8..0
PARTISAN REVIEW
The stopwatch clicks, the sand stops trickling, what was remote and
raw is blended
And mended what was tom.
And how between inrush and backwash such a betrothal should
happen
Of tethered antennae and drifting vanishing filament
We do not know nor who keeps the ring and in passing
Absolves us from time and tide
And from our passing selves, who salves from the froth of otherness
These felt and delectable Others; we do not know for we lose ourselves
In finding a world outside.
Loss and discovery, froth and fulfilment, this is our medium,
A second best, an approximate, frameless, a sortie, a tentative
Counter attack on the void, a launching forth from the window
Of a raven or maybe a dove
And we do not know what they will find but gambling on their fidelity
And on other islanded lives we keep open the window and fallibly
Await the return of love.
III
How, yes how? In this mirrored maze–
Paradox and antinomy-
To card the bloom off falling days,
To reach the core that answers?
And how on the edge of senselessness
To team and build, to mate and breed,
Forcing the mud to dance a ballet,
Consigning an old and doubtful cargo
To a new and wayward seed?
But, hows apart, this we affirm
(Pentecost or sacrament?)
That though no frame will hold, no term
Describe our Pyrrhic salvoes,
Yet that which art gleaning, congealing,
