When Borges Dreamed

"He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him in minute entirety
and impose him on reality... He was seeking a soul worthy
of participating in the universe." -- Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins

When Borges dreamed the man
who dreamed a man
I went to bed and dreamed an ear:
wanted to hear: murmuring ghosts, all secrets.

Spiralling cell by cell from auricle to cochlea,
semicircular canals winding blindly through
the most profoundly silent forest
of cilia -- I nurtured them from root to tip.

Tympanic membrane next,
stretch taut and ready to listen.
(I dreamed and dreamed
the tiny porous wafer)

Wanting to hear children tell,
alone, at night, of heaven and hell,
to hear my father from across the world
full of explanation.

Wanting continental driftings,
the moon's ancient whirr,
nocturnal winds at timberline
in a place where nothing lives.

Hammer, anvil, stirrup and,
at labyrinthine end, the drum:
little Buddha nested in the dark middle --
all sound and no sound

When Borges dreamed the man
who dreamed a man
I dreamed an ear and woke to hear Creation
echoing in my own circular ruins.

Aphasia

No more satellites and no more sex, no more chasms and no more filigree, no french phrases (s'il vous plait) no wind, of course -- wild, whipping or otherwise, and no flowers (or maybe a few; I can't help it.) No more body parts as metaphors, no doors, no hallways, no words with bones, no bones, no weather, no brand names or trademarks, no lines between lines,

no lines

no geometry, nor symmetry or astronomy

nothing clever
nothing cleverly simple
(Wrap the favored words in a brown bag filled with rocks of no particular beauty, drop the whole kaboodle into the bay and watch it sidelong, sinking, bubbles floating to the top: palms and psalms and pomegranates, heliotropes and tropes and dun beaches, tessellate, masturbate, consecrate, periwinkles, capillaries and keenings)

No growth, within or without no sinking back into the loam no home, or home away from home no lover, no self no empty shelves, no tarnished stars, empty bars, rotting cars, dusty jars, no rhyme no rhythm,

and no funny punctuation no

Number Nine Bedford at Barrow

The broker led me up the stairs, selling me
my destiny: number nine Bedford at Barrow.
He swung the door with a wrist flick and,
I'd swear, a wink, the light came on, the broker
chatted with the super in the hall and while he did
I moved right in.
I scrubbed the floors and walls, long strokes
of pine and propriety, and I rinsed away
the ghosts, all dust, any old snot,
I painted the moldings the newest old gold and
I hung my wandering jew,
hung my ever-birthing spider plants,
potted wisteria in a Mexican bowl and I
lined the cupboards tacky bluebells,
curtained the shower with free-floating fish,
flower powered the deep tub's slick bottom,
built a bookcase of silvered oak, let it bend
around the corner of an odd wall,
into the newly track-lit hall where I hung paintings
by friends in a mix of abstract and abstacter,
I hung the African masks bought cheap outside MOMA,
and made up stories of Kenyan adventures,
I gathered rose-dyed lace, resistance along a curtain rod,
painted the commode in pink and azure,
I hauled a brass bed into the corner,
covered it with Ralph Lauren's wildest dreams and
imagined lovers marveling;
I let the lone Italian lamp stand stoic
in the corner dubbed nuovo, I
ordered a case of wine for the weekend's soiree and I
finally, ceremoniously, and with every hope for the future,
placed a mat of finest hemp and the word "Welcome"
in seven different languages outsides the door where
the broker and the super look at me,
my stupid shining eyes, the "I'll take it" on my lips --
they inform me the space had been rented
an hour before by the super's cousin,
flown in unexpectedly from small town, somewhere.

Years After Tolédo

Years after Tolédo, I still feel the cobblestones
I touched, kneeling near the only mosque-chapel.
I could not get up, kept sliding my hand
over the rounded, dusty mounds. Una piedra, dos piedras,
was all I could think, knowing little more Spanish,
and less about love.

I lost you in Madrid, among El Greco's visages
weeping all over the place -- how could I compete?
You drifted from me, eyes upturned, pious.
Halfway 'round the world, I still hear your breath in my ear,

intimate as a headache:  "Guernica... ah, Guernica."
It opened a space so wide we couldn't see ourselves.
We parted near the Pyrenees, sad as saints,
stoic as continental shelves.

Just Sheltering Me

Standing at the cellar door,
arms on hips, lips pursed, angling
toward some solution:
tongue and groove or tessellation,
oak for particle board or
the creation of cathedrals.
I watch him beveling the edges

as he teaches me to line
pine shingles the right way, wasting
precious time and knowledge
just sheltering me.

He moves in measured economy,
a man pondering, holding the absolute
of a level against the rounded body
of a boat he built in a field
behind the house he built

before he knew he might create a world
of wood, of sandstone, of silver
or, as he has done -- and without implement --
forge a legacy
of the truer elements.

-- For Valmar Stauffer Thompson

---

Travelogue: Prague

We came and left by train and I, used to flying,
felt like a thief sneaking into Prague, late in our first Spring,
weighted with expectation, light with wanderlust.

The city is culled from ancient copperplate, a lithograph.
Our photographs played shell games
with someone else's castles.

In Joseph's Town the stippled cobblestone cast our shadows askew:
stenciled and graven at twilight, two ghosts against the wall
falling through each other.

Along the Vtlava I followed you, dropping korunas into the black
of the river, nacreous and penumbral, it snaked into my heart,
side-winding. I cried, hearing Heraclitus.

That night I made up words in Czech that said I love --
the ictus wrong, rhythm wrong, your answer in an equally foreign tongue.
Next day we slept on the tour bus.

The day after, you and Kafka formed a friendship without me,
but later you got taken on Wenceslas Square,
your handsome fists full of worthless Polish somethings.

You shook off my sympathy like a beggar's hand
but brought me flowers while I slept, which I left when we left,
imagining a lingering brightness

in an ordinary room
on a small corner table.