Downstream

Downstream from all this spilled blood
Will they find new ways to love the past?
Will they conclude just as we conclude
That the past is worth a backward glance
When it overflows like a bleeding wound?

Downstream from this fine-grained dust
That flies in our faces and in our eyes
Will they recall as we recall
All that fire has refused to burn?
Will they find new ways to love the past?

I walk down a street that has roots
Where a man anticipates love
And the events that unfold in pedestrian time
Are rooted in rituals of a slower kind
As surely as truth is rooted in truth.

Downstream from these day-old winds
Will they tell themselves, as we tell ourselves,
That the air in their lungs
Is no deeper than the air in anyone’s lungs?
And with time-honored beliefs, will they honor time?

Downstream from all this,
Will they ask themselves, as we ask ourselves,
What their ancient liberties were, what their future ones will be?
Will they find new ways to love the past?
Will they find new ways to love the past?

What’s Left

What’s left of the wind of a hundred years ago
Blows in fits and starts
Caught by fortunate ones who turn a corner
To find an old wind blowing in their faces
For a moment. Why it happens to blow
Down my street right now
Neither I nor anyone else would know.
The wind of a hundred years ago leaves thousand-year traces.
And the fingers that made the world out of clay,
Not even they —
Not even they could probably unravel all the gusts and blasts
That bring the wind back to its old places.

Sweet Grapes

Precise words are precious things,
Sweet grapes are a good life.
A man is subject to many different thirsts
Not the least of which is the thirst for love
But foremost among them is the thirst for memory.
So close your eyes and go to sleep
And dream about enduring things
And things that linger mysteriously in the world
Like propagating waves in deep water.
Precise words are precious things,
Sweet grapes are a good life.

I Saw My Lady Weep

I thought I saw my lady weep
Glistering tears. I thought I saw her weep
For the bitterness of our lives. For we labor in mystery
And we labor in bitterness. We command
Artificial things to become natural things
But memory refuses to take them and nature rejects them.
Fields are deserted and wasted, dwellings are abandoned, churches are in ruins —
The sword remains the first memory we have of existence
And the blowing of the wind over an open stretch of water.
I saw my lady weep glistering tears
For we labor under the yoke of undiscoverable laws
And there is weariness in the face of chaos.

Footsteps

As our footsteps slant, so shall the soles of our shoes
And whatever freedom we have known
In the act of planting a foot —
Whatever freedom has been ours —
Will be taken away from us by and by,
Will be taken away one fine day
When the shoe leather that our footsteps
Have set aslant by wearing it down
Shall itself set our footsteps aslant

On these pavements of solid ground.