something seasonal from The Grassblade Light:

25


 
 ...and there’ll be roomy enough for all the whirling
sand cricket dervishers and all the damsters and
dames in Amsterdam whipping up the food flood and
swizzling their ham-and-eggster-cage-roulade thing...

 
– in the snowy distance out the window
William heard the carousel’s merry tinkling bell
at the carnival... quiet, meditating on Study Hill
with skull and candle, his heart’s coracle now

 
only flickering.  The end draws near.
Early, he thumbprints his identity in ashes
on his brow.  28 fifths (diminished) plus
one funereal dirigible – Henry, propped up there

 
in his fragile flying egg.  Bluejay – snowtrack
of a ghost dance only.  The light shivers
behind the eye sockets, fixed.  Hers.
Mother and child.  Bruegel’s sack

 
of peasant colors – a city barge, at Paris level:
Blackstone goes from white to red to blue
and back to black – color of the night above you.
New Year’s night.  Take it on faith:  this carnival

 
beneath a farmer’s shed is where we are,
my prodigal.  The mined heart of a minor hearth,
a scull turned coracle.  A rude and ruddy berth.
And now that cushioned Czar called Balthasar

 
bows down, and on a plush pillow presents his gift:
one hoary green-gold Mexicano monkey nef.
See how the rainbow folds around that cleft
soul’s sword-point now.  Behold her darkness lift.


           
                      12.31.98