The field was blank. Then the body lay down.
The body lay down on the grain.
When the body grew blank the grain grew blossomed.
The blossoms made an absence of the body
Among them. The blossoms could not be counted
So the body was one. The flowering grain was gray.
Pressure on a stone creates a mountain. Less
Pressure creates a mountain in fog. The body
Supine in the field sees from an angle the pines
Hover over the mountains. The body
Bears a weight. The weight is blank.
Trees and mountains echo in the field.
The sky is cloudless. The echo is in the eye.
from Apology for The Book of Creatures
[On Happiness & Knowledge]
. . . reason and lust
reason and lust . . .
Venus in transit across the face
of the Sun
burns
other animals in seasons, but for us none
A siren in the pine, a siren in the stone
we desire the objects we want to know
desire
spread open on a pillow
her hair once spread across a scent
a half-read book
and in another's hand
a comment in the margin:
who leaves
for sake
of leaving
But the gardener is more resolute in bed . . .
the gardener with the dirt under his nails . . .
the gardener whose hands would smudge
the book he held and could not read . . .
the gardener is more sturdy, more desirable . . .
I wander to calm my mind
in the garden are a thousand thoughts to occupy
my mind // the thin-waisted wasp
waist deep in bloom drinks
inside the amplified chamber of his own tune . . .
I could smell in the loam her pillow
in the mulch around the roses her sheets
I heard a chattering in a tree
that silenced at my step but silence is
a siren's almost fatal song
at my next step a starling flock in one
chaos fled the tree in the shape of the tree
and tumbled through the air thrilled
and like a mournful mind extended past
the limit of the seeing eye
My gouty friend would speak to me of Grecian wine
my friend with kidney-stones would speak of sweetmeats
to any at the party who would listen
my impotent friend would speak of a woman bending forward
to speak to him as he sat
and the deep-cut dress revealed her bare breasts, and a scent of . . .
The mind is its own malady
And a man who calls himself wise and speaks wisely
while his penis grows erect
remembering a mouth that resembles a mouth
of some one he once loved
The deer sleep on the needles they eat
The deer sleep on the needles they eat
we must become like the animals
to be wise
[Knowledge Does No Good]
The blank beneath the book
better known by not knowing
reminds the printed page
nature loves to hide
the world to protect
from our thinking
the world of which we think
