Inside This Little Heart of Mine

Inside this little heart of mine
a universe resides

I don’t have to travel far to find
a Samarkand or New Hebrides

The tomes of Alexandria’s shelves
the corals of Adriatic deeps

The moons of Jupiter or Mars
or where extinguished starlight sleeps

It’s here encoiled in these valves
these chambers with their echoings

across vast cloudlands and near breaths
the same for paupers as for kings

And in particular its Lord
by every ant and flea adored
_____________________

9/18/09
(from The Throne Perpendicular to All that is Horizontal)

There’s No Place He Isn’t

There’s no place that He isn’t
in interstices tinier than between

the crossbar and the “t” of “tiny”

But ask me if I think He’s
everywhere watching me

in love’s evergreen countenance
of stern forbearance

the way an object casts a shadow
when the light’s behind it

onto any wall
pure or impure

and I might as well drunk be genuflecting freely
before mud Chukwu at the

village entrance in Nigeria with the
other pagans only in worse state

since they in ignorance are

worshipping Allah
on the knob of His door

(though the door itself be holy)

while if I know He’s here but
don’t abide

I should know but don’t know
there’s nowhere to hide

Cemetery in the Snow (Xavier Villaurrutia)

(Note: A lovely snow poem by the great Mexican poet, Xavier Villaurrutia [1903-1950] which I’ve translated, and ceremoniously try to read at the first snow of every winter, if there is one… An eerie, cold and silent poem…)

CEMENTERIO EN LA NIEVE

A nada puede compararse un cementerio en la nieve.
¿Qué nombre dar a la blancura sobre lo blanco?
El cielo ha dejado caer insensibles piedras de nieve
sobre las tumbas,
y ya no queda sino la nieve sobre la nieve
como la mano sobre sí misma eternamente posada.

Los pájaros prefieren atravesar el cielo,
herir los invisibles corredores del aire
para dejar sola la nieve,
que es como dejarla intacta,
que es como dejarla nieve.

Porque no basta decir que un cementerio en la nieve
es como un sueño sin sueños
ni como unos ojos en blanco.

Si algo tiene de un cuerpo insensible y dormido,
de la caída de un silencio sobre otro
y de la blanca persistencia del olvido,
¡a nada puede compararse un cementerio en la nieve!

Porque la nieve es sobre todo silenciosa,
más silenciosa aún sobre las losas exangües:
labios que ya no pueden decir una palabra.

________________

CEMETERY IN THE SNOW

Nothing can be compared to a cemetery in the snow.
What name can be given to whiteness on top of white?
The sky has dropped indifferent stones of snow
on tombs,
and now all that’s left is snow on snow
like a hand resting on itself for all eternity.

Birds choose to slice through the sky,
wounding invisible corridors in the air
in order to leave the snow alone,
which is like leaving it virgin,
which is like leaving it snow.

Because it is just not enough to say that a cemetery in the snow
is like dreamless sleep
nor eyes left blank.

If something has a sleeping insensible body
from the fall of one silence over another
and from the white persistence of oblivion,
then there’s nothing that can be compared
to a cemetery in the snow!

Because above all snow is silence,
made even more silent on top of bloodless gravestones:
lips made wordless.

Take Down the Universe

Take down the universe bit by bit,
dismantle its brute manifestos,
cancel the President’s breakfast in the
Van Buren Room, on the Roosevelt table, by the
Zachary Taylor fireplace,
demote the ambitious CEO pinstripe by pinstripe,
unthreading his intricate
signature on checks and contracts with a
similar but reverse flourish,

call in all Greek fishing boats, with or
without catch, the handsome young
oarsmen dreaming of buxom taverna
waitresses in scoop-neck blouses, whistling,

call back all executive orders: Buy! Sell!
Liquidate! Kill! And
erase that rat-like look of satisfaction in the
eyes of the slavish underlings who would
love to carry them out,

