Still through Egypt's desert places Flows the lordly Nile, From its banks the great stone faces Gaze with patient smile. Still the pyramids imperious Pierce the cloudless skies, And the Sphinx stares with mysterious, Solemn, stony eyes.
But where are the old Egyptian Demi-gods and kings? Nothing left but an inscription Graven on stones and rings. Where are Helios and Hephaestus, Gods of eldest eld? Where is Hermes Trismegistus, Who their secrets held?
Where are now the many hundred Thousand books he wrote? By the Thaumaturgists plundered, Lost in lands remote; In oblivion sunk forever, As when o'er the land Blows a storm-wind, in the river Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly, Seems this Theurgist, In deep meditation mostly Wrapped, as in a mist. Vague, phantasmal, and unreal To our thought he seems, Walking in a world ideal, In a land of dreams.
Was he one, or many, merging Name and fame in one, Like a stream, to which, converging Many streamlets run? Till, with gathered power proceeding, Ampler sweep it takes, Downward the sweet waters leading From unnumbered lakes.
By the Nile I see him wandering, Pausing now and then, On the mystic union pondering Between gods and men; Half believing, wholly feeling, With supreme delight, How the gods, themselves concealing, Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated, In the thoroughfare Breathing, as if consecrated, A diviner air; And amid discordant noises, In the jostling throng, Hearing far, celestial voices Of Olympian song.
Who shall call his dreams fallacious? Who has searched or sought All the unexplored and spacious Universe of thought? Who, in his own skill confiding, Shall with rule and line Mark the border-land dividing Human and divine?
Trismegistus! three times greatest! How thy name sublime Has descended to this latest Progeny of time! Happy they whose written pages Perish with their lives, If amid the crumbling ages Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately Found I in the vast, Weed-encumbered sombre, stately, Grave-yard of the Past; And a presence moved before me On that gloomy shore, As a waft of wind, that o'er me Breathed, and was no more.
dawn is to morning as dusk is to mourning all filled with empty night moonlit fleeting nocturne delight timid reed once swayed in flow precious child once played in tow bringing treasure fragrant mirth taking measure stewards earth least of all the pangs of birth litmus tree line stands for crow wing away from silent snow...
paradise the shimmered peak listing aural fissions creak guiding paths once paved in tones sneering haves with burdened stones winter sails with wails of men shorelines hail from now 'til then wave and foam and breaking backs filling holes with what time lacks listening from the bloodied cracks changing winds ever building layers of sand ever gilding...
dawn is to morning as dusk is to mourning all filled with empty night moonlit fleeting nocturne delight timid reed once swayed in flow precious child once played in tow bringing treasure fragrant mirth taking measure stewards earth least of all the pangs of birth litmus tree line stands for crow wing away from silent snow...
paradise the shimmered peak listing aural fissions creak guiding paths once paved in tones sneering haves with burdened stones winter sails with wails of men shorelines hail from now 'til then wave and foam and breaking backs filling holes with what time lacks listening from the bloodied cracks changing winds ever building layers of sand ever gilding...
dawn is to morning as dusk is to mourning all filled with empty night moonlit fleeting nocturne delight timid reed once swayed in flow precious child once played in tow bringing treasure fragrant mirth taking measure stewards earth least of all the pangs of birth litmus tree line stands for crow wing away from silent snow...
paradise the shimmered peak listing aural fissions creak guiding paths once paved in tones sneering haves with burdened stones winter sails with wails of men shorelines hail from now 'til then wave and foam and breaking backs filling holes with what time lacks listening from the bloodied cracks changing winds ever building layers of sand ever gilding...
Just once, you say, you'd like to see an obituary in which the deceased didn't succumb after "a heroic struggle" with cancer, or heart disease, or Alzheimer's, or whatever it was that finally took him down. Just once, you say, couldn't the obit read: He got sick and quit. He gave up the ghost. He put up no fight at all. Rolled over. Bailed out. Got out while the getting was good. Excused himself from life's feast. You're making a joke and I laugh, though you can't know I'm considering exactly that: no radical prostatectomy for me, no matter what General Practitioner and Major Oncologist may say. I think, let that walnut-sized pipsqueak have its way with me, that pebble in cancer's slingshot that brings dim Goliath down. So, old friend, before I go and take all the wide world with me, I want you to know I picked up the tip. I skipped the main course, I'm here in the punch line. Old friend, the joke's on me.
