Breathturn into Timestead Read online

  in the standpipe,

  in the

  standpipe.

  * * *

  SCATTERED PROPERTY, dust-

  immediate.

  Evening after evening

  the messages, withdrawn from

  the thoughts, drift in,

  king-hard, night-hard,

  into the hands of the grievance-

  reeves:

  from the break

  of their life-

  lines

  the answer steps soundless:

  the one eternal

  drop of

  gold.

  * * *

  THE LETTER READ FROM

  the unwritten

  pages,

  the play-dead reflex’s

  graysilver chain on it,

  followed by three silver

  beats.

  You know: the leap

  goes over you, always.

  * * *

  CUT THE PRAYERHAND

  from

  the air

  with the eye-

  scissors,

  lop off its fingers

  with your kiss:

  What’s folded now happens

  breathtakingly.

  * * *

  WHAT’S REQUIRED AS STARS

  pours itself out,

  your hands’ leafgreen shadow

  gathers it in,

  joyously I crunch

  the coin-pithy

  destiny.

  * * *

  I CAN STILL SEE YOU: an echo,

  palpable with feel-

  words, at the departure-

  ridge.

  Your face shies quietly,

  when all at once

  lamplike it lights up

  inside me, at that place

  where one most painfully says Never.

  * * *

  NOTHING BUT

  single children

  with faint, moory

  mothersmells in the throat,

  as trees—as black-

  alders—elected,

  scentless.

  * * *

  IN THE VOID

  where the chitlins wind

  around the brains-

  blossom,

  I threw myself toward stones,

  they caught me

  and crowned a round

  with what I became.

  * * *

  THE LOAMY SACRIFICE DOWNPOURS,

  circled by snails:

  the image of the world,

  carried heavenward

  on a blackberry-leaf.

  * * *

  THE WILDHEART, dishoused

  by the halfblind stab

  in the lung,

  disbreathed bubbles,

  slowly, bloodunderwashed

  the rarely promised

  right

  by-

  life

  configures itself.

  * * *

  IV

  THE ETERNITIES went

  for his face and beyond

  it,

  slowly a blaze put out

  everything candled,

  a green, not from here,

  bedowned the chin of

  the stone, which the orphans

  buried and again

  buried.

  * * *

  HEARTSOUND-FIBULAS, fenced in,

  the pair of cranes

  thinks itself before you,

  aspectral

  the light of your flower bestows itself,

  the mantis’s trapleg

  meets your over-

  starry

  Always.

  * * *

  GROWN WEARY

  of each other,

  roaming the margins,

  come of age,

  air

  shovels itself up, water

  too,

  the fortune-teller, slain, she

  sticks to the back of the

  ace of hearts.

  * * *

  AN EXTRA DOLLOP OF NIGHT

  is the share

  of the from afar un-

  damaged

  captured

  son.

  A voice, amidst,

  a-crows a face.

  * * *

  BEHIND FROSTSTREAKED BEETLES

  the driving lighthappiness

  bangs away,

  a helpless

  belly-grimace, friend,

  lulls you to

  sleep.

  * * *

  THE IRISHWOMAN, farewell-stained,

  reads into your hand,

  faster than

  fast.

  Her gaze’s blue marbles it,

  loss and gain

  in one:

  you,

  eye-fingery

  distance.

  * * *

  THE LEFT-TO-ME

  beamcrossed

  One:

  I am to puzzle it out,

  while you, in sackcloth,

  knit at the secretstocking.

  * * *

  REPUDIATED, need-

  friendly,

  distaff-legged

  goddess:

  Where you open up, in the kneeseat,

  a knowing knife turns

  on its axis,

  in counterblood-

  sense.

  * * *

  PRODUCTION-

  HANGAR:

  Glare-effects, at dusk,

  —on you, imagine,

  rested the healing hand under the flash-

  ing sheen—

  the guardian-word

  in the overpressure-helmet,

  a sign in the sentence

  as fresh-air-machine.

  Welding of the souls, shortlight.

  In the blast bays: application of

  artificial respiration to

  the rhymy, beautiful

  metal bellows.

  * * *

  IN THE VESICLE CHAMBER the

  disbreathed wakes up, the

  dangerous embryo,

  at its crater-

  end

  sprouts the thirdeye

  and spits

  porphyry, also

  pain.

  * * *

  MAGNETIC BLUE in mouth,

  you gasp-gain pole after pole,

  summered snow

  throws itself on top,

  soon the staggering starling hangs

  in the double songswarm.

  * * *

  OUTFALL

  combs your algae together,

  lays them

  around you.

  What you still have

  grows rampant, dammed in.

  A white forehead-splinter goes

  for you across the border.

  * * *

  THE MANTIS, again,

  in the nape of the word

  into which you had slipped—,

  courage-inward

  wanders meaning,

  meaning-inward,

  courage.

  * * *

  NO HALFWOOD anymore, here,

  on the peakslopes,

  no con-

  versing

  thyme.

  Bordersnow and

  —sounding

  out, death-

  saying the stakes and their

  waypost-shadows—its

  odor.

  * * *

  WEBBING between the words,

  their timehalo—

  a slough,

  graycrestedness behind

  the lightmane

  meaning.

  * * *

  ADDRESSABLE

  was the one-

  winged soaring blackbird,

  above the firewall, behind

  Paris, up there,

  in the

  poem.

  * * *

  V

  ORANIENSTRASSE 1

  Tin grew in my hand

  I didn’t know how

  to help myself:r />
  I didn’t want to mold,

  it didn’t want to read me—

  If now

  Ossietzky’s last

  drinking bowl

  could be found,

  I’d let the tin

  learn from it,

  and the host of pilgrims’

  staffs

  would ensilence, endure the hour.

