The smells of camphor and walnut leaf
cannot be more than writing on the table
which overlooks the glacier of this book,
brought in from hedges, winds of the sea,
glittering near edges of disposable leaves.
What can the writing be, but written for us?
A blue dominion of the air, separate and staid,
a looking relative, a movement within, apart—
as receptive as the creation it wills finally,
a last, unspoken aid brandished for chalice.
The striations band into read-off names.
Nature, the buck, a gray garden variable.
Each reads out absolute distance, divining
absence behind agents of pregnant eaves,
the clear dusk reeling open a fulsome sky.
Nothing is more generic, more anonymous
than this, among illegal ruins of printed glass,
publishing the maw and sot of blotted scripts.
One wishes your name was amber artifacts
the towpath hides as the mute evening divides.
JUNE 2007