return all glasses, broken or unbroken, to
The Management, lipstick or not
on their rims, drinks finished or
unfinished,

let all fruits and vegetables picked for
world consumption
return to their stems,
tree boughs, stalks, branches,
twinkling again in the respectable
rawness of real sunlight,

return all zoo animals to their natural habitats,
lemurs, wild-eyed, amazed and
a little disoriented to be
back home instead of in
concrete cages with one ramp and a
single-nailed tree bough,

let the high and outrageously higher notes
return to their sopranos, their mezzo sopranos, their
coloraturas with their grueling
study and practice since childhood,
return each painstaking note to its
silent source under the larynx’s unknown
grottos and reservoirs,

return the diamonds, zirconium and
all dubious emeralds in reality true
gems back to their
earthy beds, cool to the cheek of them,
covered over again by the sediment of time,

whirl all planetary motions back and
back into the oblong serene, the
octagonal octave of undressed
joy before the unstopping gaze of firstness,
everything fresh, new, before stretching, before
first heartbeat-ticks,

it’s over, it’s time to just stand still, let all
worlds slam back into their generating
chests, heartbone
serenade, voice dumb,
mind vacant as the North Pole,
just the tiny sound of the scrunch of
clean snow underfoot, the

darkness blowing back onto our faces like the
winds of discovery when the great
explorers rounded bends and saw
Victoria Falls for the
first time, the Pacific Ocean, the
first teenage kiss on a
back porch late
September, brisk
in the chill air of oncoming winter,

let the whole thing fall back into itself, fold
up into its carrying case across
illimitable stretches of space, let

Johnny the young artilleryman carry it, carefully,
between land mines, let it
down slowly, let it very

slowly and carefully down.

______________
12/12/97 (From Open Doors, in preparation)

Bathed in Silver

At the house of strangers
the host is also the guest

A blue moon sinks below the hillside
leaving everything in darkness

Moving through the night is one way of
finding out who you are

This bridge or that bridge is always a question
with no single answer

One step takes you further
one step brings you closer

Verification comes when you least expect it
from an intimate unforeseen quarter

Only shadowless beings can indicate
the direction to be taken

Once a house is entered
the only exit’s a doorway

When the moon comes up
everything’s bathed in silver

Who Taught Who What

The eagle taught the rabbit
how to keep out of sight.

The bear taught the trout
how to slip away.

The elephant taught its mahout
how to scrub its back.

The dwarf taught the growing boy
how to look tall.

The window taught the wall
how to be more transparent.

The floor taught the roof
how to be more down to earth.

The water taught the wine
how to be always clear-headed.

The wine taught the water
how to throw off all restraints.

The earth taught the blind man
how to see with his feet.

The wind taught the toupee
how to be more truthful.

The rainbow taught our hearts
how to expect more of the unseen.

The bridge taught the river
how to overcome obstacles.

The mule taught the townspeople
how to put up with its braying.

The lovers taught each other
how to accept each other’s faults.

Darkness taught daylight
how to wait until it’s time.

The body taught the soul
not to rely on it forever.

Paradise Gate / for Mahmoud Darwish

In Memoriam Mahmoud Darwish

The exile dies and
finds he’s home

All lamented fig trees and
cups of pungent coffee

sweet steam in twists above them

All horses tied to fences
lonely without their donkeys

in long green pastures

All glimpses of far ocean
across the barbed wire of enemy territory

now held in a divinely vibrant wisp in the air
for a split second before dispersal

at lickety-split speed over the earth’s mirror
as the world’s top spins below

And the grieving exile opens his sapphire eyes
now polished to a precious sheen

on unforeseen landscapes not exactly
reassembled from the precise gazes in his

poems but partaking of certain
mosaic resemblances puzzled together

And also sees Paradise Gate open before him
and all his doubts and denials

now banished as brutally as he was
into inconsequential territories

afloat under fig trees
wrapped in fresh roasted

swirls of coffee

at home at last
among departed comrades
____________________
8/13/2008