Hypostasis & New Year

For why am I afraid to sing

the fundamental shape of awe

should I now begin to sing the silvered back of

the winter willow spear

the sparkling agate blue

would this blade and this sky free me to speak

intransitive lack –

the vowels themselves free

Of what am I afraid

of what lies in back of me of day

these stars scattered as far as the I

what world and wherefore

will it shake free

why now in the mind of an afternoon is a daisy

for a while

flagrant and alive

Then what of night

of hours’ unpredicated bad luck and the rot

it clings to

fathomless on the far side in winter dark

Hey shadow world when a thing comes back

comes back unseen but felt and no longer itself

what then

what silver world mirrors tarnished lenses

what fortune what fate

and the forms not themselves but only itself the sky

by water and wind shaken

I am born in silvered dark

Of what am I to see these things between myself

and nothing

between the curtain and the stain

between the hypostatic scenes of breathing

and becoming the thing I see

are they not the same

Things don’t look good on the street today

beside a tower in a rusting lot

one is a condition the other mystery

even this afternoon light so kind and nourishing

a towering absence vibrating air

Shake and I see pots from old shake

and I see cities anew

I see robes shake I see desert

I see the farthing in us all the ghost of day

the day inside night as tones decay

and border air

it is the old songs and the present wind I sing

and say I love the unknown sound in a word

Mother where from did you leave me on the sleeve

of a dying word

of impish laughter in the midst my joy

I compel and confess open form

my cracked hinged picture doubled

I can’t remember now if I made a pact with the devil

when I was young

when I was high

on a sidewalk I hear “buy a sweatshirt?” and think

buy a shirt from the sweat of children

hell

I’m just taking a walk in the sun in a poem

and this sound

caught in the most recent coup

Source: Threshold Songs (Wesleyan University Press, 2011)