Midmorning like a deserted room, apparition
Of armoire and table weights,
Oblongs of flat light,
the rosy eyelids of lovers
Raised in their ghostly insurrection,
Decay in the compassed corners beating its black wings,
Late June and the lilac just ajar.
Where the deer trail sinks down through the shadows of blue spruce,
Reeds rustle and bow their heads,
Creek waters murmur on like the lamentation of women
For faded, forgotten things.
And always the black birds in the trees,
Always the ancient chambers thudding inside the heart.
*
Swallow pure as a penknife
slick through the insected air.
Swallow poised on the housepost, beakful of mud and a short straw.
Swallow dun-orange, swallow blue,
mud purse and middle arch,
Home sweet home.
Swallow unceasing, swallow unstill
At sundown, the mother's shade over silver water.
At the edge of the forest, no sound in the grey stone,
No moan from the blue lupin.
The shadows of afternoon
begin to gather their dark robes
And unlid their crystal eyes.
Minute by minute, step by slow step,
Like the small hand on a clock, we climb north, toward midnight.
*
I've made a small hole in the silence, a tiny one,
Just big enough for a word.
And when I rise from the dead, whenever that is, I'll say it.
I can't remember the word right now,
But it will come back to me when the northwest wind
blows down off Mt. Caribou
The day that I rise from the dead, whenever that is.
Sunlight, on one leg, limps out to the meadow and settles in.
Insects fall back inside their voices,
Little fanfares and muted repeats,
Inadequate language of sorrow,
inadequate language of silted joy,
As ours is.
The birds join in. The sunlight opens her other leg.
*
At times the world falls away from us
with all its disguises,
And we are left with ourselves
As though we were dead, or otherwise, our lips still moving,
The empty distance, the heart
Like a votive little-red-wagon on top of a child's grave,
Nothing touching, nothing close.
A long afternoon, and a long rain begins to fall.
In some other poem, angels emerge from their cold rooms,
Their wings blackened by somebody's dream.
The rain stops, the robin resumes his post.
A whisper
Out of the clouds and here comes the sun.
A long afternoon, the robin flying from post back to post.
*
The length of vowel sounds, by nature and by position,
Count out the morning's meters—
bird song and squirrel bark, creek run,
The housefly's languor and murmurous incantation.
I put on my lavish robes
And walk at random among the day's
dactyls and anapests,
A widening caesura with each step.
I walk through my life as though I were a bookmark, a holder of place,
An overnight interruption
in somebody else's narrative.
What is it that causes this?
What is it that pulls my feet down, and keeps on keeping my eyes
fixed to the ground?
Whatever the answer, it will start
the wolf pack down from the mountain,
The raven down from the tree.
*
Time gnaws on our necks like a dog
gnaws on a stew bone.
It whittles us down with its white teeth,
It sends us packing, leaving no footprints on the dust-dour road.
That's one way of putting it.
Time, like a golden coin, lies on our tongue's another.
We slide it between our teeth on the black water,
ready for what's next.
The white eyelids of dead boys, like flushed birds, flutter up
At the edge of the timber.
Domestic lupin Crayolas the yard.
Slow lopes of tall grasses
Southbound in the meadow, hurled along by the wind.
In wingbeats and increments,
The disappeared come back to us, the soul returns to the tree.
*
The intermittent fugues of the creek,
saying yes, saying no,
Master music of sunlight
And black-green darkness under the spruce and tamaracks,
Lull us and take our breath away.
Our lips form fine words,
But nothing comes out.
Our lips are the messengers, but nothing can come out.
After a day of high winds, how beautiful is the stillness of dusk.
Enormous silence of stones.
Illusion, like an empty coffin, that something is missing.
Monotonous psalm of underbrush
and smudged flowers.
After the twilight, darkness.
After the darkness, darkness, and then what follows that.
*
The unborn own all of this, what little we leave them,
St. Thomas's hand
returning repeatedly to the wound,
Their half-formed mouths irrepressible in their half-sleep,
Asking for everything, and then some.
Already the melancholy of their arrival
Swells like a sunrise and daydream
over the eastern ridge line.
Inside the pyrite corridors of late afternoon,
Image follows image, clouds
Reveal themselves,
and shadows, like angels, lie at the feet of all things.
Chambers of the afterlife open deep in the woods,
Their secret hieroglyphics suddenly readable
With one eye closed, then with the other.
*
One star and a black voyage,
drifting mists to wish on,
Bullbats and their lullabye—
Evening tightens like an elastic around the hills.
Small sounds and the close of day,
As if a corpse had risen from somewhere deep in the meadow
And walked in its shadows quietly.
The mouth inside me with its gold teeth
Begins to open.
No words appear on its lips,
no syllables bubble along its tongue.
Night mouth, silent mouth.
Like drugged birds in the trees,
angels with damp foreheads settle down.
Wind rises, clouds arrive, another night without stars.
