II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The thrilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.

We meet at our tree
On the highest hill
(But far below the citadels)
Empty on these first days of spring
Yet a token still

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Set silent subtle: as a rhizome
Whatever your etymology of being
The derivations are deeply rooted
Exotic cognates strange semantics
Inviting others – me – to a new vocabulary.

Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Original insights incisive attack and my favorite:
Humility asserting power.
Recumbent grounded utterly calm

Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

The acclaim for you (or their claims on you)
Your flashmobs delight disgust disquiet
Triumphant touts the Times
Empty provocation proclaims the Post
Radical exhilarating an unmitigated disaster

So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, 
Along the empty alley, into the box circle, 
To look down into the drained pool.

Asking where you are staying
What you are saying what it might mean
I share their enthusiasm but resent

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

Your return to the city was sudden
Entirely unexpected and not just by me
Seems everyone is tweeting texting talking

There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

Or a ticket to transcendence
Typically it begins in consternation
My expectation imposed on you
Yours on me quite innocently
When you ask why I hear who

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

What is your passion
Does it derive from pei pati passio
Or powerful sexual attraction
Is suffering synonymous with desire

                                    But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                                    Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

                                    Yet there is also
"Every body persists in its state of being at rest
or of moving..."
                                    Which is the more replete
State of being (statu suo)
I do not know.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

Our reality is movement measured
Bending squeezing our paths together
Accelerated for intentional collision
To discern if explosive freedom
Interacts and decays in all the expected ways.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Knowing has become predicting
The when where how of
Motion (motus motare movir movere)
As in kama-muta: moved by love
Or mivati, when we push away

Pesah

ἐὰν μὴ ἔλπηται ἀνέλπιστον οὐκ ἐξευρήσει...

“If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it…” 

                                                                   Heraclitus

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

Patterns perceived and repeated
Frame our expectations
Spawning hypotheses and proofs
Predictions independently confirmed
Become our scientific truths.

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Tempt us
Not
And lead us

To turn, turn
In dark and in light
Till by turning, turning
We hold less tight

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

              For Thine is the Kingdom

Between steep stony cliffs
and tumbling stream
Between landslide
and occasional flood
Between this moment
and our next
There is a fertile fold

            yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

                      Life is very long

Between her expressive life
and extended death
Between her songs
and living too long
There is a fertile fold

                     and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                   For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the idea of my mother
and her reality
Between my memory
and the actuality
There is a fertile fold

                  And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

V.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Ring-a-round the seasons
A pocket full of reasons
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

Friends walking
Dancing hands talking
Bright May day
Action, reaction
Momentum's sudden shift
Chrysalis cracked between
Life and death: she went left.

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

She claimed me with tongue and touch
Going where I had not gone
Showing how ignoring why
Then left me there in worried wonder

IV.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

She induced more than seduced
Starting where I stopped
Knowing what she wanted
While I wondered waited
Worried and asked why

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

"For every action there is always
An equal and opposite reaction: Or
The forces of two bodies on each other
Are always equal and directed
In opposite directions."
Coming to the crossroad
Of life and death, look each way.

III.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land 
Here the stone images 
Are raised, here they receive 
The supplication of a dead man’s hand 
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Propelled from the car
Ascending then descending
In a graceful arc onto the
Hard, hot pavement
The body bounced
Just as Newton had pronounced.

In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

Her left hand in mine I whisper in Laura's ear
"Jesus is waiting, arms open wide
He loves you and wants you, go to his side."

That evening catching a last breath
Her body left to meet her mind.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

Both coasts, Grand Canyon
Even once to England
Now she seems divided
Stay or go?
One part here, another departed

There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Her mind had left her body behind
Wherever she thought she was
Was not where I thought I saw her
Unless her space extends beyond this place
She had always loved to travel

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column

She seemed to be sleeping
Breathing softly out and in
But was non-responsive
Unconscious the nurses said
See: Sci- (stem of scīre: to know)

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

In these last days
Dignity draining
From the hole in his head
Delirious and nearly blind
Right hand lame, left hand weak
Fred helped to tuck the sheets

As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar 

Shape without form, shade without colour, 
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

He had lived, he often said
More than threescore years and ten
In wrath and gladness, as written

And establish thou the work of our hands upon us
Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! 
Our dried voices, when 
We whisper together 
Are quiet and meaningless

The first to go was grandpa Fred
Killed by a tumor in that head
Really by the surgery instead
Mortality's first claim on those I love

The Hallow Men

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together 

He tried to help make the bed
Bandages covering half his head
Three days later he was dead

Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Past present and prospect coagulating
Encrusting old wounds with a hard scabrous edge
Salved and softened if our convivium can continue
Opening realities beyond prior prohibitions
Conversing consoling conciliating

Consider please my questions