Prime

The first day of the year is prime,
This year, in this one life, at least,
That stutters around in these lines

Like a mouse behind wallpaper,
Happy for the hollowed housing,
The convenient gaps and decay,

Prime habitat for a rodent
Capable of counting the days,
Divisible by one alone.

Behind the Dark Pines

Which were the exact poems

From which Mahler derived

Der Abschied’s lines, and which

Lines did he add himself?

That last ewig . . . ewig

Seems surely to be his,

Nothing Wang Wei intoned

Or would intone—but which

Might have been the reason

Mahler asked, Won’t people

Go home and shoot themselves?

He never conducted

A public performance

To find out. He died first.

Ewig . . . ewig. The word

Unknots its own meaning

In its repetition

With the music fading.

His wanderer’s farewell

Comes to him, not from him,

And from that which won’t end.

What Are You Doing About This?

Just as you experience
These words, these moments just past,

However the encounter
Has occurred, is occurring,

Whether you know our language
A little, a lot, or not,

There’s somewhere on the planet
Something sublimely gorgeous

Is going on, and elsewhere,
Right now, lives are suffering.

Proximity predicts most
Of how you feel about this.

No one nearby wants to miss
Rainbows over Uluru,

Auroras over Iceland.
No one under falling bombs

Or hearing screams from the tents
As the forest fire rips through

Feels contented where they are—
But there’s a middle distance,

And then further and further,
Where the fear of missing out

And the horror at the pain
Attenuate together,

And it takes a photograph
Or a documentary,

Or at least an article,
To generate the longing

And the agony of not
Doing something about it.

So how much are you missing
Or permitting to happen

You shouldn’t, hopeless person,
While encountering this poem?

What Isn’t of What Is

Who needs timidity
In the impossible?
If you can fantasize

Immortals and wizards
And anti-grav warp speed
Hyperdrives, you should think

You could toss it all out.
Let the time-traveler
Flip the arrow of time.

Permit back-causation.
Grant joy without boredom.
Get rid of all the rules

Not just a few of them.
Obliterate if-then.
If this were to happen

Differently, don’t require
Other things to happen
Contrariwise. Why not

Fantasize what you want,
Since you’re fantasizing?
Is it because you can’t?

Then fantasize you can.
Strip it down to the ground,
The studs, nitty-gritty—

Otherwise you’re hinting
You’re just scared to request
What isn’t of what is.

To Do with Your Time

Your time’s not time.
It’s attention.
If you want time,
You only need

To give it some
Strong attention.
It only flees
When it’s ignored,

But, if you turn
From hopeless things
Like winning wars,
Or doing chores,

Or reading poems,
And find some time,
What little’s left
Grows to be yours.

Sage in a Cave

Meaning is the creature
Graham imagined laying
Eggs between the words, eggs

It was the poet’s task
To extract. We’re not sure
About that, anymore.

How do the motionless,
Unself-motivated,
Made to erode, move on?

Turning Winter Near Cold Mountain

All through a dank night in the cave,
The hermit tossed and turned,

Deciding whether to evict
The dreamed Leviathan,

Whether it was time to put out
The smoldering dragon

Grown old and dull, the coils of smoke
Now like wispy grey hairs.

Upon waking in a new year,
The monster was still there.