'But if it ends
the start is begun' - William Carlos Williams *1
'a first unfallen church it might have been.' - Nathaniel Mackey *2
to engage a spider
where
once were roses
becomes a geometry which
indeed
a spider is
its shape, that is, a
spider
at web's edge,
waits
or is it
weights?
Newly dead
I swore you
to a would-be
cloud
bore you to the lowest boulder
I, too, soon to be shroud
you lived silent enough to be
ignored
so passing, yours,
calls attention
well deserved
pity or verse?
both in one?
the Worst
Epitaph for a Spider
bidden, it bore
not a grave
but a door
where is no need to knock
its life grokked
it is no longer
there's no mock in
it tho
as it was and now is
all that is not
never
was its business
but its was only to
obey
That which bade
spider
poet
maker
it made
all praise to the Bidder
Paean to a Spider
the tactility of the spider
bemused
concentrates skies *3
first days here on the mountain - I speak to
it every morning from the john me wondering
at its slow slow movements for three days till
fourth its legs all curled tuck tightly beneath
its carapace I blow at it from the cold seat -
bunched draws round my colder ankles -
it budges not at all I realize it is deceased
its legs uniformly creased a beauty to see
first time ever've felt remorse for bug any kind
lifting Spider up with toilet paper so soft
double ply-ed solemnly march Spider on
bier so soft softly into still harder winter
snow and darker woods Middle-March
flip flops no socks slow going find a rock
up near the woodshed so place Spider
there with oddest prayer ever in my life
but Lord Buddha helps re: 'all sentient
beings' etcetera etcetera que sera sera
so perform brief bone chill rites then slide
down the path patch to my ground floor
entrance to hot shower then to Hopkins
poem - The Windhover - the more meaningful
than ever for its 'dappled-dawn-drawn things'
now rather substituted or addendum-ed to
prayer ponder 'threaded-sewn-moaned things'
strangely mourned actual tears born no doubt
of projections upon small cringes majestically
formed objectively perceived from secret
sightless spaces suspended cocooned in
darkness or once in close woods August last
Requiem
the fragility of the web
infused
penetrates spaces *4
a web
it
was
there strung
and
purled
pearled between limbs
beneath trunks amid
fiddle ferns spun
between brittle sticks
there mute legs
somehow click
tho no ear hears
but
trembles
feels
which are ways
of knowing
but work they
unwinding
beneath faint stray leaves
each strand somehow
sticks
echoes catching where
spider
tufts sough
a
brief
webbed kingdom
such sleights
do filaments trace
alone with the Alone *5
________________
Footnotes *1 William Carlos Williams line from 'Spring and All'.
*2 is a line of Nathaniel Mackey's from 'Song of the Andoumboulou'.
*3 & *4 are riffs on these lines below from William Carlos Williams 'Spring and All' p32:
The fragility of the flower
unbound
penetrates spaces
*5 Title of a mystical Sufi poem by the great poet Abū 'Abdullāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʾī. A Sufi mystic, poet, and philosopher born in Murcia, Spain on the 17th of Ramaḍān (26 July 1165 AD) , Ibn Arabi was one of the great mystics of all time. Considered a Saint, his counsel is to wake up as one 'alone with the Alone'.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem