New Poem (the title also serves as the first line)

As You Came From the Holy Land
(stanza 1)
of western New York state
were the graves all right in their brushings
was there a note of panic in the late August air
because the old man had peed in his pants again
was there turning away from the late afternoon glare
as though it too could be wished away
was any of this present
and how could this be
the magic solution to what you are in now
whatever has held you motionless
like this so long through the dark season
until now the women come out in navy blue
and the worms come out of the compost to die
it is the end of any season

2nd, final stanza :

Why must it always end this way?

Always the same ending, same style or format, nothing new. It feels like there’s no other way.

A dais with woman reading, with the ruckus of her hair
And all that is unsaid about her pulling us back to her, with her
Into the silence that night alone can’t explain.

Her silence, the silence about her, pulling us back into a silence deeper than the night. The commotion about her head. Who is she? Is she the woman reading a poem, the judge?

Silence of the library, of the telephone with its pad,

Heavy silence, books silent, telephone silent, words, words, words silenced.

But we didn’t have to reinvent these either:
They had gone away into the plot of a story,
The “art” part—knowing what important details to leave out
And the way character is developed.

We don’t have to make it new or start again. There is the format, the structure. Churn it out.

Things too real
To be of much concern, hence artificial, yet now all over the page,

Everything’s been done to death. It’s become meaningless, an artefact, like the movie. Now it’s everything, this empty, meaningless style.

The indoors with the outside becoming part of you
As you find you had never left off laughing at death,
The background, dark vine at the edge of the porch.

And there’s nowhere to go, to escape the dead repeated style that you perpetuated yourself, even though you knew. You always knew what was behind all that, the empty silence that you ridiculed. But look, the wildness of the real world waits silently at the edge of your artificial world.

Missed last night.

Stanza two:

you reading there so accurately
sitting not wanting to be disturbed
as you came from that holy land
what other signs of earth’s dependency were upon you
what fixed sign at the crossroads
what lethargy in the avenues
where all is said in a whisper
what tone of voice among the hedges
what tone under the apple trees
the numbered land stretches away
and your house is built in tomorrow
but surely not before the examination
of what is right and will befall
not before the census
and the writing down of names

Stranza three :

remember you are free to wander away
as from other times other scenes that were taking place
the history of someone who came too late
the time is ripe now and the adage
is hatching as the seasons change and tremble
it is finally as though that thing of monstrous interest
were happening in the sky
but the sun is setting and prevents you from seeing it

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight
Filters down, a little at a time,
Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,
As the sun yelllows the green of the maple tree.... — csalisbury

the idea is not to be immortal and free
it is to be finite, mortal and yet see
don't try to be the magnificent sun
yellowing green truths in the sunlight is fun

As You Came From the Holy Land
of western New York State

You came from your pilgrimage, where you sort resurrection, the assurance of God. Did you find what you went looking for?

were the graves all right in their brushings

Was it as it should be, everything in its place. Was death locked in place, where it should be. Was it as you expected? it? Did you get your answers?

was there a note of panic in the late August air
because the old man had peed in his pants again

Or did you feel the doubts, the decay in the air, did you see that there is only this life and it ends not in glory but in slowly wasting away.

Was it relevant any longer. was there turning away from the late afternoon glare
as though it too could be wished away

Did your faith fail you, or did you ignore that as well?

was any of this present
and how could this be
the magic solution to what you are in now

You found nothing. So how could you believe there us a future in it? How could that be the way to live, how could it solve your problems?

whatever has held you motionless
like this so long through the dark season

This thing, the thoughts, this idea that you believe, that stops you moving, growing, is darkness a solution to darkness?

until now the women come out in navy blue

You had believed in the healing power of God.

and the worms come out of the compost to die
it is the end of any season

And now you know there is no God, no heaven, nothing. Nothing comes from death, after death there’s nothing, never has been, never will be.

It always ends the same way.

Reminds me of the I Ching. Or Kairos over Chronos.

final stanza:

out of night the token emerges
its leaves like birds alighting all at once under a tree
taken up and shaken again
put down in weak rage
knowing as the brain does it can never come about
not here not yesterday in the past
only in the gap of today filling itself
as emptiness is distributed
in the idea of what time it is
when that time is already past

New Poem :
'A Man of Words'

Stanza I:


His case inspires interest
But little sympathy; it is smaller
Than at first appeared. Does the first nettle
Make any difference as what grows
Becomes a skit? Three sides enclosed,
The fourth open to a wash of the weather,
Exits and entrances, gestures theatrically meant
To punctuate like doubled-over weeds as
The garden fills up with snow?
Ah, but this would have been another, quite other
Entertainment, not the metallic taste
In my mouth as I look away, density black as gunpowder
In the angles where the grass writing goes on,
Rose-red in unexpected places like the pressure
Of fingers on a book suddenly snapped shut.

only on the gap of today filling itself
as emptiness is distributed
in the idea of what time it is
when that time is already past — csalisbury

That broke my brain. In a good way though.

remember you are free to wander away — csalisbury

This is a great challenge. To go back to the scene one would leave.

Ah, I did the inexcusable & mistranscribed. The first line should say 'only in the gap of today filling itself.' Still pleasantly brain-breaking.

@csalisbury

Just wanted to say thanks for posting these. I haven't got anything insightful to say about them, I just don't have an artistic bone in my body unfortunately, but I do love poetry. I know I could just go and read something new in any bookstore, but it's nice to just have something launched on you now and again. Please do another when this one's finished.

