"As to the poetical character itself, it has no self:
it is everything and nothing."
-- John Keats, letter to Richard Woodhouse, 1818
When I enter the rhythmic dying of lilacs,
steal into a tulip and stare
at the grief-stricken stamen, little naiad
weeping where pollen-fingered Bacchas
shatters another sanctuary, I surmise
the bones of the earth are the bones of heaven.
When I enter the observation of a cloud,
the raindrop on a twig tip, or this
sexless bulb of daffodil in half-thawed loam,
the veinless entropy of seeing beats
to rhythms more vast than spring.
Nipples green, in need of color, nudge
up where leaves unclench themselves from dreamsand spew their buds like broken teeth.
The inward star explodes, golden to the world.
And deeper than the mind has swum,
eels who feel the full moon's pull
migrate out of mud bottom. I believe
the bones of earth are the bones of heaven.
I do not look but gaze, and gazing, enter.
And seeing, I do not remember my name.
Here am I, if even this, brief tissue of attention,
woof of gazes, gauze thrown over things.
I have no name, entering the distance of a pine
shattered and bare against whiteness,
where the bald eagle either sits or does not sit,
depending on the eye which fills or does not fill
the distance with compassion.
I enter the translucent wing,
kaleidoscopic dragonfly, poised
on a weed over mirrors of water;
I enter the architecture of doubt
constructed by the motion of fixed stars;
I enter the Cross of the poet, Jesus,
a center observing itself from four
perspectives, and I know
the bones of earth are the bones of heaven.
I enter the sacrifice, the pouring out of cups,
where the seer falls from the eye, its socket
spilling smokeless flames of pure attention,
scattering ashes of shadow on fallow land
where curves of glimmer green themselves
and irises revel in colors of death,
transparencies in muted sun, flames
of their root: there I perish with Apollo,
where the bones of heaven are the bones of earth.
When I enter the murk of a turtle egg,
my seeing stealthy in the fibrilation of little things;
when I implode into my own retina, dip
the spoon of my pupil in clover and taste stars;
when I glut the soil with the blood of closeness
and come up tall in the ladybug's eyes, I enter
the Cross again and again, I enter the Cross
of the dead poet, Jesus, my only purpose
to see! To observe well! Which is to die
and make this world alive in the eye of the void.
Distant thunder over the meadow: yellow leaves
dance upward into themselves, these monarch
butterflies. One must observe more closely, here
where the bones of heaven are the bones of the earth.
"As to the poetical character itself, it has no self:
it is everything and nothing."
When I enter the rhythmic dying of lilacs,
steal into a tulip and stare
at the grief-stricken stamen, little naiad
weeping where pollen-fingered Bacchas
shatters another sanctuary, I surmise
the bones of the earth are the bones of heaven.
When I enter the observation of a cloud,
the raindrop on a twig tip, or this
sexless bulb of daffodil in half-thawed loam,
the veinless entropy of seeing beats
Nipples green, in need of color, nudge
up where leaves unclench themselves from dreams
and spew their buds like broken teeth.
The inward star explodes, golden to the world.
And deeper than the mind has swum,
eels who feel the full moon's pull
migrate out of mud bottom. I believe
the bones of earth are the bones of heaven.
I do not look but gaze, and gazing, enter.
And seeing, I do not remember my name.
Here am I, if even this, brief tissue of attention,
woof of gazes, gauze thrown over things.
I have no name, entering the distance of a pine
shattered and bare against whiteness,
where the bald eagle either sits or does not sit,
depending on the eye which fills or does not fill
the distance with compassion.
I enter the translucent wing,
kaleidoscopic dragonfly, poised
on a weed over mirrors of water;
I enter the architecture of doubt
constructed by the motion of fixed stars;
I enter the Cross of the poet, Jesus,
a center observing itself from four
perspectives, and I know
the bones of earth are the bones of heaven.
I enter the sacrifice, the pouring out of cups,
where the seer falls from the eye, its socket
spilling smokeless flames of pure attention,
scattering ashes of shadow on fallow land
where curves of glimmer green themselves
and irises revel in colors of death,
transparencies in muted sun, flames
of their root: there I perish with Apollo,
where the bones of heaven are the bones of earth.
When I enter the murk of a turtle egg,
my seeing stealthy in the fibrilation of little things;
when I implode into my own retina, dip
the spoon of my pupil in clover and taste stars;
when I glut the soil with the blood of closeness
and come up tall in the ladybug's eyes, I enter
the Cross again and again, I enter the Cross
of the dead poet, Jesus, my only purpose
to see! To observe well! Which is to die
and make this world alive in the eye of the void.
Distant thunder over the meadow: yellow leaves
dance upward into themselves, these monarch
butterflies. One must observe more closely, here
where the bones of heaven are the bones of the earth.
