From Desolation : Souvenir
nothing windswept
sleeps
all the lumbering gods
find it difficult to speak
it’s graceless of them to shine
like furniture in the sun
tidy, well-dressed men
in limbo, in middle passage
as with doubt, the cloud
as with the cloud, a mouth
as with a mouth, the mirror
as with the mirror, light
the dead man reads a book
on a train between
calcutta
and new
delhi
the window shakes like water
a soul is being made
the dream and now a field
you can only see as far
as the last hesitant star
someone holds you now
his breath warms your skin
how the white iris feels
coming up through snow
at the threshold of a forest
wind has a proposition
it wants us to enter
bring light into the gloom
the visible is in peril
it’s running out of room
nature’s writing a story
we call it inner distance
you can’t look at nothing
intention takes its picture
hands joined how?
authority of music
many times rehearsed
never quite composed
the rest is not silence
tongues of ash
bodies of wood
experience and myth
will pay what they owe
goodbye to all the bees
an extra yellow chair
leans against the wall
its shadow also rare
we use the gods for sport
black horse, night rider
the green man in the grass
and the history of zero
the actor and the acted
underfunded, overflowing
sublime the double life
it snows on the laws of perspective
you can’t see through its system
of gridlock and crystal
from one memory, many pictures
what is a ‘texture’ of meaning?
why are children cruel?
in a café on the pampas
three rubbles from the river
scraping boga onto our plates
theparana
no piranha there
only cattle wading
the simpler the sentence
the more it comes around
we must prepare the child
for what it already knows
in space, there is no ‘where’
movement alone is home
the mother image: tree
not merely the sea
rocking us to sleep
but the mother of doubt
holding us freezing
to be guilty of a word
guilty of ‘hope’ and ‘bone’
to stammer in the aisle
another word for earth
no punishment in love
only what you deserve
who else might admire
the depth of your reserve
it’s nothing or all the way
love in our first eyes
words are nearly gone
infant at the entrance
among us ideal
hears the rain’s existence
survival at both extremes
what will separate
death and the child?
well past painting
the sun passes out
our son is you and me
dirt of two lovers
the future’s lived now
being’s encore
the song is sad, a vague idea
the number one’s unreal
this is an English mastiff
the kindest thing in the world
all the lumbering gods
find it difficult to speak
it’s graceless of them to shine
like furniture in the sun
tidy, well-dressed men
in limbo, in middle passage
as with doubt, the cloud
as with the cloud, a mouth
as with a mouth, the mirror
as with the mirror, light
the dead man reads a book
on a train between
the window shakes like water
a soul is being made
the dream and now a field
you can only see as far
as the last hesitant star
someone holds you now
his breath warms your skin
how the white iris feels
coming up through snow
at the threshold of a forest
wind has a proposition
it wants us to enter
bring light into the gloom
the visible is in peril
it’s running out of room
nature’s writing a story
we call it inner distance
you can’t look at nothing
intention takes its picture
hands joined how?
authority of music
many times rehearsed
never quite composed
the rest is not silence
tongues of ash
bodies of wood
experience and myth
will pay what they owe
goodbye to all the bees
an extra yellow chair
leans against the wall
its shadow also rare
we use the gods for sport
black horse, night rider
the green man in the grass
and the history of zero
the actor and the acted
underfunded, overflowing
sublime the double life
it snows on the laws of perspective
you can’t see through its system
of gridlock and crystal
from one memory, many pictures
what is a ‘texture’ of meaning?
why are children cruel?
in a café on the pampas
three rubbles from the river
scraping boga onto our plates
the
no piranha there
only cattle wading
the simpler the sentence
the more it comes around
we must prepare the child
for what it already knows
in space, there is no ‘where’
movement alone is home
the mother image: tree
not merely the sea
rocking us to sleep
but the mother of doubt
holding us freezing
to be guilty of a word
guilty of ‘hope’ and ‘bone’
to stammer in the aisle
another word for earth
no punishment in love
only what you deserve
who else might admire
the depth of your reserve
it’s nothing or all the way
love in our first eyes
words are nearly gone
infant at the entrance
among us ideal
hears the rain’s existence
survival at both extremes
what will separate
death and the child?
well past painting
the sun passes out
our son is you and me
dirt of two lovers
the future’s lived now
being’s encore
the song is sad, a vague idea
the number one’s unreal
this is an English mastiff
the kindest thing in the world
Ekleksographia #1
January 2009
Poems
Paul Hoover
Paul Hoover’s most recent poetry collections are Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006) and Poems in Spanish (Omnidawn, 2005). With Nguyen Do, he edited and translated the anthology, Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008). With Maxine Chernoff, with whom he edits the literary magazine, New American Writing, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (Omnidawn, 2008). His collection of literary essays, Fables of Representation, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2004. Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, he edited the anthology, Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994).