from a section of Grassblade Light, called "Letters to Elena":

         23
     
                                  i.m. Armand Schwerner

  
         Padre Soler is on the radio...
 heart be ashamed of heart, blent
 with life's foundations.  The listing, bent-
 over, heeling, keening keel's – gone solo.

  
         Pianissimo now, catamaran.  Akhmatova
 besieged in Petersburg – heart is irate,
 Assyrian, on fire – a Q?  Decipher it.
 Leave it for burnt notebooks – clamor

  
         of the throng.  The slow leavings erase
 themselves – float off with what you see
 each day, as a tree in a square of squares
 is branching.  Fire-tong or supergrass –

  
         farmed-out – superfluous and quadrilateral.
 These half-notes, half-seen...
 autumn's fall, cuneiform incision:
 each heavy blade a W, left in the wall.

  
         Axehead for all.  But you...you will remember
 the way it crystallized at last, fleet
 flower:  only a promise, the way sweet
 slow wings emerge beneath your tenderness

  
         the blackened score a dove cupped there
 between prow and stern, amidships,
 in the ribs.  Undecipherable, your lips
 lifting my fingers.  Hush – beware.

  
         Dust rises like your fingers to my lips,
 like dew before the sun.  Like the tracks
 of man or wolf, in the blue snow,
 by the deer licks.  No one sees us go.


       
                                               2.4.99

Ron Silliman has a nice post about Armand Schwerner today.