2.17.2005

a passage from mostly failed poem, India Point (not impersonal enough):

  29


An autumn harbor had become like home,
a womb for Orpheus the hobo. Vessel
for vessels too – Providence (the bumble-
bee), Kriti River, Rosevean – all handsome


figureheads for voyageuring – back to her:
source or star of his desire for justice,
Marian image or magnetic matrix,
measure of all happiness, harmonious


Polaris out of Mendelssohn. The locus
was a consolation prize – yet place itself
was not the consolation. Percival,
bereft, looks up transfixèd into clouds,


into a sheepish flock (of cloudy speech)
shaping a vanishing point (just out of reach)


*


and on stone-heavy shoulders of a church
leaving a light snowfall (whispering, watch).


Under the Bruegel-skies of late November
a hobo stumbles on, hunched-over, broken-
down, his fortunate misfortune taking on
a common nature – weathered, as it were.


He goes into the snow, anonymous.
Loses himself in night's immensity.
Above, the pole star, shining steadily.
Then (on the Feast of St. Lucy) it flowers.


Just as the almond tree in midwinter
ignites each calcine-rigid human heart
framed on the hexagon - so the fire star
crowns (blazing toward Jubilee). Enter.


11.24.02

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