A few degrees above freezing,
and already the first gnats
have come back to life.
Insects have mastered
the most immaculate lifelessness,
deader than any corpse:
even ice
with its many knives
never gets a chance to grow.
from Ghost Blueprints
5
Will you not be a letter in flight, a bird,
long years morphing into sequences of gold?
Will you not be a pool unruffled by the suffering stone,
unmoved by the face that must stare to rival its own?
Will you not be a flowering spear, garden aroused
from slumber by sound, a rain-filled and viable day?
Will you not be the measure of shorn-away years multiplied
by the net of some larger ardor, unfathomable by the eye?
Will you not be the lever, the door, the moon; gauntlet
unthrown, unraveled thread that will lead to its source?
Apothegmatic
At the office all the morning, dined at home with a very good dinner, only my wife and I, which is not yet very usual. In the afternoon my wife and I and Mrs. Martha Batten, my Valentine, to the Exchange, and there upon a payre of embroydered and six payre of plain white gloves I laid out 40s. upon her. Then we went to a mercer’s at the end of Lombard Street, and there she bought a suit of Lutestring for herself, and so home. And at night I got the whole company and Sir Wm. Pen home to my house, and there I did give them Rhenish wine and sugar, and continued together till it was late, and so to bed.
It is much talked that the King is already married to the niece of the Prince de Ligne, and that he hath two sons already by her: which I am sorry to hear; but yet am gladder that it should be s o, than that the Duke of York and his family should come to the crown, he being a professed friend to the Catholiques.
Only love a bard
for the company and the wine,
as a king
is a ladder to the crown.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 18 February 1660/61.
Thaw
Having melted the snow above it,
a black stone glistens
in its pit.
All thaws seem abrupt.
Lichens slicked with meltwater
glow a lurid green.
I’m feverish—might I, too,
burn a hole
clear through to spring?
Against nature
(Lord’s day). A most tedious, unseasonable, and impertinent sermon, by an Irish Doctor. His text was “Scatter them, O Lord, that delight in war.” Sir Wm. Batten and I very much angry with the parson. And so I to Westminster as soon as I came home to my Lord’s, where I dined with Mr. Shepley and Howe. After dinner (without speaking to my Lord), Mr. Shepley and I into the city, and so I home and took my wife to my uncle Wight’s, and there did sup with them, and so home again and to bed.
Unseasonable light:
war, arson,
a city.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 February 1660/61.
from Ghost Blueprints
4
For snow, at Christmastime, we thinned
sheets of gauze and cotton to wrap
around arrangements of dry twigs
in oversized vases— We took
our sweaters to don inside the mall
where we could pose for photos
against the chilled slab
of an indoor rink, cutout
backgrounds of iced over
cottages and stenciled sleighs
foreign to our tropical clime.
When I first walked into the bone-
chill of a real winter, new
friends warned: my hair, damp
from the shower, would turn into
a breakable tiara of icicles.
I looked at all the stunned
glittering in the trees, each limb
sheathed as if for a long keeping: as if
the heart keeps best, numbed and on ice.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Snow follies
Snow doesn’t stop falling
when it hits the ground;
it just slows down for a while.
It’s like that talk-show host
who ridiculed the idea
of a day-time moon—
how I relished his show’s
slow collapse, despite
its glut of glitterati.
Chop wood, carry:
stone not water,
water not ice,
ice not coal,
coal not graphite,
graphite not smudge
but locomotive spark.
In response to Via Negativa: Clarity.
Businessman’s prayer
To my Lord in the morning, who looked over my accounts and agreed to them. I did also get him to sign a bill (which do make my heart merry) for 60l. to me, in consideration of my work extraordinary at sea this last voyage, which I hope to get paid.
I dined with my Lord and then to the Theatre, where I saw “The Virgin Martyr,” a good but too sober a play for the company. Then home.
Lord, look over my greed.
Make my heart err
for my work,
a martyr to the company.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 February 1660/61.
Head cold
The house is pinned
under heavy snow.
My head fills with mucus.
Icy limbs strain
to reach the ground,
alternately melting and freezing.
I drip in the noon-time glare.
Let me be replenished
in nightly increments.