Journals

Moving Backwards
I am constantly remembering that I have not stopped loving
any of them, for any of the reasons we were together or apart

~

I fortified my heart and braced myself to enter England
It was lovely to see you all—laid out gardens and
heroic trees. When I closed my eyes to the watery�

I can keep my euphoria going because of these trees
propped up on these trees.

~

The difficulty has been to remain myself (for me to enjoy) so far
away from home. Occasionally, lost in enthusiasm or work this was so
And occasionally, as this morning, a hummingbird hovers over the trumpet vine
and of course it is a miracle.

~

The thunderous galloping hare

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So under Richmond Bridge contends
continues flowing past the river bends
of Twickenham and Chiswick until when
I step off (for my house is there) where it ends

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Within your heart a little spirit moved and came out from your eyes and came to wound
me as I was gazing on your loveliness and made its way through my eyes so quick�that
it put heart and soul to sudden flight�Then when the soul had been restored a little, it
called out to the heart, "Are you dead, then? For I don't feel you in your proper place!"

~

When I am not looking—when I do not look
or see you as you are today in Green felt hat
and red your favourite colours saying look at me
I was recognized by one who took me by the skirt and cried
(This means of course no disrespect) There can be no comeliness in limbo
And yet here in its very desolation and unsubmissive life
I had in plenty what I wanted, now, alas, look and attend this water
waited for Last season's fruit is eaten last season I wanted
           Of course there are dissimilarities as well
           tin, asphalt, pail, What! are you here?
           the dramatized encounter of the wholly world
           whose very unexpectedness and 'unreality' releases
           generally unspoken but entirely urgent cares
           In a word, the meeting never is a meeting
           A crowd, over the medieval bridge
           establishing relationships between the medieval and the modern world
           apparently implied (Can you say for sure that it is not?)

I almost wish I could have hung about outside so as to be able to write about this place I
was arriving at�I am able to do a bit of planning ahead before birth�to have whole days
in front of one in which one can see how far one can reach into that unknown realm�but
the perch that just oneself provided was not enough for other than retaining some sense of
home & real being.

and full of pike and tench among the weeds
and under the tall water
docks and willow herbs
not knowledge, not
wisdom, given to mysterious
average man who answers
and thrushes hardly leave the corn
A dream has passed silent of wing no sound
from cottages The dreams are over them
satisfactions, consolations, hopes
You see we have been happy
in common and in secret
one feels how wonderful it would be to be
just where one is.

~

We wish to prolong what we can see and touch and talk of
We can do the work of the Universe
though we shed friends and country
house and clothes and flesh and are invisible

We just make empty handed armless snatches in the air
& catch our love everywhere and it is marvelous
that longing never dies & one can't improve one's vision
even the fool's about the business of eternity
those that move about outside
they are also of our company

The coombes breed whole families
daintiest snails in saxifrage & moschatel
the spurge and spurge laurel
saffron-hearted primrose greenish in the light of its own leaves

~

The world blown in on a cord
My male indifference learnéd & improved
Bored, no less. By itself
I have been moved (recently) by your height
and small breasts. And a favour which you asked of me
how cunning to invoke the one thing that intrigues me most
my usefulness. Apocryphal. You know it.
The only other trick that works is your indifference
but lately what's the difference, they all show it.
O Honey, can we even bother to bat oars
as Cleopatra on her throne, and Tony her adored
Well, when we're not looking it shows
and we are host to fantasies most unlike ourselves
(the usual perhaps) and this must surely be what allows
(the weeds in little crevices to grow)
the crack where one weed grows

~

We are found back amongst ourselves
A great Error has occurred
Human disaster
Still those of us still walking heard
As with yesterday in trees

And then amongst ourselves we find ourselves
walking headless falling with our limbs
fragmented images imagine us
No Elegy—Fanatics have their dreams.

_________________________________________________________________________
"Oh," he said "people have jumped out of the World Trade Center. They fell like apples
from a tree. People would rather jump than burn."
--NYT Sunday Sept 23rd, 2001
________________________________________________________________________

Now and In England
by the last boat leave
radiant with otherness
a thin continuance

A huge, plunging, tremendous soul. I would like to be a tree for a while. The great lust
of roots. Root-lust. And no mind at all.
--D.H.Lawrence Fantasia of the Unconscious p.39

_________________________________________________________________________
my heart is congested by glittering on a glistening quince tree—my ribcage has splintered
through a lung. Such is teaching. And I cannot teach with nothing below me but debris.
This not grandiose. My daughters are upon me the reckless victims of neglect and puerile
indecency. I have not trained my indecency. It describes only laziness and inadequacy. If
I were to follow truthfully truthfully my desires nothing could be indecent.

I never shook off the feeling that something very obvious, very manifest in itself was
hidden from me.
--W.G.Sebald, Austerlitz p.54

My life is a hesitation before birth —Franz Kafka Diaries

In reading I had thought the words inside my head—that sounds were in my ear—but
noticing today the words 'at Alexandria, with the founding of the museum and its library'
the words themselves held the site of the sound. The halls of Alexandria must have been
silent—with a thousand heads listening to the silent page expound.

We who dwell on Earth can do nothing of ourselves —William Blake

Why don't we make some new emotions —Alice Notley

~

The film begins (music)
and it is a simple scene
deer eye trees paling
I have no time to listen/with television on/self-immolating over nature

The things you have decided
are not necessary

~

we sit down with a book
we lie down my friend and I
and the book open reading
we are holding our breath against each other
ourselves shuddering with pulse
apart from ourselves—the concentration
touching where we both are

~

I will not do a thing
I have not done anything
when I was a young boy the first time
and then later immediately. And then gradually getting used to it

And later once or twice, quickly in the dark
with all those others sleeping near by. You whom I hardly know
as well as anybody I suppose. And again in the cemetery
and all those times and all those times when not
the same to me now, almost, with me as I enter each
moment. And you and I deciding if the story is compelling.

~

If you don't compromise might you live forever

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man is frail and the law of the universe is mutability

~

the sea surrounds us &
is nowhere to be seen
here in its bitter green heart
any music we make in this dark

at times I wish I meant
the first thing I could think

~

A free adaptation
and now one is in the other's arms
it won't end here
in the bath house—unused
a city trembles falling horses
Eumolpus the poet in poor garb
black eels—oars in water

FUVK BY CKCK5V

tie our own hand to the fence and prepare with an axe to release ourselves
A burning Sun in a cold universe
who with two women shopping
the dead of London move to another parish
the dead of London move to another parish
the living at his window all day long
mesmerized by routine groceries

~

M. moved among the shadows like a phantom.
The high walls of the garden where it was said
the gardener used to see the ghost of the former owner
in the shape of a rabbit
saints on the one hand, animals on the other
moment as it passes

~

its hell its hell what matter if it be the worst of hells

~