Song of Civilization

Nothing sounds

As clear-cut as your voice shouting
Timber in the wilderness.

Kismet

Though fearing

The inevitable, for the love
Of one more moment

Of living, I will not perish
The thought.

Blind Faith

--for Jenny

Trails. And in the distance, dust, and the sun
floating through and down to the mountains
beyond us, boundaries of light and darkness,
what do we know of love? Only that it binds us.

(from Sentences, 1976)

The Summoning

In the end,

There’s nothing to doubt,
Nothing to question,

Not even the vaguest idea
Of equivocation.

The Whites of Our Eyes

It is a wise man who plants a tree in the shade
of which he knows he will never sit.
—Greek proverb

That vainglorious

Gunmetal grey sky you keep
Seeing in your mind’s eye?

A revelation is at hand, carved
In glorious black and white,

With orders from on high
To plant it.

Fending off the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

Think you

Don’t have a ghost of a chance?
Try passing yourself off

As an apparition.

Before the Shit Hits the Fan

You

Just give us what you want,
Word-slinger—

But don’t give us what
You have to give us,

Give us what we want.