Pulled himself from the water

  His broken heart

  Singing for him

  The cavern

  Awash in tears

  Makes no difference

  Waking into sunlight

  Bring me a drink

  From the fountain

  I hit my head and keep hearing

  The same songs

  Harden their hearts

  To the present

  To young walkers

  Who died of themselves

  Kestrels swirling

  Over scorched grass

  To the white wind

  Close your eyes

  There’s a strange boat

  Coming up the river

  Faces of children

  Splashing into the sky

  Butchers be not jurors

  In your hearts

  The lion divides the stag

  Into four parts

  One for the one

  Called lion

  One for the strongest

  One for the most valiant

  One that everyone else

  Is forbidden to touch

  Games are important for instance

  How Tetris is good for you

  After you survive a school shooting

  Rotating blocks

  In your mind works as a kind of

  Cognitive interference

  Preventing the formation of

  Patterns of intrusive memories

  Properly stacked firewood

  Allows the passage of mice

  But not cats

  Everything is alive

  On its way in

  In the morning

  The science is conclusive

  The system is closed

  There is a silver rudd fish

  On the pond bank

  Gasping

  A little dagger

  In the grass

  The purpose of a system

  Is what it does

  Horses are the only survivors

  Of the age of heroes

  Black flecks fluttering

  Across the lid of the sky

  A storm flashes

  Carrying inside itself

  A light whose origin

  It can’t untangle

  A red flower

  Grows within the stove

  The boy falls in love with it

  The mayor’s adjoint

  Shows me a vial

  Of ashes

  Tells me he’s feeling a lot

  In his chest right now

  Everyone knows

  A safe way home

  For whenever they’ve

  Been drinking

  You do your job and

  Nothing happens

  The prattling of frogs

  On a pond

  The general will of

  Horses versus the particular

  Will of flies

  The woodpile draped

  In snakeskins

  Two pricks in

  The morning sky

  Like spoiled children

  One beats on the table

  The other whips the sea

  Are you inside

  In the thinning darkness

  Clap your hands

  Hold your breath

  If a failure is repeated

  If grief comes from the body

  If I take this head who will I

  Show it to

  In myths the bodies

  Of boys are punished

  Cast down from great heights

  Or torn apart by beasts

  Saint Eutrope was made perfect

  By an axe blow

  And is generally forgotten

  Though he appeared once

  In the air above his brothers

  To show off

  His scar

  You have to praise ghosts

  So the ghosts eat praises

  Instead of eating you

  Rain falls on the neighbour

  Whose mind is disordered

  Who comes searching for cherries

  In the pit of winter

  The mist is waist deep

  And moving swiftly

  Right through us

  Carrying nothing

  Building the house

  It was born in

  Like cloud-coloured wolves

  Trickling down

  From the mountains

  Pale flowers falling

  From the mouths of deer

  Uncorrected sky with

  The dead grazing

  Past cheekbones

  I can leave you alone

  But not forever

  We offer our palms

  For divination

  Our temples

  For blows

  A comet approaches with

  High resolution and

  Low irony

  We’re lying together

  On the dry leaves

  Asking each other

  Could we live here too

  After the invention of

  Boats it was still

  A long while

  Before anyone

  Thought of sails

  Then the black cloud

  Came for us too

  So now at least

  Three great springs

  Were coiled

  Ritual separation

  Of hand and hand

  And pocket knife

  The boys asleep

  Between tree trunks

  Dreaming of

  Every morning

  As the same knot

  Tied a different way

  And so named

  Something new

  Check the killer’s follows

  Before the accounts all

  Evaporate

  Dead-eyed lilies

  Choking the pond’s surface

  Bitter taste of

  Black water

  The shifting weather

  Abandoned midsentence

  Like false companions

  Reluctantly present at

  The illumination of

  A mouse’s gallbladder

  It’ll burn if you touch it

  The sinking pink that

  Surrounds us connects us

  With the sun

  It’s not beautiful it just

  Looks that way

  Lonely before destruction

  And lonely after

  Backing out of the day

  Uncharmed by the skull

  And sculpture of

  Tapped-out trees

  Their aspect unaltered

  By the presence of starlings

  Inhale history and

  Exhale more history

  Empty spectrum

  Of the future

  The faint scent

  Of smoke

  Pearly column

  In the distance

  Cleansing the world of

  Coin-coloured leaves

  When the snake bit me

  It was the snake that died

  You might believe nothing

  About the night and

  Blurred hills

  Decomposition of

  The rock wall

  By plants

  The dogs are

  Loose and charge through us

  With complete indifference

  Little by little you detach

  Your heart from the society

  Of men and men tell you

  To run five miles

  To fix it

  Dragging with you

  Your own

  Dumb bones

  Invincible winter of

  Glitched light and

  Collapsing texts

  Blood flowing

  From the back of your hand

  Crack your skull

  Against the concrete

  A fistful of gravel

  Cast against the windshield

  Like a spell

  In the deep cold

  Of the water

  Fish scales glint

  Unequal

  To the heartache

  An absence is

  An arrow

  The trough beneath

  A wave

  The Spartans began by learning

  To steal their dinners

  I saw footprints in the mud

  And turned back

  Don’t want to leave my bones here

  Where the satellites

  Will scrape them

  You have to cut the rope or

  You’ll both die on this mountain

  In a bed of juniper branches

  He lays hands on your head

  And you’re magnetized for six winters

  The boat is found drifting

  The boy steps on a wasp’s nest

  And is stung over and over

  Too stunned to run

  What jewels are the magpies hoarding

  In the crook of the old poplar

  Too many stars in the Great Bear

