i
the map of reconstructed time, we move
the people stay
the people
cry at our train window, they sell
us fried fish
from roofs of palm frond
they look at us with forgotten
eyes
the eyes float past our windows
like fish eyes in water
the dark bodies
flay at the moving train, the camera
catches a face
my face reflects in a face, the past
whirls under our wheels
though there is an exchange
after—
we look on that world, the other (theirs)
with stillness
in introverted dream
the train goes slowly, marking the stations
it moves on slow tracks
numbers, a calendar
of repetition
we reach out, hoping to find a place
where the heart
finds roots
ii
you are lovely as a flower
full of seed
you are beautiful as the rain
your hair
falls in the sunlight
your body is full and straight as the angel
your body carrying seed
the face
i see in your face the evidence
that burns
i see in your body as it moves to me, i feel
the recurrent stillness
objective
oh how can we leave love, the changed form
she has just been with us
she departs
her long hair falling in shadows
over our minds. i found
after, a ribbon (under the couch, i found it
in darkness)
that feel from her hair
iii
a body holds the circle of time
locked in the circle, the time wheel
as the Aztecs made it went round and round
the head in the center
spoke with a tongue of fire
age is
the snake in coil, the brain
(it is time that makes the difference)
and difference—
that is the gate of fire: to love
let us walk out upon the grass, while we are yet
not old. and come with us, child
it will be a long way if we go deep in
the wood;
she made
a cross of her arms when she left us, not
believing in crosses
leaning out of the bus. going to love
to have touched. not knowing when
to have wondered
why there was grief at death of the old
though it is not grief . . .
only in pictures, a disk of images, a face we see
whirling in the water
whirling in the glass
shapes of terror, as we stand one age with the other
our bodies (the same age)
each shut with the gate of enclosure
caught in the circle of changing circumference
in pain we open our leaves