The Foremost of Hermopolis’ Muses Has Been Found Again

It was the face
that, drawing near—
as near as nearness
can draw and yield—

split and undid
Lethe’s heavy stream
and wiped away
its layered deaths,

like the foremost Muse
who invents again
grammatikē and mousikē,
giving the soul her gentle lift.

And those eyes, that face,
restore to presence speech
in its older, deeper sense,

so that two may join
as names long parted,

at the point where they touch
when voice enters
the beauty of verse—

both so close,
so coiled,

they keep

each other’s beat.

Snow’s Counter-Voice, Courting the Plum in Bloom

 

Dust is post-sacrifice.
Snow is pre-appearance.

 

Why is the plum aware
of its own essence?
Because it cares—
and does not depart.

 

And how would I not know?

 

Am I not snow—la neige—
nostos in branching stars,
released and inscribed—

 

nostos that knows
the plum before it blooms,
and knows itself as snow
still folded

 

inside buried buds
before they arrive—
just as return knows itself
before it comes?

 

And when they bloom,
I do not remain. I depart.
No one can be all
and live.

 

To stay
is to burden becoming.

 

But in winter’s
monochrome mold,
I relay the light,

 

and make it manifest—
white
even in the dark,

 

preparing
rebirth—return—
nostos of the eyes

 

not yet painted
with their many sights.

 

For I am the whiteness
where songs begin,

 

and with this tincture
I balance what has been,
silence the errant notes,
and reset the bar

 

so it sounds again
clear and clean—

 

like snow
when it is new.

 

I return purity.
I return silence.

 

And then I go back

 

to the presence
that was here
before arriving.

Full Moon on a Myrtle Bough

I remember now—
under the bright moon
the depth of night
became in you
its unrolled canvas.

How easy—and how perilous—
like pearls drawn from the sea,
polished, lustrous,
not yet touched,

to stand by the window
and enter fragrance
and myrtle shadows
falling from without.

You studied the curtain,
as if unsure
whether those feathers
were yours or mine—

or already one,
already risen
for a flight
beyond their time.

Love Letter to the Cathedral from a Bohemian

O Notre Dame! There over the Seine
you stand, your Lutetian stone
and its silent gravitas
measuring allotted time—

slipping through the grasp
of the voiding hourglass.
But you are a lady—
one of the many once

that men of faith rushed
to expunge from the ranks of gods,
whether from below
or even from the sky.

Thus here, in your loneliness
of naked beige and cream,
forged from the stranded sands
of long-bygone seas,

you still beautify yourself, coyly,
with violets’ shadow
and celestial blues
of your translucent eyes,

and hold your inflexible watch
as you weigh—day after day—
how much or how little, if at all,
the throngs stepping

inside through your carved gate,
heads bending back
to meet the lordly reach
of your ascending arcs,

can press your body downward
or lift you from the ground,

while you, yourself, a Charon’s
long and well-masked barque,

let them all come aboard—
and having taken them in,
you sail, and your silence
is the palladium none can clasp.

“Finally, I Wanted to Write a Letter But…”

 

With a swell in space without—
or is it with a magic wand?—
I suddenly wave all outer sound,
and one ever lingers nearby,

comes closer still, as close as can be,
and my pose—offers him a bed
in which love obtains its weight
and body and breath blend as one

everywhere—all about—gap by gap,
track by track—thus I see and learn
what gem is but the briefest touch

and something of the mirror’s envy too
for its face knows nothing of the depth
where, across the world, souls of lovers fuse.

Even Those Statues Would Like to Be Warm / Vždyť i ty sochy chtěly by se hřát

Vždyť i ty sochy chtěly by se hřát

Řezavý a bílý sníh
Valeč pokryl zas
a z Doupovských hor,
vyhražených vojákům

a válkám, vane teskný,
jako by cokoliv, co hlasem
chtělo by být na rtech,
ohlušivý, samotářský klid.

A staré sochy z baroka,
nahé v opožděné kráse,
ustrnuly v parku,

než je křísne někdo
vstřícným dotekem a pozvedne
k nim s teplem živý dech.

Even Those Statues Would Like to Be Warm

The cutting, white snow
has covered Valeč again,
and from the Doupov Hills—
set aside for soldiers

and for wars—there blows
a mournful,
as if anything that wished
to become a voice upon the lips

were swallowed by a deafening,
solitary calm.

And the old Baroque statues,
naked in their belated beauty,
have stiffened in the park,

until someone rekindles them
with a sensing touch
and lifts them with a living breath.

 

Those Good Old Greeks

Va et recherche, mon cher Chénier !

Good old Greeks! They knew
how to intone through ὄψ—
the eye, the face—becoming,
in raptus, elevating bliss—

a speech of sovereign poesy,
and somehow, by a yielding power,
to pass beyond even the hardest
brink of knowledge—

where soft and melting fingerprints
could draw to love a dizzy labyrinth!
O what else is as deadly to a stony cold

as eyes and faces taking light
and shade into their breathing braid,
fanned—descending—into a kiss?