(Our gold is not the common gold)
I was somewhere else but lost,
sitting outside, standing outside, pacing outside
upon the blackwood stained decking,
under my early morning, autumn verandah.
The last birdsong I heard was about ten minutes ago,
there was no traffic, no wind, no hushed neighbour voices.
And I was weightless and I was light. Alone and nothing.
And the sun was chiming red and white—
a somewhat imperfect transmutation.
Late tomatoes were clinging to the vine.
And the vine to the scarecrow. The scarecrow staring
its thousand yards, beyond and through
the old words hanging from the electric fence.
My poet’s beret upon its straw head,
medals upon its patchwork chest: limp trinkets
of the love that I had squandered, rebutted or refused.
The seed of love rotting in the fruit.
The fruit half stripped from the vine.
This heart neutral. This heart dead.
Weightless in the pyrite light of a contemplation
or, perhaps, just my ten minutes of a god.
And of course the blackbird was the first to sing again,
though it was a dove who returned with the olive leaf. And I did
not know that my bloody tears were falling onto withered roots
entangled in that gaping, bottomless God Hole.
A vain man, bone winnowed, swallowing rubedo tears,
groping at plastic fruit bowls, in rooms dank of sex;
a boyish man, vainly having another toke. Chugging
on years passing. The sun diluting. Too late. Too late.
So much love, I purloined. Now aching of love, yearning to give.
And scarecrow, know! Would she come again,
I would furnish this house, with flesh of citrinitas. Would fluff
the cushions on the sofa, make apricot-soft that scented hollow,
where once she might have slept. Would place her head
upon my lap. Would hold her so near, so dear;
guard her, firmly, gently; watch her fly.
And like a blind man, with a blind man’s touch,
would unworry the lines from her wreath scarred brow. Give love.
Make love. Warm and snug under the cold glow of night,
dream of her, with her, autumn to winter.
And there was a glitter of gold in the gravel
and when the scarecrow arrived at Damascus
they knew him only, as the scarecrow, weightless
somewhere else but lost
