Here and Never Elsewhere
If given energy and the product of the square
of its mass and the trajectory of light…
if given in a perfect and infinite curve
from a closed and finite universe
to the center of a more expansive sphere…
yet I rest amidst the corrupted motion
of the sublunar world,
my head raised in the open air,
the sky upon me as if a wall of glass,
a window, background foreshortened
between the faraway north and the wide
and extended south.
Surely I could take leave, depart, but I would
not be able to find the distance.
I only know this proximate here
and never there and every distance covered
only gives rise to a new distance.
And I am always where I am and never elsewhere,
carrying all that is mine, all that is me,
good and bad.
Correspondences
Spring’s silence
amidst the equinoctial sky
flowers pollinate and a dream passes,
the scirocco returns
and light clothing too.
Ever the same cycle
where the world with some
small differences–
the rains late or early,
a major or minor drought–is always
year to year the same world.
I don’t know how to calibrate my feelings
in response to these earthly rhythms
and seasonal changes in discord
with the uneven flow of my humors.
One day follows another
little by little now hotter, now longer
and I do what I must do–
awaiting the sun
a book the mute face of another
in sparkling summer
the winter of discontent
which still endures in June.
Awakening
Already I had found it in churches, woods, grottos,
or forged arts in Venetian paintings.
Time escapes from my hands,
I awake as the sea escapes
through two doors.
So as to better seize it
I breathe a little more strongly.
From my thoughts
the night sky escapes.