WEBVTT

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"The Hearts."

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I'll read "The Hearts"
and a couple more.

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And that probably will make
a poetry reading of it.

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This one is about the same
length as The Figured Wheel,

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I guess, and it's
probably the kind

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of thing Alison has
in mind when she

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talks about trying to make
something productive out

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of the movements of daydream.

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"The Hearts."

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The legendary muscle
that wants and grieves,

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the organ of attachment, the
pump of thrills and troubles,

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clinging in stubborn colonies
like pulpy shore-life

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battened on a jetty.

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Slashed by the little deaths
of sleep and pleasure,

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they swell in the nurturing
spasms of the waves,

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sucking to cling.

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And even in death
itself, baked frozen,

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they shrink to grip
the granite harder.

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"Rid yourself of
attachments and aversions."

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But in her father's
Orchard, already, he says,

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he'd like to be her bird.

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And she says, "sweet, yes,
yet I should kill thee

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with much cherishing," showing
that she knows already,

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as Art Pepper, that first
time he takes heroin,

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already knows that
he will go to prison

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and that he'll suffer and knows
he needs to have it or die.

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And the one who makes the
general lose the world for love

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lets him say, "would
I had never seen her."

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but, "oh," says
Enobarbus, "then you

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would have missed a wonderful
piece of work, which

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left unseen, would bring
less glory to your travels.

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Among the creatures in the
rock torn surf a wave of

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agitation a gasp."

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A scholar quips,
"Shakespeare was

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almost certainly homosexual,
bisexual, or heterosexual.

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The sonnets provide no
evidence on the matter."

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He writes Romeo an
extravagant speech on tears,

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in the Italian manner.

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"His teardrops cover his
chamber window," says the boy.

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He calls them crystals
insanely and sings

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them to Juliet with his heart.

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The almost certainly invented
heart, which Buddha denounces,

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in its endless changes,
forever jumping and moving,

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like an ape.

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"Over the poor ape's
head, the crystal fountain

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crashes illusions, the
cold salt spume of pain

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and meaningless
distinction," as Buddha says.

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But here, in the crystal
shower, mouths are open to sing.

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It is Lee Andrews and
the Harts in 1957,

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singing, "I sit in my room,
looking out at the rain.

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My teardrops are like crystals.

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They cover my window pane."

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The turns of these illusions
we make become their glory.

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To Buddha, every distinct
thing is illusion,

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and becoming is destruction.

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But still, we sing
in the shower.

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I do.

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In the beginning, God
drenched the emptiness

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with images, the
potter cross-legged

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at his wheel in Benares
market, making mud cups.

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Another cup each
second tapering up

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between his fingers, one
more to sell the tea-seller

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at a penny a dozen,
and tea, penny a cup.

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The customers smash the
empties, and waves of traffic

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grind the shards to mud
for new cops in turn.

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And I keep a cup
here next to me,

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holding it a while from
out of the cloud of dust

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that rises from the
shattered pieces.

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The risen dust alive with
fire, then settled, and soaked,

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and whirling again
on the wheel that

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turns and looks on the world as
on another cloud, on everything

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the heart can grasp and throw
away as a passing cloud.

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With even enlightenment
itself another image

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another cloud to break and churn
a salt foam over the heart,

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like an anemone that
sucks at clouds,

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and makes itself with
clouds, and sings in clouds,

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and cover its window pane with
clouds that blur and melt,

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until one clings and holds.

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As once in the temple, in the
time before the temple was

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destroyed, a young priest saw
us the seraphim of the Lord.

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Each had six wings, with two
they covered their faces,

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with two they covered their
legs and feet, with two

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they darted and hovered
like dragonflies

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or perched like griffins in
the shadows near the ceiling.

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These are the visions,
too barbarous for heaven

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and to preposterous
for belief on Earth,

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God sends to taunt his
prophet, with the truth

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no one can see that
leads to who knows where.

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A seraph took a live coal
from the altar and seared--

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"God only knows the
girl who will love me.

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Oh, if we only could
start over again."

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Then the Hearts chant the
chords again a final time, ah,

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and the record turns through all
the music and on into silence

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again.

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