as the people talk about Dylan,
but no longer listen,
as their watches wind
the sun,
after the rain flood the ash-tray
and the record choked
on the needle, when,
like a selfish lover – satiated,
jade eyes in the pitch –
it climbed
and fell to the side,
a long pale shiver runs
suddenly
through a surrendered sky:
a poetry of the clear stars
that vanish, traceless
over a vacant landscape,
who sing in blue and silver
the song we’ve failed
and dreamt and suffered for
before, failed like all the
black-blank
nothing
locked between our invocations.
The voices continue,
the temple of narrow staircases
through which they
clamber,
scatter, swim, fall,
rise, ring out, echo,
and we do not anticipate
the tempo
of pandemonium,
the rush of the rapture,
our celebration of the absence,
recounting nothing,
I remember, tinsel-silver-lustrous-diamond-chimes-beauty-
power-fire-pain-pain-pain,
the voice of my father’s father
ringing from the tower’s bell,
and
-blank, abyss, void –
I can remember old-stone-cracks
like lightning chiseled
about the cave
which bore his baritone prayers, the silver words
strewn over the table
like the priceless belongings
of the dead, the firelight winking
in wedding bands, the photographs
worn invisible, his judgment
– wine, poison, plunge, finale, mori -
waiting to pass
through the air,
to snuff the flame from its wick.
Grandmother, your gentle hands did not stir.
I remember nothing.
Patterns emerge in the rings of the wood,
the silences spread with rats, the glimmer clank cheers! of the glasses,
the eyes do not rest, the people talk about Dylan,
sudden, certain – clear, crystal, tinsel, silver, lustrous, diamond, chimes, wine, poison, beauty, power, fire, plunge, pain, pain, pain, finale, plunge, finale, mori, abyss, void –
we know we are nothing
but my dream of the shimmer in the ant’s black shell
before nothing, nothing, blank.