and what they'd find there something like a rhyme.
Without the moon (Lob grateful for the dark) time
stopped or perhaps extended. In an hour
or so, the moon again visible, a bower
where none could be expected appeared, gold and green
more evident than tints under the moon had been.
Noiseless, but both could sense the company of animals around
them, like mistletoe in trees or mushrooms on the ground
and in their midst a face that might have been the leaves
in accidental patterns -- so such misty light deceives
the hunter who sees antlers where there are only branches
but there a massive torso seemed to rest on furry haunches
and Trafe crept forward belly-first, his haunches in the air
then, tucking nose between his paws, lay flat before the Figure.
Lob moving now more slowly half-stumbled, then he knelt,
inclining head and shoulders till, hands on the ground he felt
the cold leaves, as he had to smell the flower. The god,
knowing it for the exact same posture, approved it with a nod.

If poetry is lovely words about lovely things then Keats
had the right idea in his long-voweled monosyllables
ending lines (some running right into the gutter in my rebound one),
hard now to see what he might have thought he might be at,
"gold vase emboss'd With long-forgotten story, and wherein
No reveller had ever dipped a chin But those of Saturn's vintage;" not that individual
lines are anything compared to the athleticism of going on, in this Florence Press 1915
version, edited by Colvin. He did it in time, as Stein says US troops repaired things.
A tenth and a sonnet is where I'm at, a tenth·and a sonnet. A yard
of cloth is different from a yard of ground. Ann saw trilliums on a walk, between freezes.
Heidegger walked and walked on mountains till "path" was not a metaphor
for him but layered impressions. Hegel is without muscularity. Jim
Haining rests on an overstuffed reddish-brown couch watching basketball,
having eaten my curry. His hair is tied back, fair beard and moustache
still like Robert E. Lee's. His shoes are white leather with black laces,
the red wool shirt (Pendleton?) open over a white t-shirt, fingers of
one hand closed while his thumb moves from his upper teeth to beard. The
film is Vera Cruz, "In the meantime the few will have to do the work of
many." Yesterday on the couch he decided pretty much to let University
Microfilms archive the Salt Lick Press books he's wanted to reprint,
quite a step for him. Rebecca's home, it's eight, asks for an omelet.
Two eggs, a dash of water, beaten, bit of dried parsley, turmeric.
"Can I have sour cream on it?" she asks. I turn out the omelet, put sour cream in the
overhot pan with paprika and parsley, pour it over the omelet and serve.
I've finished Endymion, the longest hymn to adolescent love and wish-fulfillment
ever written -- he'd, at that time, say "penned" -- and ifrare substances and colors (amethyst)
are all there is I'd not reread his curiosity shop of images, what are called images, because
he filtered out everything he saw in the streets; Guy's Hospital morgue gets in with the "white
feet" of lovers laid out in rows in an undersea cave, everybody rescued with speeches
from bad historical plays of the period, and all so censored that you get a dallying
with dalliance that infuriated critics. Glaucus tears a magic book to confetti which,
scattered on bodies restores them, mardi gras of sighs like RedSox fans at season's end.

Copyright Gerald Burns 1995-1997