Poems

From ‘Baroque Fountains’

Greek Fountain for a Tyrant
A culvert is equal to a polis. Peisistratus saw with clarity this wisdom. His Athenian aqueduct bent to the fountain of Enneakrounos so freshness was constantly falling in the agora, the nine beautiful spouts rushing into urns, onto bodies flocking for water.


Runny Harmony
You see I should have seen it, lucid as the actual stream: runny harmony, running with the sun. The circling swifts understand this. This curtain of Pope’s frippery has stalled the entire afternoon.


Meditation
Silence is a dangerous fountain revealing what was always there all along: birdsong. At last the last language out of the desert free from this static mind.


The Silence of the Setting Sun

Upon this raw October day
I have let slip a crinkled leaf.
I have bent double with the wind
and felt the rain beyond belief.
And I have watched the thunder come
across the meadow and the field
and known the answer to the drum
and shivered at its freakish light.
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