for Kinnell, Strand, Levine
The one eyed
painter too
flicks and claps
repeats silently
as he will and is
want
his lips moving
as
does a spider make
a
quieter order
in
a darker corner
no sight needed
only sense and silk
cabs blur yellow/gypsy
in angular winter light
now dazzle before Spring
when raises dead bulbs to jonquils
potted pretty in windows, on stoops
and, wild, strayed in parks
do not, O, pass us by or over
for all our patient harping
come morrows under willows yet
we shall hang up our loves again
get back to work
honest scrub and
clean beside the avenue
stand recalling willows
never seen
and grieve still an old yet present
eviction in the cities of men
there, almost within reach, the blossoming
tree brightens between darker bricks to truly
dwell. It is for me a shy son of mists to see
in spite of big chunks missing, lost, wasted,
torn out, that the Celestial World is not as
it appears to most, It yearns for much needed
hardness for spirits without shoes still long
to be bread that they may dwell in our finitude.
Dear uncommon friends, Kinnell, Strand,
now Levine, and my zen quill and pen-ners
of the East, imbibers of tea and samsara,
cackling cocks and hens in locked and guarded
shunyata pens of the world -
you have all become wholeness-itself by now.
I am reading reading crowded pushed your many
years behind me hoping I may gather what you
have found in the dusk where the trail ends
at the highest peak.
Ruffling all your bright feathers your KATZ
chorus clucks/crows up from the frozen
streams below:
No becoming.
What is there to be found?
Black Rooster, blind,
scratches all dawns.
Note now:
nothing to lose, this rag of selves.
With what glory remains of hungry pockets,
I skip forward singing, La La La, a willful
don, a lord of nothing-much, poems a'pocket
Note now from yesterday:
the grace of animals that have held me in their long gaze;
a raiment mist at the hem of the darkening woods.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
A wonderfully worded poem, Warren. Thanks for sharing