TIME AND THE CENTIPEDES OF NIGHT

Like time, the meadow narrows

                                                        up to its creek-scraped end.

At sundown, trees light-tipped, mountains half-slipped into night.

How easy contentment comes,

Old age at this end, time’s double door at the other.

The only way out is the way in.

Now we know which course the drift is,

                                                           in this drifting dream of life,

As the Chinese liked to say.

                                                 I like to say it too,

The thunderstorm-floating sky, lightening and lumbering gear shifts.

Afterwards, Gainsboroughs to the east and to the south.

How to understand this

Deep sleep,

                     deep sleep in the sheared, many-mouth afternoon?

Whatever is written is written

After, not before.

                                Before is blank and pure, and void

Of all our lives depend on.

Prayers rise like smoke, and are answered as smoke is.

Arrange your unutterable alphabet, my man,

                                                                              and hold tight.

It’s all you’ve got, a naming of things, and not so beautiful.

If history is any repeat, which it isn’t,

The condition of everything tends toward the condition of silence.

When the wind stops, there’s silence.

When the waters go down on their knees and touch their heads

To the bottom, there’s silence, when the stars appear

                                          face down, O Lord, then what a hush.