*
This dim aubade. A chorus of chummy frogs would be better.
Or wild bells. Or a kind of skitter faster than a rag.
Dry notes for the tongue's brandy, the warm skull's glittering
eyes.
Dry memory's a thin score. Time dulls the timbre.
Our labor: to pluck, scrape, pound, fluid struggle of a voice–
the beautiful imperfect work that will not bring you back.
Laurence Breiner
IN THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY
for Jacob Bronowski
From the deep soil of Poland, pungent as cabbages,
he travelled a human life to La Jolla,
traumatized ground shearing against itself,
ready to flood back into the sea
where the moon left a gap when it went to heaven .
Now, in this startled Mrican landscape,
his California spectacles berserk
with light, he cradles in his hands
the skull of an unimaginable girl
here so many million years.
No tremors. He takes it in
as his figure soaks up the light
older than man or girl
bawling from unchristened rock:
He wants us to see.
