lxxxii.

even if
the blue morning

fades, the drooping leaves
hold little,

the night promises the return
of the silence

of dawn, I saw trees break today
into pieces, I am glad,

but light pooling between the curbs
holds, the words

spoken at night, pool
whenever dawn is blue there,

lxxxi.

the Old Gods are dying,
--aren't they always?

those stories kindle, the wind
falls between the walls--

--and who knows what lies beyond
them, shadowed and rustling,

in the burning night, by the fire
it's flailing phantoms,

the note--is this:

whisper and it kindles,

---

sure as shadow--the falling dark
your reference

will live as many lifetimes, as
are necessary,

---

surely: the indelible imprint
remains--

beyond feeling, the touchstone
the remnant of

who knows what?--it remains
through fear, past it

the rest fails, who knows why?--
this empty thing

rebuilds it.

lxxx.

what is sacred--is held
covered,

inflection unveils

(affection cannot)

attention, the details:
bear inestimable

heroism, shattered
reflect

light unrelentingly,
unbroken, carry

such reflection forward.

lxxix.

the section, runs
fingers--the text,

in texts, transliteration
half-garbled the world runs

on broken translation,
into
haphazard meaning--

the figures, hung together,
run into definition

contra hope, run
counter ambition, against
meaning

haze before the window,

this poor constellation of letters
and lines, this shuddering

collection of half-remembered
insights,

aggregated but not understood--
run against time, these poor fools

these days will be mis-remembered

lxxviii. (the texas rise)

the extension of shrub to scrub
to stream, and the willow drooping over them,

burning, the air thick, and unyielding
the light, unforgiving--swallows shadow

the leaves sway, and stream-bed sucks
effluent and overflow, the shadows fall

benediction, only in the cleft, between
properties--the long avenue, the burning

lawns--the endless street from plain to
plain, to fence, to copse, to plain

to school, to step--to walls and windows,
the heat claims everything, even its absence

the horizon wavers, offers more plain and more, but
absorbed, digested--the heat suffuses, all things

makes all things, itself

all futures, teaches this: the outstretched hand, the
steady step, when the world is burning

is the measure of anything that matters, it could
all blur, it could all fade, swirl--compress

down, this one point, moving--measures
the rest, never so grand, never so broad, never so wide
the world might swirl, fall into one place and consume
lawns and gates and plains together,

in movement, desire broken
free of its delineation, the sun will fade
before memory, the heat rise and break
on the quiet axe of unmet need

remade, exiled--sundered on the cleft
of a different place, and its attendant worlds
and wants

lxxvii.

the heat hazes, the dust on the windshield,
the figures blur, sometimes--

the figuration of lights, at no interval
heuristic unto the moment,

the cars flock, they flow, they brake,
at the line--the light burns

sense, from the pattern--these things
hold sense:

the flat of the sole on the ground
the shadow, aslant, step and stride
the fingers, clutch and fall,
the eyes to blur and clear

these things do not hold sense:
the glow upon the grass, the
stars rise, the lights hang, and fall
across the glass--these things do not
hold sense:

the cricket's beat, the sun's blaze cut
the whispering in the weeds, the morning's
pale blue light, the night's indigo glory

these things do not hold sense:
the murmured conversation, the broken
syllables, the reeds which catch them, ditches
damp, in the evening, the moment in the lee of
the light, under the eaves, the clouds of smoke--
the words fall, they fail, these things hold sense:

the burn in your calves, the fingers aching,
clenching--these things hold sense: the lingering
sense of direction, the fading guidepost of
memory, the aching shape of what is
missing--these things hold no sense:

sleep: the quite, unbroken silence, of the dark--the
strange anticipation (crickets blare) of early dawn,
the wheel-wells rumble, up a familiar cliff, the mountain
dry and gleaming, the raven's call, the gloaming
rising tide of hope, the benches worn, sea-beaten grain,
the easy availability of vision, over the walls, toward the
sea, the comfortable space, reserved and waiting, so easy
to slip into--these things hold no sense,

the sense of waiting, of being waited on, but these things
hold sense: the glimmer, and the haze that rose from these
things, and the sense of waiting, the desperate, burning
searching--we will burn ourselves to remember the night