Something is breathing in the air
Something is moving in the water
And the winds in you are blowing
Bring back my boy
I loved him
I loved him
Little flakes of snow
On the roads and the fences
My head is a flame
My body’s distant
And I am fading out
I can tell it all in time
I’ll go down in a flame
And wheel in the air like a swallow
Diving
------
I came to love spaces inside of me
The winds that blow
The leaves of the almond trees
That would grow by the road
Brushed with light and with snow
And I would ride as far as it goes
Oh, joy of mine, swelling inside of me
I feel your eyes, hands as they form in me
I said it once, said it twice
While you live, when you die
You are free again
You are free
------
His little hook, your little eyelid
The iris dilates while the heart implodes
And when he comes in your dreaming
His mouth still denies
What your heart just knows
Oh no
Nobody would ever have known
No light in the dark would have shown
How you would reply
------
My only boy, be not so blind.
Open your eyelids wide.
In through your mouth, breathe soft, light…
There are no words, no hands, no eyes,
that show where a door stands wide.
In through your mouth, breathe soft, light…
And your heart stands open,
when silence trickles down, bright,
and softly, slowly surrounds
your little ghost town
------
And we march in our rows and rows
Under a burning hand
Past the scars of the wounded land
Into a country of thorns and spines
Wild and unbroken
------
So then he rose, and he rubbed his eyes
Crawled through a hole in a lake of ice
Just to show you all the way
Though the queen has died
She has multiplied
------
If you could ring the sky like a bell
Even such a sound would never suffice
If you could bang the world like a drum
It would only show it was hollow inside
------
Hey, little birdie, catching my eye
Sing little sweet things into this mind
And tug at my darker side
------
In place of the sun
In place of the moon
A terrible light
Will flood every room
And bathed in this light
We will swim again
------
Took me out on the tide
to make pearls of my eyes
and uncover me, oh.
Tore every stitch, every line,
every hook, every eye
------
A wind that lifts the leaves against the night
The reeds that bow and bend beneath its weight
The holy sap, its smoky light
I will not hide
The fish that swim inside the murky deep
The island shores that loom above the sea
The holy, holy melody
Will bring them all to me
------
Daddy, come back to me now
I would beat them away
I would pull you out
I would have washed
All the cinders from your eyes
And with silver and gold
I would adorn you
Let it all come out tonight
When they pull me out alive
Alive!
------
Oh, the falconer awakes to the sound of the bells.
Overhead, and northbound,
they are leaving his life.
And each empty cage just rings in his heart
like a bell,
underneath these cold stars,
in their trembling light.
And he cries, “Amen, let their kingdom come tonight.
Let this dream be realized.”
------
and the hunter’s cry
is still on the air
as the bullet flies home
but the heart that’s pierced with it
still is racing
still is racing, alone
The silver shoals
of the light in the deep
brush the glittering skein
where the great, dark body writhes
and the trembling jaw
the unfathoming sounds
of leviathan, bound
as his heart, though weakening
still is racing
still is racing, alone
------
On cliffs that tower from the rising seas
their bonfire glow
where a tiger lies
and, cleaning their weapons,
they laugh at his useless
claws, and all:
it is a beautiful night
to be born to this life
and grind his every bone to powder!
------
My winged children, all
will fly over the mountain wall
to the lid of the sky,
and slice its belly full wide
with their warm knives
-not the pin-pricks of starlight-
but to bathe in the bright blood
of the world above!
------
In the forest on the branches and the clotheslines
a fierce little wren singing loud, and high
while his eyes, insisting on their own life,
gave legs to the lie
that there was the world, and time
to grow old in its light
------
Only now would you long
for the ancient boughs,
the moon, overlapping the long white clouds
and the home life of a love
who will never return again
------
“The way is to climb
the way is to lie still
and let the moon do its work on your body
and then to rise
through forests and oceans of lives
and through the way of the black rocks,
splitting, wide,
and flow
ten thousand miles.”
------
And in the dark,
from the sea marbled and moon-blue
into the burning eye of the sun
without feeling
My end was imminent-
Steady your course now, sparrow
but I remembered him-
Fear for your home life, sparrow
------
Galloping into the void,
you are rolling your eyes like a horse,
all to turn from the beam,
from the eye of that screen.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!"
------
and your hands on the balcony
as a spine
pricks the world
and the shudder, deep, is unheard,
but you feel it
oh my god
as the spindle
flies apart
turn your bow to the biggest wave,
but your angel’s on holiday
and that wave rises slowly
and breaks-
------
And over the ocean
winging low
I saw the first wave
and the flares that fall
like fireflies
on the islands
In the boom and swell
from the waves to the heights
reverberations
of our old lives
Like a golden bell
that would ring through the night
and then the front moves
and we raise our eyes
in the silence of the islands
------
Come down from the iron wheel!
Come back from the endless labor!
Look down on the rolling waves
that strike on the crumbling reef
now.
Is what the body becomes
in the bellow aloud
in the crack of the drum
and as the body dies
what is left of the heart
burns white
No light on the western shore
No sign of the ships at anchor
No sound but the roaring winds
No warmth but the life behind the eye
------
In a power dive
in a slow burn
over ancient fields
over islands
from the slope and the rise
of the mainland
unfamiliar shapes
------
My father climbs to the top of the rail
his head above the roaring world
his body burning
his eyes on the waves
and a god below the waterline
------
Effortless gulls in the wake
silver and white on the bow
as the island is broken away
from the world
------
Give us back to our lives
on the waving blue wild
and remove every mark
down to the waterline
and with your arms at your sides
turn homeward.