I Thrum for News of You

 

Xiao Wei, since whomever

I did well by, I want to touch

The dewy blanket, the space between our lives

All night long, as if ~

The youth I can’t remember

Bid me farewell, they are the very ones

Who injure me most of all

That I long to hold most of all

Xiao Wei, if I cannot say your name

Then to whose voice shall I dispel

Come now, sing this, all of you

And add your voices for the ocean whales

And the life I would have loved

Had you been of my own culture

Had you been of my own care

The unmarried woman is, a prayer gone wild

For humankind, and maidens to keep a vigil for

The brides are gone, forever more

To the genes of old, they renew their force

In little faces, and mothering grace

But Xiao Wei, how much time is left?

Until you too walk the thorny veils

I won’t be able to hear your voice

Shaking inside my breast, for much too long

That I cannot speak any more,

When your tongue breaks down and you

Are silent, I thrum for news of you.

The Worthiness to Die

I know loneliness one dare
Not sound, so grave that friends depart
The alarm that leads to inner scrutiny
And horrors not be surveyed

The gloom of youth with no resolve
Skirted in the dark, under lock
Of our brief taste of tragedy
That does not depart so easily

I fear that loneliness is one of my
Prime emotions, that illuminates
My caverns and corridors
But am I alone in this?

I do not know, I suffer
As best I can, with brief wisdom
And hampered forgiveness
For cowardice or weakness I am not sure

And friends too few, and charity
Only given, and lovers
That leave before they truly know
I know loneliness one day

Not watched, that poverty expounds
The hardship of living a minority
Without but a wave of gold
I know loneliness like a jewel

With so much weight, and worthiness
And a strange hunger to die
Before one truly knows how to live.

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AGNES CECILE
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I’ve Caught the Scent of Last Year, It Tastes Like Stone

You do not have to love me/
I don’t think you ever did
I was born to follow you
And I was born for you to
Leave me behind, so it is
–
I wrote all these songs for you
Too sad for you to ever read
You sharpened the man in me
With scolding and rejection
I was born like a new poem
*
Dressed by the wind
The sky didn’t care your eyes
Were bloodshot, from the life you led
I was caught in the sundrift
Of your belly stepping into a new life
–
You do not have to love/
I don’t think you ever could
I am still caught in last year
With the taste of mud and stone
For forest said, never mind, I am as old
*
As your gossiping about a woman
I was born to live after you
To outlive you, for you to haunt me
I wrote all these songs for you
But you never liked poetry.

Plato Does not Speak of This

I have learned to despise in myself
What those I loved left me for –
They are not here with me now, I must deal
With the sun and moon for my pillows

The grief of lonely years, the dust of doorways
And years of half-grain and empty homes
Cold rooms, half chaff, no jewels
I have learned to accept in myself

What those I once sought, did not value
For only I must truly, live with myself
The others, they do not sweeten this bitter sea
They give and retreat, without loyalty

As a thorn opens into a rose, my throat and lungs
Beg the light for an execution place
Where I will wail and be thirsty for my own blood
Purified, as the Nile once flowed beside my limbs

I was never a warrior, but a humble worshiper
My dead eyes did look into your living eyes
and I cried, for love’s work looks absurd at times.

A Drop of Blood Like Shadows

My shadows have remained
Behind there, like a midnight guest
That doesn’t know when to leave
But the truth of the matter

Will surface, in sleep
The frosted sacrifices for art
Will suffice, the choice to be free
How the house is altogether preoccupied

Dust to dust, something called love
In the world, perhaps it’s not for me
Into a sterner living I must surrender
Why? Because life’s calculation found me wanting

There is no mercy in these stark designs
Of fate, no morning ray that sweet
Uncouth are the women who left me
Just as with my mouth I used to travel

Down their spines, their hips, their hands
Like a quiet shawl of tremulous abandon
I must warm myself with paler dreams
The dread of separation still in my gut

Heavy as a lost gleam of a lake of swans
There is nothing to forgive, nakedness is ruthless
My shadows have remained
I only sow the reaping done, a late comer

To reality, and ecstasy and maturity
I arrive at incredible vexation
A rage to break the barriers of sheltered patterns
Afloat in me like ice in foaming wine.