in the space before unbeginning scroll
before the set of disagreements language of the shootout
which is language's unscrolling
nothing specifically human about the heartbeat
a crumbling wall
there they are, agents of the figure, or a summer
airing and having just arrived, afternoon
they put away their light duffels in the rooms
they talk about the labor of dinner, divide
into pleasant domains the onion-chopping
corner-swept, bedmaker
following an idea long-clapped and retrived
long walk around the pond, a bleak
dead-eye of when memory will falter
dusk between leaves
a breaking into the eye
the way back's one-eyed
and unstoppable, I have known annihilating
desire and ripped gently apart like a thing
with gears with last, felt duty and blazed
and I have stayed, stayed, stayed quietly
with bliss of supper and play on the carpet
before bed. And I have tried to make sense
and make meaning and make money and
masks, and I have deer on my side instead
of hunting, and the rolling of dice instead
of their enumeration
a painted bell, a portrait
that rings. And watched the scroll in museum
light, static and coursing.
Watched day develop
all in one person, the many-personed self,
heat in the shade, the long sentence
waiting for the doors of granary to open,
dragonflies by the pond
the garden and the wild
rough drawings behind it, and I am working
my way towards dying in my own surround-
sound increments
Farmers at the waterwheel:
the massiveness of the farm in their shoulders,
angle of the bucket
the weight of the cooperage,
that's where the beginning, spilled droplets
in moth-littered dust. Even before we met,
we never got over each other. Over you,
and the composite blue. Winter does when
we are together things
All at once the congregation
gives up, sells the bell, sells the sleds. The shale,
and the shadows of the shale. Leaves you
walking from the chapel to the train
livid with sleeping bags and wet couches
we never get over each other, in person.
Past the forms and the farms
past quarry and query.
The moon's flesh and the river's an ink stain.
Under the bridge they step out again,
argue with the pallbearers and the brides' pallor.
The birdseed and bindweed. They stop for milk
around midnight, and get me some hot dogs too
while you're in there
I'm not going in.
Where am I suddenly. O the land of the dead pardon
me, I didn't realize it, and the letter said they
aren't going to be delivered
are they. I had thought
the audience for these moments was an ear
like my mother's ear
but now I see the slip.
Have these gallons been a trap? Galleons,
sailing from the right edge of the drawn world.
