Když ještě nosily se duše

Byl rok 1961 – rok rození,

a lidé, dosud ještě v oblecích,

nastavovaly stojany a plátna

světlu, řece a starým domům,

jež byly stále ještě povědomé

jak žena páchající lásku

a hladce po vědomí vonící

pod bludištěm rozlévaných vlasů

až přes práh nahodilé básně,

a na dlažebních kostkách

chodců krok v tom okamžiku vázl

a zůstával stát jak pramice u břehu

a v lidech dosud ještě bylo cosi,

cosi jako duše vytržená z času.

 A stojany a čerstvě načatá plátna

byly jak síťky na chytání motýlů

snících o barvách i o člověku

a mírně tušící, že právě tam,

kde světlo míhá se a třepí

v tázání a třepotavém třpytu,

jímž trýzní ony oči, víčka, řasy,

ještě lze ochutnat ranní chlad

a řeku i svěžest ve vzduchu

a tišivě do slunka již šatící se krásy.

Neboť právě tam, dosud a tehdy –

ženy stále ještě podobají se květům

ve stínu a třpytu, jímž se o nás otírají

jejich křídla, oči, víčka, rty a řasy,

a barokní sochy na Karlově mostu

stále ještě trnou před kacířstvím lásky,

která stále ještě rozsévá, hromadí i kupí

tyhle závěje rán, světla a stínů

co drahocenné klenoty po tělech

veskrze intimníćh a něžných

a své malby, modlitby a kresby,

svou mluvnici a hovor

dosud ještě podepřený

tím vnímáním – od údivu

k údivu rozepjatým

místo konečných stanic

jak křídla napřímená k letu

či jak oči znovu chytající se krásy,

a ten tah a tišina uprostřed času

znovu? ještě jsou – podepřeny duší.

Clarity in the Waters
Caught In a Few Reed Strokes

Less is more
as long as clarity
longs to be,

as long as clarity
is restored.
In few strokes


by the stalks of reed
above the waters
calm and still

as they tug and draw
emptiness or the coat
of waters off the face of soul.

“Catholic women do it better,”

Just ask any Baltimore taxi driver

About Loyola University girls …

                        “Every greater or better love

                        Tries to knock us off.

Back into la prima nocta.

                        Like la prima nocta.”

By the Seine

    below the Pont Marie

    Notre Dame totters

 on her two teetering toes

            or something like this

for in those moments it’s easy

    to skip or swap a letter or

rank and become dyslexic,

    pagan or barbaric

or even—passion tongue-tied,

the Pont Marie is strung

    & drunk all the way through,

and if Notre Dame is a lady,

    she is so darkly and flipped

like a heron amidst the stream

    which she searches and beaks

for the one fish on two long legs

and magic of gold and her triple wish.

    That love is tantrum and dream,

timber in kindling, temper and humor

    and pique and emptiness trim

and mantra and mudra—behind which,

    instead of Kali, gorgeous Medusa blinks.

It‘s good that right in the beginning

   every cathedral offers a bird cooling bath

and only then a pulpit for, as we know,

   for man and woman ever to sin,

   the word had to be first,

and the first ever conversation,

    back-and-forth talk, was between

    curious Eve and the bellicose

belly and bell & crawler and creep

    whose name makes the sound

and air shudder, quiver and sing.

    Or is it because there is always

a cat, a holistic cat, buried or meant

in the word catholic from which sideways

    we spin and slip and nap and fall asleep

    till all in everything rings, rinses and fits?

And if there is such a cat free

    to finish and turn, then

there must be an Egyptian beau

down inside any such belle or fan

    should you just bother to scratch,

the very one whose lines once made

   stone by the Nile come alive

in those statues divinely smooth

    and yet ready and calm

    as she arches and aches

like Notre Dame’s dam

  

or the Pont Marie?

    Like Heavenly Nut

showing us the shower of stars

and beauty’s finish, surface and end

    —beauty’s genesis text

    and prima nocta and grazing grace

as love drums her dreams

    into the ears by which we stalk

the earth, the air and waves

    and even heavens—

    spiced, despoiled and dented

by women and heartthrobs of Hell.

    And still I would maintain,

as Notre Dame tumbles,

    trembles and streams,

and so does the Seine,

    though never minding a bit

who is the angel and which is the imp,

    each of them raises her golden knees.

The Fall Is a Supreme Act

By Which Beauty Absolves Itself

Of Drama and Excess

The days may not be so bright,

yet the quiet keeps

dimly their shimmer inside

two of our enclosing palms.

Fallen leaves are growing dark,

but trees are lush in red

and orange in crowns,

sights and layers

that beauty makes

them wear and fray

and then drop

and discard

as they go nude

into winter—deeper

into eyes and silence

and calling shimmer.

As we are all—one by one.

October 2, 2016

Tell Me Which Regimes Make Poets Exhiled and I Will Tell You How Dead They Are

He went to see a sunset

And saved his country’s soul

By blessing a positively dead sunflower

What was the day

when Allen Ginsberg

went to the sunset

Frisco rusty hill

with Jack Kerouac

and saw the Sunflower,

the unholy battered,

dead old thing

with withered

roots below

on thoughts

of death?

It was the day

he rebuked the flower

and then he blessed

its beatitude perfect!

On that day

in a Sunflower poem

Beatnik Ginsberg saved

what was doomed and dying

alas unlike the priests,

the planners and the anti-poets,

seduced by the beauty and the speed

of American cars, cigarettes

and panties

and cracks and wings

and shopping

and high heels

with no reason to waste on sunflower odes

& no soul to see, to mind or mend or heal

or love or one to whom to sing—submit.

Thoughts of death of their own instead

against life they went to weave, plant

and plan, set on inverting their people’s

own sunflowers and deadly nothings

in reverse—and that’s what they did,

those seedless anti-poets,

grim reapers, faithless priests,

proud apparatchiks of the East,

in their way of dreaming—

of Allen’s golden hills.

After Verlain

“Your steps born of mine

were my religious tread.”

May we tell for whom

and how—under what weight,

a yielding soul would

so shiver and turn

ever so lightly into a verse,

into that row that goes

and stops and in which then

a soul reverses even all

and, to the beginning,

rushes and returns.

Outside of my window

the autumn is alike,

both a row and a verse

and fresh and falling

into the lights—rustle

of the air for the Fall

has come to gather

its soothing rains

and to disperse what was

holding, tarrying on—

that much, that little

that trees used to

wear on—that weaving

of easy breeze and breath,

which just like our—time,

tasted love and echoed steps

were given with grace themselves

to verse and shiver with each turn

in that very way in which we

used to live and love and  blend.