From The Wrong End of the Rainbow (2005)
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上午如弃置的房间，大衣橱的魅影
掺和着餐桌的沉重，
平光里的椭圆，
情人玫瑰色的眼睑
在幽灵般地悸动变幻着，
腐烂在四个角落里拍打着黑色的翅膀，
这是六月之末，丁香花微开之时。
麋鹿踪迹隐没于蓝叶云杉的阴影处，
芦苇颔首致意、飒飒有声，
小溪潺潺，宛若妇女哀叹
淡忘的人、荏苒的事。
乌鸫鸟总在树林间婉转，
古老的心房总在内心颤响。
*******
燕子纯洁如一把小刀
划过蠓虫如云的半空。
燕子兀立于屋前的柱子，满嘴的泥巴、粘着一截稻草。
暗黄的燕子、灰蓝的燕子，
在泥巢和中央拱廊，
家，甜美的家。
不停的燕子，不歇的燕子，
夕阳西下，母燕的暗影投落银光熠熠的水面。
森林的边缘，灰石头静寂无声，
蓝色的羽扇豆没有哀鸣。
下午的阴影
开始收拢它们的黑袍
并掀起它们水晶之眸的眼皮。
一分一秒、一步缓似一步，
犹如时钟的短针，我们向北方攀爬，进入午夜。
*******
我在沉寂中凿开一个小洞，很小，
只是一个字的空间而已。
当我从死亡之境爬起，我将说出那个字，无论那是
何年何月，而此刻我还记不起那是何字
不过，当西北风从喀利勃山上吹来，
那个字也将回到我的记忆，
在那一天，我会从死亡之境升起，无论那天何时来临。
阳光单腿着地，一颠一簸地走出草坪，然后停驻、休憩。
昆虫退缩在自己的嗓音中，
微语和低沉的重复，
它们的语言难以尽诉忧伤，
也没有足够的语言来表达淤塞的欢乐，
犹如我们一样。
鸟儿加入进来。阳光伸开她的另一条腿。
********
世界时不时地从我们身边退避
带走它的所有伪装，
于是我们便只和我们自己一起
似乎我们是死者，或者我们的双唇仍在嚅动，
空空的距离。我们的心
像供奉在一个孩童坟墓上的红色小马车，
毫不令人感动、也不会令人亲近。
一个漫长的下午，一场漫长的雨开始降落。
另有一首诗篇，那里会有天使从它们冰冷的房间冒出来，
翅膀发黑，因为沾上某人的梦。
雨停了，知更鸟又回到它原来的标杆。
一声低语
从云朵中传来，太阳于是出现。
漫长的下午，知更鸟又回到它原来的标杆。
*******
元音通畅的声长，以其音质、以其音位，
衡量着清晨的韵律——
鸟的歌、松鼠的叫声、溪流的潺潺，
苍蝇颓丧无力地嗡嗡念咒。
我披着宽松的睡袍
在白日的抑扬顿挫、平仄长短中
随意地行走，
每一步都在拓宽韵脚的间隙。
我走过我的人生，好像我只是一个书签，将地点占有，
整夜地打断
某个人的叙事
是什么导致这一结果？
是什么绊住我的双脚，并不断地逼迫我的双眼
紧盯着脚下的地面？
不管是何原因，山中的狼群将会因此
惊起而狂奔下山，
乌鸦因此从树上飞落。
*********
时间啃着我们的颈项犹如狗
啃着炖过的骨头。
它的白牙将我们消蚀。
它令我们卷起行囊，在尘封的路途上不留下任何足迹。
这还只是一种说法而已。
时间，犹如一块金币，躺在我们舌头的顶端。
它在我们两排牙齿之间的黑水上漂来滑去，
另一枚随时都能接替。
淹死的孩子眼皮泛白，犹如受惊的鸟，
从船骨边缘猛然窜飞。
庭院中的大叶羽扇豆，
牧场上的高杆草
受着风的驱赶，迈着大步向南方慢跑。
翅膀的每一次扑闪都越发强劲，
那消失的又回到我们身边，那灵魂又回到了树上。
********
溪流间歇的赋格曲，
一会儿说好、一会儿说歹，
阳光的主音
和着云杉与落叶松下黛绿的幽暗，
引诱我们，并让我们屏息。
我们的双唇涡成美好的词，
却没有发出任何声音。
嘴唇只是信使，不会有任何信息。
当疾风刮走了一日，黄昏的宁静其美无边。
石头的沉默巨大无比。
幻觉，犹如一口空棺，暗示着某种缺失。
花朵沾上污渍
矮树丛低咏起单调的圣歌。
黄昏之后，黑暗降临。
黑暗之后，还是黑暗，然后有什么紧随其后。
*******
那拥有这一切的，仍未呈现，而我们留给未来的少之又少，
圣托马斯的手，
一再回到那个伤口，
它们仍未完成的嘴在半睡半醒之间难以自持，
先是要求所有，然后只要一些。
它们的来临伴着忧郁，已经
像远山上的日出和白日梦一样
在东方涨涌。
傍晚的黄铁矿石巷道内，
图像一帧接一帧，云朵
一片片展示自身，
而阴影犹如天使，静卧在万物的脚旁。
来生的厢房在树林深处敞开，
它们隐秘的象形字突然可以读解，
只需闭上一只眼，然后闭上另一只。
********
一颗星与一次黑色旅程，
飘渺的雾霭可用来许愿，
夜鹰和它们的催眠曲——
暮色渐紧，犹如一层橡皮套裹着山峦。
低浅的声音、白昼就此结束，
犹如一具尸体不知从草场深处的何方冒出了地面
带着多重阴影潜行。
我的体内有一张嘴，长满金牙，
它开始张开。
嘴唇间没有言词，
也没有声音的泡泡从舌上滚出。
夜之嘴，沉默的嘴。
像吸了毒的鸟儿停在树上，
天使低垂着潮湿的脑门，休歇了。
风起云涌，又是一个晦暗无星的夜晚。
选自《彩虹伸错的那端》（2005年）
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