WEBVTT

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I wrote three odes
in a sequence,

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I've never tried
reading them in sequence

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before, I'd like to hear how
they go together since they

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were intended to go together.

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So if you can put up with
three fairly good sized poems

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in a row, I'll listen.

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The first is called
"Cool Dark Ode."

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You could have
sneaked up, broken

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into those under heated rooms
by the windows overlooking

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the tavern, or the back way
up the broad but and lighted

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stairs, at a moment
when no one was present.

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When the long planed table
that served as a desk

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was recalling the
quiet of the woods.

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When the book's, older,
were thinking farther back

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to the same essential stillness.

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And both table and books, if
they thought of the future

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ever, probably shuddered, as
though from a stray draft,

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seeing themselves as eventual
flame, some final smoke.

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Now, when there is no
longer any occasion,

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I think of inviting
you in to wait

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for us on these
short, cramped sofa,

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beside the single candle stub,
which must have frightened you

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off then.

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Or in the cubicle of the
bedroom, where even then we

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imagined ourselves extinguished
by your total embrace.

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Attentive meanwhile
to the animal noises

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of your breathing, the
whimpers, the sudden intoxicated

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outcries, that were not our own.

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Night, oh, blackness
of winter, I

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tell you this, you
that used to come up

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as far as the frosted
panes, the door, as far

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as the edges of our skin.

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Without any thought, I know
now of entering those borrowed

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rooms, or even our mouths, our
eyes, which all too often were

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carelessly left open for you.

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"Warm, Flesh-colored Ode."

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It was still possible then to
imagine that no more than one

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or two hands would ever move
down the face of the hour.

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And the shadow, which
followed might remain patient.

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And if anything
somewhat reluctant

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to continue that no more
than one or two hands

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that ever descended so far as
the shoulders of the afternoon.

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And that necessarily they
would have been bare then

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of even that shadow, which
sometimes, the air itself seems

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to be charged with
and to suffer from.

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That no more than
one or two hands

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surely would have crossed
the forbidden zone

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at the end of summer,
and end of the sky,

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there would be turning always
from white to pink slowly.

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And that it could no
longer matter then

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what shadows rose from
your hollows and sank back.

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And it is still
possible to imagine

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that there are one or two
hands, which do not know,

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or which do not yet know.

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Anything of either that
face or the shadow,

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which does after all follow.

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Or a flushed shoulders
or turning sky,

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or if those particular
hollows alive with less

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and less curious, and
impulsive shadows now.

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And that there may somewhere
be hands, which will never

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be smeared with a very
special pollen and General

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McgInnis of a dying summer.

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And that there are
probably other hands, which

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have stopped or will stop,
or even now are shaken

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with premonitions of a time when
they will have begun to stop.

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And among these some, which
remember little or nothing

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of you and your coloring.

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And some also, which do not and
cannot forget your blood upon

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them and your due.

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"Pale, Tepid Ode."

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Not with the vague
smoke in the curtains,

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not with the pigeons or doves
under the eaves, nevertheless,

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you are there hidden, and
again, you wake me senseless,

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noiseless, someone or something,
something or someone faithless,

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that will not
return, undiscovered

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star, that fade and are fading,
but never entirely fading,

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fixed, and that will not return,
someone, someone or something

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colorless, formless, and
that will not return.

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