These are all love poems, or prayers, as you see fit.
Are you referring to God-- maybe capitalized or not?
A series of poems titled "Underneath" in this book--
this one is "Underneath (9)"-- again, a poem I've never read.
Persephone appears in it.
These are love poems.
They're hard to read to you guys.
This has got four sections-- spring, summer,
and you can guess what the other two are.
"Spring.
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.
You must learn belonging to--
no one.
Drenched in the white veil--
day.
The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.
Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see in.
Missing corners, fields, completeness--
holes growing in it where the eyes look hardest.
Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place,
and the small weight of your open hand on it.
And these legs, look, still yours, after all you've
done with them.
Explain the six missing seeds.
Explain muzzled.
Explain tongue breaks, thin fire in eyes.
Learn what the great garden--
up, up you go--
exteriority, exhales-- the green nevertheless,
the green who-did-you-say-you-are,
and how it seems to stare all the time, that green,
until night blinds it temporarily.
What is it searching for, all the leaves turning towards you.
Breath the emptiest of the freedoms.
When will they notice the hole in your head--
they won't.
When will they feel for the hole in your chest--
never.
Up, go.
Let being-seen drift over you again, sticky kindness.
Those wet strangely unstill eyes filling their heads--
thinking or sight?
All waiting for the true story--
your heart beating its little song--
explain.
Explain requited.
Explain indeed the blood of your lives I will require.
Explain the strange weight of meanwhile.
And there exists another death in regard
to which we are not immortal.
Variegated, dappled, spangled, intricately wrought,
complicated, abstruse, subtle, devious, scintillating
with change and ambiguity.
Summer.
Explain two are.
Explain not one.
In theory-- and in practice.
Blurry, my love, like a right quotation,
wanting so to sink back down, you washing me in soil now,
my shoulders dust, my rippling dust.
Look, I'll scrub the dirt, listen.
Up here, how will I-- not--
hold you.
Where is the dirt packed in again, around us, between us,
obliterating difference.
Must one leave off.
Explain edges-- tongue breaks--
thin fire-- in eyes.
And bless.
And blame.
Moonless night.
Vase in the kitchen.
Fall.
Explain duty to remain to the end.
Duty not to run away from the good.
The good.
Beauty is not an issue.
A wise man wants?
A master.
Winter.
Oh my beloved, I speak of the absolute jewels.
Dwelling in place, for example.
In fluted listening.
In panting waters human-skinned to the horizon.
Muzzled the deep.
Fermenting the surface.
Wrecks left at the bottom, yes.
Space birdless.
Light, in it, a woman on her knees-- her having
kneeled everywhere already.
God's laughter unquenchable.
Back there its river ripped into pieces, length gone,
buried in parts, in sand.
Believe me, I speak now for the sand.
Here at the front end, the narrator.
At the front end, the meanwhile--
God's laughter.
Are you still waiting for the true story?
God's laughter.
The difference between what is and could be?
God's laughter.
In this dance, the people do not move.
Deferred, defined, obstructed, hungry,
organized around, a radiant absence.
In His dance, the people do not move."