  The continent tips and begins to sink

  Into the sea

  *

  take

  silence

  take

  distancing

  night

  your

  friends

  are

  trees

  in

  air

  *

  speak

  your

  longing

  but

  only

  if

  you

  want

  people

  to

  understand

  it

  *

  you

  can

  never

  make

  less

  sense

  than

  the

  age

  you

  live

  in

  *

  can

  you

  tell

  if

  it’s

  the

  wrong

  message

  if

  it’s

  nothing

  good

  or

  good

  *

  language

  is

  a

  big

  home

  but

  you

  can’t

  live

  there

  together

  We cycle down one side of the valley

  And partway up the other

  Periodic motion

  Of the heron’s wings

  Everything that moves

  In an arc is inescapably

  Tethered to something

  So you do what was done

  Before you

  Free a small frog

  From the downspout

  Empty out the cat’s jaws

  A comet describes the limit

  Of a young boy’s understanding

  Sounding out the names of

  Saints on the calendar

  Saints in the village chapel

  Private saints of the long path

  In the hushed and

  Numinous woods

  Flower of the cheek wound

  Closing over

  Drawing back

  Into its bud

  Mist settles in the saddle

  Between two hills

  At the bottom you may

  Find yourself united

  With those who need convincing

  How far they are

  From the end

  You have to continually

  Cut each other

  Out of the belly

  Of the wolf

  And replace the weight

  With stones

  This is the work of

  Many lifetimes

  Get used to the plan because

  You’ll carry it always

  As sunlight distorted

  By the mirror

  Parable-like

  A startled bird

  This is what

  We’re going to do

  To stay safe

  A young dove

  An adder

  A cream-coloured horse

  The stars were sick people

  Who needed more help

  Than we could give them

  Drag the desks over

  To block the doorway

  Don’t all things

  Abandoned in motion

  Even violence

  Come to rest

  Every morning there’s a new

  Tissue of myths

  The system is changed

  Through manual operation and

  Elevated language

  An introduction of

  Grit on the surface

  How death can only be

  Misunderstood

  Lay your hands

  On the backs

  Of friends

  Thus perish

  The enemies

  Of love

  The clangs of bells

  Becoming formal

  As you count them

  Stars grieve for brothers

  They’ve never met

  But somehow lost

  The shrinking light makes trees

  Seem taller

  At night all these dreams

  Carry us ceaselessly

  Beyond ourselves and place us

  Where we’ll never arrive

  This is a source of

  Great joy and misery

  A series of heart-shaped knots

  Along a dusk-coloured rope

  The boy turns his house over

  With a bump of his shoulder

  There’s no way to keep him

  Any longer

  In the moon’s orb

  No rain left

  No more hail

  No more hail of arrows

  The glass is shattered

  The stream unfastens itself

  From its bed

  The sailor

  The knife-sharpener

  The soprano singing

  The jewel song

  From Faust

  Everything is mixed

  In each other

  Every swelling sting

  Is inseparable from

  The desire to be

  Delivered from it

  Try that on like

  A necklace

  I hear in the distance

  The braided

  Shouts of boys

  If a daily routine and

  Plain speech

  Are a slow wave

  Glance up from the screen

  And glimpse the owl’s

  Collapsing orbit

  Trace of panic

  In the air

  Like smoke

  The texts break apart

  When you try to

  Reach down

  And touch them

  You pass through a ghost

  Whose arms are extended

  A glowing planet

  Brightens in the periphery

  You don’t need to

  Be so strong when

  Everything you touch

  Fills up with your

  Frail existence

  An arrow slips back

  Into the tower

  A soundless owl

  The moon sheds its pale

  Colourless light

  Washing the blood and muck

  From your elbows

  Whatever you remember

  Is who you were

  Whatever you forget

  Will someday cease

  To be part of you

  A gust of wind

  The smell of moss

  On your hand

  I am reading this to you

  From inside the blue shadow

  Cast by a ghost whose arms

  Are extended metaphors

  Culminating in epiphany

  And so are recognizable

  As poems

  There are small

  Horses within them

  There are lights

  On the next hill

  Where the breeze

  Carries ashes

  At first they’re unreal

  Then invisible

  Like a wasp’s nest

  In the ground

  Listen they’re mostly wrong and

  Nothing converges

  Not without you

  Not without tearing yourself open

  And emptying yourself of

  Nearly everything

  Among strangers

  The Spartan was selfish

  And grasping

  And when night fell

  It was unjust

  We spread ourselves out

  Over the whole world

  So the seam is

  Where the wound is

  Let me dig the ground for you

  Just until your arms

  Are strong

  Do nothing

  With your soul

  For as long as possible

  Like starlings

  The grass granted

  Without condition

  In the light rain

  Impossible to always give

  The same meaning

  To the same birds

  The young heron

  Cleaves for an instant

  The air then falls

  The wind should do

  Only what it wants

  The wind should want only

  What the heron wants it to

  Anyone can hold onto

  A horse’s neck

  But if you can’t swim

  Et cetera

  No men have lived

  As deep into death

  As boys

  Wondering

  If a soft life

  Prepares us

  To go bare-headed

  Into strife

  The horses start up

  At the sound and stumble

  Over a bald crest

  Let this body

  Be a shield

  That turns away arrows

  I will see you

  At the end

  Where we will just be able

  To make out each other’s

  Words over the singing

  Of angels or whatever

  Other emptiness

  We meet

  Last days of

  Retrogression

  Diagram of clouds

  Becoming truer

  Let go by the hot stars

  We ate chestnuts

  And hunger became at last

  A bone in us

  No matter who opened his mouth

  It was always the same voice

 

1 2 3