From “Dark Honey”
In homage to Osip Mandelshtam
I am sure I do
not believe we can
move a pencil through
a white field, pulled by
a team of upside-
down ox-head letter
As, and in real fact
furrow it. Poor old
page-earth – sized, cut, scraped,
ploughed with mule-pencils
or impressed by ink,
illuminated,
printed, obscurely
inscribed, and revered
or destroyed, revered
and destroyed, and here
comes yet another
walled-garden crop for
eye, ear, lungs, legs, mind.
***
The cranium dome
hangs from its own silk
conceptual thread
of thought, conceiving
its infinite in-
complete perfection:
its Zeno, its Zeus,
its Dante, its Te
Deums and freak shows,
frescoes, twine theory,
money, bread, bricks and
wine, six-syllable
abstractions, axes
and facts, its every
variation of
custom, including
vertical graves of
men buried upside
down without their heads.
***
(In dusk-lit, telling
ways, tell me, little
swallow, Tuscan or
T’ang or wrung somehow
from time: since I have
neither feather nor
wing, how I too can
go into a grave
made only of air.)
***
“For your sweet joy, take
“from my cupped hands a
“little glittering
“of sun, a little
“honey—for this is
“what Persephone’s
“bees have commanded.
“A boat can’t cast off
“if it isn’t moored;
“no one can hear a
“shadow that wears fur
“boots; we can’t best our
“fright in this dark wood.
“Our kisses—these are
“all that we can save,
“velvety as bees
“that die if they are
“exiled from the hive.
“They’re murmuring in
“the transparent groves
“of the night; the wilds
“of mountain Greece are
“their motherland; their
“diet is time, lung-
“wort, pale meadowsweet.
“For joy, please take this
“pagan gift: this rude,
“rustling necklace of
“the bees that died, for
“these had transmuted
“honey into sun.”
