Here in Morocco, Humanity is turning
as down a mountain pass, past the cafe
in spring-time winter, the hour of the blown scarf,
the torturous good-byes beneath a pale sky.
Christos amore dei Christos magnus
I'll be waiting beneath the regular cup,
white as my heart, as this letter,
the snow above, reflected only in your eyes.
A perfect time for springtime. And for skiing.
After the hotel, down we went.
I picked you up in the snows then,
and replaced your mittens, one on each hand,
and you looked at me with a dazed look,
trying to understand,
as I picked you up and brushed you off,
and then you brushed me, and it,
turning.
I lie awake alert at night,
sometimes in the same hotel, listening to the moose crossing,
naming the colleges and towns I've seen,
the lodges, and the roadstands,
the inns, the establishments,
the factories, the state monuments . . .
idly in the dark.
A lone radio
cries out the combination
that would turn my heart in yours,
I would turn to return to you,
garbled though, like everything in this cylindrical bubble, --
who have left me in no gladness,
lady of the technicolor and peak madness,
Russian who jumped out of a cake
to find me charming,
as I had only dreamed myself
(though "he led a charmed life", they said),
someone who I could talk to.
Why is this disrupt
at the edge of a dark night
in other circumstance?
At any rate they come,
the silver on the table reflecting their uproar,
this exodus of military civil servants,
as civil as can be, here in Morocco.
They thread the horizon in the eye of god.
When I was a child, I was shown an old book,
over-sized, of colored maps
you could pull out.
They traced the fortunes of the several states.
Bespoke of sieges. Masteries. Culture.
An evocation of the uniquely delectable
hidden within their knowing cloud of code,
the blatant portent of their colophon.
I buried myself here, and in imperial avuncular voices
the planners of the state bespoke on siege of war,
huddling the horses of a carousel
into color, orange, red, green . . .
I trifoliated the mecums of chance,
the polyfugals of index.
I restored the primeval indicator
its absence absolute.
Inhumanly as possible
I culled the grass.
My mother rode me by the English canal.
I was shown an old book,
kept under a pillow,
to memorize against my brother,
at an early, impressionable age.
The prize of the moon
I wanted for someone only,
as the sun sank. Brilliant city!
I wait for you, tired by the canal,
to deliver me of these letters,
these vocables of pebbles in a stream,
the word I am for you.