Absent music has devoured
our bodies. The sky obstructing
the sunset. A dark weight, a murmur,
a sunglimmer on bodies. No, autumn’s
glow ignites no spring,
nor need the body await it: there is nothing
we do not see. Only this music
burns our bodies like tinder. Silence.
Only a murmur of water. Don’t tell me
of the glimmer of bodies, when the woods obscure
the sun, and the sun, with dark fire, obscures
the sun’s glimmer. The sword slices
the twilight into halves.
The ideal waters, just the meaning of water,
the idea of water, glow
on field gules of a heraldry absent.
Text written, text negated, canebrake or cinder,
the vast vaporous vessel never finds
its domain, the dead rigging.
Snow-shrouded ship of clouds. What fate?
Without weapons, without buckler or palfrey,
the white horseman of the sky. Blind trees set eyes on
the desolate water, a blind machination of trees.
As the void grips the marrow, clement
in autumn, so the cold grips the eyelids.
Hands of the water, the distance, the dark
emerald green of night in April.
Dry splinters, all those moments,
are they good for something? Dark, the holm oak
abides and awaits, as if the world
were nourished on an instant: of waiting.
Such is the waiting of bodies. Fed by the fire of day
on the obscene hope of flesh,
as though it might be eternal.
Like, perhaps, the light that burns the forests,
that ignites the branches of iron winter.
Like, perhaps, the dark winter wind
bearing lovers’ voices, bodies, useless
trappings of flesh, black professions
of the winter sky, fire of arrows obscure.
Useless profession of the flesh. Falcons’
cries loom over us, like a gravid cloud’s rebuke,
cradling us in a destiny of rain. Must the eyes
open fully then, as if to witness
the downfall of the stars? Will they see it,
and the sky choked by the fundament of bodies,
the water of elements and the water of air,
the destiny of light, taking sides
with the shadows, the screen of beings
unfolded, will we see
with new eyes, like a beast sensing rain,
not with the senses, not with hope, not
with the abject and beaten will,
but with the entirety of its being, inexorable
like the night, with the will of the night?
This, perhaps, is waiting. Perhaps the tree
feels it, and knows the sign of the tree
is another, deeper. Thus night,
like a mesh, envelopes the covert
progress of beings, the rubble
of the carnal profession, reddish
strips of sky igniting its theaters.