April 20 & 21

Haven't had time to post these days here barely time to write -- 

and not sure

they are even worthy of posting them

but since I said I was going to do that, I must.  

4/21

Becoming Uncoupled at the base of South Mountain One Early Spring Evening When Fog Hangs in the Air 


After love, we listen in the dark
to rain make a song on the thin roof
-- a cat meowing at the door sounds 
like an untuned lute. 
He says "I love your voice" 

why is it this way --
too much passion brings such affliction. 

4/20

Confronting Helen 

For Beauty's nothing
but beginning of Terror we're still just able to bear,
and why we adore it so is because it serenely
disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.

Rilke, the First Elegy




Fuck Rilke and his mysterious angels 
the terrible angels -- his limpid, lapis eyed 
mysterious creatures who hold up the blood of Imam Hosayn, 
Prince of Martyrs so the world doesn't fold.

I birthed a baby boy whose eyes revealed
the answers to the pyramids 
and a daughter whose face
iswaswillbe torment the minds of poets
for eternity. 

I am not afraid of you, Helen, who sent 
legions of men smiling 
into the mouth of death --the promise
of you on their lips 

"Love made ME such that I live in fire 
like the Phoenix, who dies and rises 
at the same time." *



* from Gaspara Stampa's Rime 208