Second, final, stanza:

Those tangled versions of the truth are
Combed out, the snarls ripped out
And spread around. Behind the mask
Is still a continental appreciation
Of what is fine, rarely appears and when it does is already
Dying on the breeze that brought it to the threshold
Of speech. The story worn out from telling.
All diaries are alike, clear and cold, with
The outlook for continued cold. They are placed
Horizontal, parallel to the earth,
Like the unencumbering dead. Just time to reread this
And the past slips through your fingers, wishing you were there.

New poem
'Scheherazade'

Stanza I:

Unsupported by reason's enigma
Water collects in squared stone catch basins.
The land is dry. Under it moves
The water. Fish live in the wells. The leaves,
A concerned green, are scrawled on the light. Bad
Bindweed and rank ragweed somehow forget to flourish here.
An inexhaustible wardrobe has been placed at the disposal
Of each new occurrence. It can be itself now.
Day is almost reluctant to decline
And slowing down opens out new avenues
That don't infringe on space but are living here with us.
Other dreams came and left while the bank
Of colored verbs and adjectives was shrinking from the light
To nurse in shade their want of method
But most of all she loved the particles
That transform objects of the same category
Into particular ones, each distinct
Within and apart from its own class.
In all of this springing up was not hint
Of a tide, only a pleasant wavering of the air
In which all things seemed present, whether
Just past or soon to come. It was all invitation.
So much the flowers outlined along the night
Alleys when few were visible, yet
Their story sounded louder than the hum
Of bug and stick noises that brought up the rear,
Trundling it along into a new fact of day.
These were meant to be read as any
Salutation before getting down to business,
But they stuck to their guns, and so much
Was their obstinacy in keeping with the rest
(Like long flashes of white birds that refuse to die
When day does) that none knew the warp
Which presented this major movement as a firm
Digression, a plain that slowly becomes a mountain.

Stanza II

So each found himself caught in a net
As a fashion, and all efforts to wriggle free
Involved him further, inexorably, since all
Existed there to be told, shot through
From border to border. Here were stones
That read as patches of sunlight, there was the story
Of the grandparents, of the vigorous young champion
(The lines once given to another, now
Restored to the new speaker), dinners and assemblies,
The light in the old house, the secret way
The rooms fed into each other, but all
Was wariness of time watching itself
For nothing in the complex story grew outside
The greatness in the moment of telling stayed unresolved
Until its wealth of incident, pain mixed with pleasure,
Faded in the precise moment of bursting
Into bloom, its growth a static lament.

Catching back up : 3rd & final stanza:

Some stories survived the dynasty of the builder
But their echo was itself locked in, became
Anticipation that was only memory after all,
For the possibilities are limited. It is seen
At the end that the kid and good are rewarded,
That the unjust one is doomed to burn forever
Around his error, sadder and wiser anyway.
Between these extremes the others muddle through
Like us, uncertain but wearing artlessly
Their function of minor characters who must
Be kept in mind. It is we who make this
Jungle and call it space, naming each root,
Each serpent, for the sound of the name
As it clinks dully against our pleasure,
Indifference that is pleasure. And what would they be
Without an audience to restrict the innumerable
Passes and sipes, restored to good humor as it issues
Into the impervious evening air? So in some way
Although the arithmetic is incorrect
The balance is restored because it
Balances, knowing it prevails,
And the man who made the same mistake twice is exonerated.

New Poem (and heads up, this poem is made up of very short stanzas, will probably take around two weeks.) The poem is called 'Absolute Clearance' and it begins with a quote.

"Voila, Messieurs, les spectacles que Dieu donne a l'univers..."
-Bossuet

Stanza I

He sees pictures on the walls.
A sample of the truth only.
But one never has enough.
The truth doesn't satisfy.

In some vague hotel room
The linear blotches when dusk
Lifted them up were days and nights

And out over the ocean
The wish persisted to be a dream at home
Cloud or bird asleep in the trough
Of discursive waters.

The times when a slow horse along
A canal bank seems irrelevant and the truth:
The best in its best sample
of time in relation to other time.

Suffer again the light to be displaced
To go down fuming
"So much is his courage high,
So vast his intelligence,
So glorious his destines.

"Like an eagle that one sees always
Whether flying in the middle airs
Or alighting on some rock
Give piercing looks on all sides
To fall so surely on its prey
That one can avoid its nails
No less than its eyes."

How it would be clearer
Just to loaf, imagining little
(The fur of a cat in the sun):
Let the column of figures
Shift, add and subtract itself
(Sticks, numbers, letters)
And so on to median depth...

Until a room in some town
The result of a meeting therein
Clasping, unclasping
Toward the flustered look
Of toys one day put away for the last time.

"I put away childish things.
It was for this I came to Riverside
And lived here for three years
Now coming to a not uncertain
Ending or flowering as some would call it."

Teasing the blowing light
With its ultimate assurance
Severity of its curved smile
"Like the eagle
That hangs and hangs, then drops."

(end of poem)

"Like an eagle that one sees always
Whether flying in the middle airs
Or alighting on some rock
Give piercing looks on all sides
To fall so surely on its prey
That one can avoid its nails
No less than its eyes." — csalisbury

This poem didn't hit me as hard, but this stanza did, but maybe only because it's very musical. But also the phrase "like an eagle that one sees always" reminds me of feeling like I "always" saw hawks (not eagles) growing up. So I guess that memory brings the stanza into focus for me. For what it's worth.

Back to it. New poem, much longer stanzas. Called: Grand Galop