was all that we had left.

What may be known is plain to them

What may be known is plain to them
and rational creatures cannot worship
the laws of the first. The last apostle
begins to show the works he has made,

and even idolatry without excuse
must have been lost. All, more or less,
do hold the truth till all false traces
of the gospel favor God. These show

that men have the most absurd idolatry,
and facts cannot be denied. Gentiles
are left without excuse, for whatever

may be pretended degrades themselves
by abominable deeds. Invisible power is
manifest in them because he shows it.

The poet sat and counted up the lines

The poet sat and counted up the lines
of the song despite a terrible mania;
he thought about the quatrain as a shrine
where the bodhi tree is doing yoga.

The subtle way the tired Sun shines
between the gross branches of a sutra
reminded him of her clothes: the refined
tapestries that seemed from another era.

By the time he reached the number nine
he felt the heft of modernity that Kafka
knew, then battled the existential rhymes
and thundered into a confusing volta.

But this form is a strange web of time
and space, and the ever-elusive aura
is not something that we easily find
in the concrete systems of a stanza.