Image-Nation 9 Poem by Robin Blaser

there are shining masters
when I tell you what they
look like some of it is
nearly false their blue hair

but they are not ourselves they
are equivalents of action they
compose forms, which we hear

sound within a context
as if that action we are
images of used us
the body becomes an instrument

sometimes the harp pierces the body
and a man only hangs on the strings

I hear the airborne-fire, the dead rebels'
second speech, which follows their live words,
and the rice, and the motorcycles

but public life has fallen asleep
like a secret name the wrong-reader
will say he has pity for others
where the thought is born in hatred
of pity, which is only feeling the action
we are only images of hates pity
and its reduction of horror to sentiment

wordlessness no thing is so simply
personal I put my hand out to catch
beauty in the act of I know no beauty
which is not permanent not invoked
in splendour the words are meaningless
until they emerge in the action they are
images of

I was once a youth, and I was
a maiden, a bush, a bird, a fish
with scales that gleam in the ocean

they come from the dark under
many names the blue wind
they are not ourselves, not even
the moon drawn down into our
breasts that we may strike others
with eros the
body gleamed so wind
master a bone, a ball, a top
an apple, a mirror, a skein of wool

wind — words wind — hair we

have dismembered the earth and
are born lifeless on the moon mouths
to the wind

unthought the many mountains, the many
cities, the many houses

I was once another man's heart
an eagle, a wolf cloud, smoke,
splash
psychron (cold, refreshing
anapsychsai (to be refreshed from evil

we have eaten ourselves luxurious and
careless I must bathe at the
gates of the city I must tell you
they have been blue in the heart,
in the wind
I have opened my mouth
they have come from the black-fire
we have stiffened
the terror of earth, as if terror were the only unearthly
thing in our hearts
we have given her rivers
of our own salt earth then remains uncanny,
sublime water is fear's movement grief cries
in the air like birds fire is hidden in the imageless
self
the blue hair the face of gold the clothes
like snow the blood
is light

zero
enacts it

Jack Clarke's ‘we are under image'
rythmos (form's movement) to walk into ‘the
primordial always exists' face to face always outside
ourselves the astonishment is
that it is kosmos
playing out with one man entheos
they are
the flowing boundary taking birth taking leave
at the point of the heart a continual
division of halves