And the sophistry of clocks.
And the provinces of abstract towns.
Dizzy geometries, vertigoes.
Not to fortell but to tell.
To say it: a paring away.
Nombre Antiguo del Fuego
in the tunnels of onyx
the circles of sal t,
chimerical child of
calculus and of thirst:
From every stone appears a brief black tongue
Naming the scales
0
f the nigh
t.
COMPLINE
Gudique is the chastening.
She is not a fish.
She is not the rocks where she browses
nor the pools.
The river when it opens
is not Gudique.
When its forgetfulness
falls from it,
when a cold wind leaks
upward through the dri fts and folds and
John Matthias
