Poetry

When his beloved Sophie died, Novalis 
Lay by her grave and wept himself to sleep.
On the third night she met him in a dream.
He woke transformed, longing for the last trance,
“When sleep shall be without waking.” 

Goddess, I have watched your motions gratify the world.
Votaries of all casts and ages, genders, voices
bow to you as they must, for nothing follows without you.

This morning your mouth
Was all I could think about

The martyr is borne
through town on the backs

of believers.
Such a ghost ship!

The light will inch across the ceiling
until it meets the wall. 
                                       The sheets
will seem softer than you remember.

Deep in the wood where things escape their names,
Her childish arm draped round the fawn’s soft neck
(Her diffidence, its skittishness in check,
Merged in the anonymity that tames),
She knits her brow, but nothing now reclaims
The syllables that...

Just as a swarm pours from a hollow rock
In one long beeline for the wild thyme,
Alighting in clusters on this purple and that,
But is stricken with a mass amnesia
That disorients the compass of the sun,

My room’s the shape of a cage
The sun crooks his arm through the bars

My enemies used to annoy the hell out of me with their fake cheerfulness, their pathetic need to be liked, or their drive to dominate every conversation. 

Do you know the poems of Max Jacob?
Do you know Talese, Gay? Swenson, May? 
Do you know Goldfinger, alias Gert Fröbe?
Do you know Robinson, Sugar Ray?