"Graveyard Soliloquy."
"Not in search of the sun, only in search
of the plane, the whitewashed chapel roots
and the branches of roots.
The foot of the Santo seated thus,
a figure seen in the last stage of making before the polishing.
A closer examination reveals the right eyes
and perfectly carved.
The supine queen comprised of 13 blocks,
then the addition of four measured
along the variegated thigh.
What can be seen, what can be written or drawn
can also be wiped away perhaps a number of times.
Her understated desire-- the stark white contour
of the stone, enhancing the eyes.
Your own desire-- a wooden drawing board
of the kind used by workers or students.
There is clear indication that the surface
has been marked with red highlights
in a grid, clear indication that erasures
have been made on this board.
Dead that bend their fingers dark around the stone.
Living that bend their fingers thus.
Oh, what doors shut.
Oh, the lupine and the wisterias creeping.
The opportunity to listen much the same
as the opportunity to be good.
Animals in relief and writing dogs and swans,
brass roses in an endless cascade.
A brisk rendition of poppies in September, silk in summer
washed until only the mountain remains.
Hymnless, I have broken herbs into a glass
to make someone laugh.
No, I have broken a promise to make some tea.
From famine to your own land, from prehistory
to a documentary manner, debris engrave
vines in bronze and amber.
Fruit and salt-- the explorer's hunger for pith and loan,
a child mummified in a heap of bark and stones.
The river's bare, the river's bottle,
the river's campsite broken.
What we heard in the caution to preserve the deer and gone,
withered bodies that speak loud and long.
In the Last Judgment, you've been implicated
in a mosaic of unclothed servants in an unchecked
bathing scene.
Your own hunger lists in the courtroom
to the side of the damned.
Many a mulberry and many a spring,
Claire bread, substance or steam.
Before baking, your torso soft against the Granite Queen.
What is in you is called form.
What it makes of you is called desire.
When your adversary is stronger than you,
it is not advisable to push conflict
to the point of blood or a decision.
Better to be like water, which flows into the form that
contains it, yet breaks through all containers, filling up
every empty space before moving on."