not for me the dogma of the period preaching order and a sure conclusion and no not for me the prissy formality or tight-lipped fence of the colon and as for the semi- colon call it what it is a period slumming with the commas a poser at the bar feigning liberation with one hand tightening the leash with the other oh give me the headlong run-on fragment dangling its feet over the edge give me the sly comma with its come-hither wave teasing all the characters on either side give me ellipses not just a gang of periods a trail of possibilities or give me the sweet interrupting dash the running leaping joining dash all the voices gleeing out over one another oh if I must punctuate give me the YIPPEE of the exclamation point give me give me the curling cupping curve mounting the period with voluptuous uncertainty
How do we forgive our Fathers? Maybe in a dream Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.
Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers? For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?
And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning for shutting doors for speaking through walls or never speaking or never being silent?
Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs or their deaths saying it to them or not saying it?
I leave her weeping in her barred little bed, her warm hand clutching at my hand, but she doesn't want a kiss, or to hug the dog goodnight- she keeps crying mommy, uhhh, mommy, with her lovely crumpled face like a golden piece of paper I am throwing away. We have been playing for hours, and now we need to stop, and she does not want to. She is counting on me to lower the boom that is her heavy body, and settle her down. I rub her ribcage, I arrange the blankets around her hips. Downstairs are lethal phonecalls I have to answer. Friends dying, I need to call. My daughter may be weeping all my tears, I only know that even this young and lying on her side, her head uplifted like a cupped tulip, sometimes she needs to cry.
A man can give up so much, can limit himself to handwritten correspondence, to foods made of whole grains, to heat from a woodstove, logs hewn by his own hand and stacked neatly like corpses by the backdoor.
He can play nocturnes by heart. They will not make the beloved appear. He can learn the names of all the birds in the valley. Not one will be enticed to learn his.
On the crown of his head where the fontanelle pulsed between spongy bones, a bald spot is forming, globed and sleek as a monk's tonsure.
I was the earliest pinch of civilization, the one who laced him into shoe leather when he stumbled into walking upright. "Shoes are unfair to children," he'd grouse.
Through a pane of glass that shivers when the wind kicks up I watch my son walk away.
He's out the door, up the street, around a couple of corners by now. I'm in for life. He trips; my hand flies out;
Someone's hiding out Who can't forget about The things that people do when they're free. Like visitors from space It's hard to find a place To blend in and go unrecognized. I'm waiting for a sign I'm standing on the road With my mind outstretched to you. I'm picking something up I'm letting something go Like a dog I'm fetching this to you.
Pictures in my mind Row of poppy fields Harmony entwined A changing gear that grinds Pictures in my mind.
Pictures in my brain Electrical energy Fighting drugs with pain There's a war inside Pictures in my brain.
I'm looking for a job I don't know what I'm doing My software's not compatible with you. But this I can't deny I know that you can fly Cause I'm here on the ground without you. Angel without wings Owner without things Sharpshooter without rings ...around you. The road we used to ride Together side by side Has flowers pushing through the dotted line.
The girl on the rooftop stares out over the city and grips a cold revolver. Laundry flaps around her in the hot night. Each streetlight haloes a sinister act. People are trapped in their beds, dreaming of the A-bomb and hatching get-rich-quick schemes. Pickpockets and grifters prowl the streets. Hit-men stalk informers and crooked cops hide in churches. Are there no more picket fences and tea parties in America? Does no one have a birthday anymore? Even the ballgames are fixed, and the quiz shows. Airplanes full of widows circle the skyline. Young couples elope in stolen cars. All the prostitutes were wronged terribly in childhood. They wear polka dot skirts, black gloves, and trenchcoats. Men strut around in boxy suits, fedoras, and palm-tree ties. They jam into nightclubs or brawl in hotel rooms while saxophone music drowns out their cries. The girl in the shadows drops the revolver and pushes through the laundry to the edge of the roof. Her eyes are glassy, her hair blows wild. She looks down at her lover sprawled on the sidewalk and she screams. A crowd gathers in a pool of neon. It starts to rain.
The semi-trailer, lost in the night and wailing upon overturning wheels, nestles its sound around my mind and lifts me from my sleep. Certainly no mind has ever encountered the horrors of the late-night loneliness and been less than challenged.
It is there, hiding from the monsters, under our blankets and breathing through a crack...
There we find our dragons and learn to ride.
Once again I cast a leg over his scaly back and look upon the clouds.
