Incandescent in fine airy flight, ingenious indusium, a soul sifted sprite,
A flash before eyes and then, as they say, out like a light.
We walk through them still, though believe darkness to bump in the night,
And were it not all for a lost lover’s call, we would not see black creatures bright.
The turquoise and magenta blur calmed into a solid shape, and he fixed his gaze into the golden cage at its glaring black eyes. Two glistening beads stared passed him, not moving an inch as he coaxed an ink stained, calloused finger between the bars. Not a single twitch. His finger bent up and down along the gleaming feathers in tactile hypnotism.
1 Rainer Maria Rilke
1
Plant the seed, denounce the trees, hope and go wanderers far.
Move the earth to sift a siege on pebbles enticed to mar.
To mar and sow, and grow and grow,
Tomorrow’s no sorrows we know.
Tomorrow’s no sorrows we know.
Plant the seed, attract the weeds, verse upon verse upon dawn.
When in the light the twilight spite came to undress the lawn.
In Babylon, a Puget song,
A will to be chilled to the bone.
And so it has left us alone.
And so it left alone.
And so and so and so.
“A Doctrine for Hardened Hearts” by Yale Y. Clern
Four flat rum-and-cokes down and I’m the one feeling preoccupied for once. Is it almost midnight already? Have I spent the day so hazily? My afflatus laughs at us and gives me a warm pat on the back. I haven’t spent enough time with him, and he’s glad you could drop me off. But why did I agree to come anyway? I don’t even like Shiner Bock or this no-name jam band that plays with the lights off. I guess I thought I could make a little into a lot. And besides, my sheets are in the wash; I can’t go to sleep whenever I want.
Ah, but in comes a long ago lonely face. If I held out my palms, tell me familiar revenant, what stories would you begin to trace?
Cesare Gonzaga in The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione
Go slow. Speak of it, one breath at a time. Pull my ear to your lips, or set me in your eyes. Tell me your story, not ours, not mine. Tell me where you’ve been, and I’ll bear you the Rhine.
I know, this has never been easy for you. I don’t fault you for that, I never have. My knees have, my eyes have, my chest, but never I. So I’ll let your heart run its course, our tongues will craft the docket, to let our souls abound. Wrapped tight in warm wonder. Flashlights found days later, forever torn, forever unwound.
But see! I am nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so… I’m sorry, I said I’d just listen. But, please, for a moment forgive a second defection:
Inside all flesh there is a lover. Some callous, some humble, but a lover wanting nothing more than love. In the old coffee goer, whose hands fight so violently to grant the gums some sugary soft cake. In the lost and drunk, in the calm and found. And in him: He who runs up your mountain just to long for your beauty, forever condemned to observer, told to make nothing of it. I will be like him now. Please treat him kindly.
Again now, I am yours to listen. To wrap your scars with my ensanguined cloth. I’ll nod, and I’ll smile. I’ll take the scissors from your hands, and slide a poem in their stead:
And in the end, no matter the the triumphs or the sins, the sorrows, the dark and aching tomorrows
The moon will still be beautiful.
