FEBRUARY
I couldn’t get the copier to work
so I stared at it like a monolith
stares at an ape wishing
it would use the tools
provided for its evolution
outside the birds divide the spoils
regarded by some squirrels nobly
paired in colloquy
on a promontory the lions
outside the abandoned library
guard archaic enthusiasm
you can only touch
under a green lamp
with authenticated eyes
poems are so strange
it seems no one needs them
but really we die
in our own hearts
someone is always just about to have written
their eyes dispensing
tears of hilarity
the final beam of sunlight
has wandered onto my forehead
ELEGY FOR TUESDAY
The phone rings
and someone tells you
another great poet died.
Now you have to tell
sleep it has lost
its most curious denizen.
Most of the world
doesn’t know it’s a death mask
in a glass case.
One cloud says
I was the one
who taught her
you can start
anywhere and end up
explaining everything.
Another replies
you were just her apprentice
of resembling.
Yes it’s true
you can read her book
and still find the door to the past
and yes the war
survived her
but not her poems
secretly continuing
the work of wondering
all the wrong things.
PALANQUIN
When I was a child I used to read
such long books summer went on forever
my room was filled with trees
a blue river flowed above me at night
I was surrounded by a yellow house
I did not yet know the difference between silences
in the longest one a king could never be killed
because he always rode by himself
In his palanquin, his solitude was his armor
I pronounced it in my mind
on the final page the war for the emerald
had ended and another loomed
I can’t remember if he married the ghost
he had seen in the park when he was a boy
or the daughter of the relentless
assassin patiently waiting in the sequel
when I say it now it resounds in my skull
I’m still not sure how it should sound
it’s like one of those names you see
carved into a stone in those old graveyards
you can find in every city if you have enough time