  * * *

  WELL-

  like

  depthed into the enchanted,

  with double-hipped

  daydreams above,

  ashlar-

  rings

  around each breath:

  the chamber, where I left you, crouching,

  to keep you,

  the heart commands

  the frost quietly fascinating us

  at the separate

  fronts,

  you’ll be no flower

  in urnfields

  and me, the scriptbearer, no

  ore, no arch takes me from the round

  wood-mud-hut, no

  angel.

  * * *

  WITH DREAMPROPULSION in orbit,

  smolder-

  singed,

  two masks instead of one,

  planetdust in the caved

  eyes,

  nightblind, dayblind,

  worldblind,

  the poppy head in you

  lands somewhere,

  besilences

  an also-star,

  the swimming mourning-domain

  records a further shadow,

  they all help you,

  the heartstone pierces its fan,

  no kind of

  coolness,

  they all help you,

  you sail, smolder, and die down,

  eyeswarms pass the narrows,

  a blood clump swings into the orbit,

  earthswarms encourage you,

  the weather in outer space

  begins to harvest.

  * * *

  FOR THE LARKSHADOW

  laid fallow: the hidden

  un-

  hardened,

  brought in: the experienced

  stillness, a field, islandy,

  in the fire,

  after the

  saturated hope,

  after all

  branched off fate:

  the unrepentant, sung up

  moss-victims, where you

  search for me, blindly.

  * * *

  THE CUT-THROUGH dove-cordon,

  the blasted

  blossom-powers,

  the suspected

  found object, soul.

  * * *

  WAN-VOICED, ha-

  rassed from the deep:

  not a word, not a thing,

  and of both the single name,

  fall-true in you,

  flight-true in you,

  sore gain

  of a world.

  * * *

  SOUNDDEAD SISTERSHELL,

  let the dwarftones in,

  the interrogated:

  they mumble the greatheart together

  and carry it piggyback to

  every plight, every plight.

  * * *

  WEATHERSENSING HAND,

  the moorpool shows it the way,

  at night, through the fenwood.

  Luminescence.

  Who now works the bellows of the peatorgan, one-

  legged, will

  win a strongstream

  loss.

  * * *

  IN TIME’S CORNER the

  unveiled alder swears

  under its breath,

  on earth’s back, wide as a hand,

  crouches the shot-through

  lung,

  at the field’s boundary the

  winghour picks the snowcorn

  from its own stone-eye,

  lightbands set me afire,

  crown-damages flicker.

  * * *

  ME TOO, who am born like you, no hand holds,

  and none throws me a happiness into the hour, no different from you,

  dipped like I into bull’s blood,

  yet the numbers stand ready to light the tear,

  leaping into the world

  from our navel,

  yet what came near us, singly,

  enters the great syllable-script,

  and the almond-testicle

  thunders

  and blooms.

  * * *

  THE BACKWARDSPOKEN

  names, all,

  the outmost, whinnied

  into kinghood

  before hoarfrost-mirrors,

  beleaguered, besieged

  by multiple births,

  the merlon-cleft through it,

  which means you, isolato,

  also.

  * * *

  GRADUALLY CLOWNFACED

  nothingmirrored,

  the cosmetics, truth, frozen blue

  in the angle-mouth,

  frostpollen powder on the blank superskull,

  round about the thin questionlock Black,

  the brows, the brows: growing,

  two giant feelercombs, two

  —you, tall-streaked,

  large-felt roughnight Alwaysalways—,

  already swung away from the flake world,

  not to, not fro.

  * * *

  ROADBLOCKBUOY LANGUAGE, roadblockbuoy song.

  The steamroller thrumps

  the second

  Iliad

  into the torn-up

  pavement,

  sandseamed

  the old images

  surprise themselves, into the gutter,

  the warriors bleed to death oily

  in silver puddles, on the road-

  side, thudding,

  Troy, dust-crowned,

  gets it.

  * * *

  TO FLY UNDER

  the flood, past

  raised black

  sacrifice stones,

  unendingly earthed melancholy

  in the

  undercarriage shafts,

  drunken flightwriters on

  the yearning-slope,

  future found objects, silvery,

  in

  the cockpit’s skullery,

  sight tunnels, blown

  into the speechfog,

  self-sparkflowers

  on all cables,

  in the great, unextended

  rimring your

  hubbed shadow,

  Saturn.

  * * *

  VI

  DELUSIONSTALKER EYES: in you

  end up the rest of the gazes.

  A single

  flood

  swills up.

  Soon you brighten

  the rock to death, on which they

  have

  bet, against

  themselves.

  * * *

  UNWIELDY MORROW,

  I bite myself into you, I silence myself at you,

  we resound,

  alone,

  the pastose

  eternity-chimes drip away,

  squawked through

  by today’s

  yesterday,

  we drive,

  grandly

  does the last soundbell

  take us in:

  the accelerated heartstep

  outside

  in space,

  near her, the earth-

  axis.

  * * *

  NOTEPAPER-PAIN,

  besnowed, oversnowed:

  in the calendargap

  he’s cradled, he’s cradled

  by the newborn

  nothing.

  * * *

  STREW OCHER into my eyes:

  you no longer

  live there,

  save

  on the tomb-

  furnishings, save,

  pace off the stonerows,

  on your hands,<
br />
  with their dream

  paint over the

  stamped-out

  temporal bone’s squama,

  at the

  great

  bifurcation re-

  count yourself to the ocher

  three times, nine times.

  * * *

  SWANDANGER,

  grebe-

  threat,

  the icelashed with

  kraken-

  arms,

  you, clawed

  Yakut-

  Pushkin:

  Hei, Chebeldei, Chebeldei.

  * * *

  LEAPCENTURIES, leap-

  seconds, leap-

  births, novembering, leap-