POEMS
By night private, I balanced warring moods,
white anarchs shifting in the moonlit room,
and made of fragments- his lurking underword,
straight eyes, high cheeks, and equable fresh
glee~
a sheave of presences to garner home,
harvest and fecund ancestor of cold dawn.
Also, I gathered unknown waste of him
looming within, the smother lifting the wide sea.
Anarch or ancestor, mood called mood.
I have been selfed just so before, and drained.
By
ill
and various violence have died
at eight an aunt, an uncle nine years later;
a father and grandfather in great age;
and five friends else
in
swart, unequal time.
Theirs has been the chaos I abide,
of them my self the faltering piety:
my ear for echo, my hope for grace and gesture.
I am in tide with them, their verge in me.
My friend died on no road. My friend was killed
in the rude place that stirs and
is
the same,
the bottom place that is beyond, the place
of balance and loss, gulf in even eyes.
He died protesting fellowship and self,
the common hope, uttering himself alone.
In either ash is beauty, in all beauty ash.
Accepting all, all but the self yields up.
II.
The Oil of Joy for Mourning
Him whom the old joy fell over,
night rain each night a new lover,
I sing, I see, I wake;
in last me, the unsleeping, the dark rover–
in new him a raw joy for no sake.
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