On Clearer Nights

You’re inside a history
Where the inside never ends.
Outside it does. You’ve seen ends

And ends from the outside, and
You know they vanish, the end.
From the inside, you’ve seen night

Full of what looks like empty
Spaces you know aren’t empty.
No one knows the universe

Except from such an inside,
And any eyes inside know,
However often they close,

Even if the whole inside
Is all inside a black hole
That’s vanished from the outside,

Inside there’s only inside,
Dusky gaps with brilliant lights,
More or less overcast nights.

Missing Detail

Something small and strange is
Merging with the wayside
Scenery this morning.

What is it? Afternoon
Creeping into the light?
You lie your location

To nearest and dearest
Just to escape up here
Where no one passing cares.

Scrutinizing the view
Up the sunny asphalt
You hope for some weird clue,

But there’s nothing to see
Bizarre enough to count.
Maybe burnt ghost pine trees.

Pattern Now Forever Written

Doesn’t it astonish you
That every least movement you

Make becomes part of the day,
This irreversible day,

Itself shaping the cosmos,
A bit of the whole cosmos?

You move through what can’t not now
Have been each instant you’ve been.

Tie

Is it the story or
Its contents that create

The dilemma? Settlers
And spores can be heroes

Of their own success or
Villains of lives taken.

The chestnut forests are
Mourned in America,

Land of many settlers
And source of many spores.

Can stories not help it
That a protagonist

Must perform the monstrous
Villainies of other

Stories of the same kind?
Is it in the nature

Of success to slaughter
The success of others,

Feature not a bug of
Heroes to be monsters?

Or is it the stories,
The nature of stories,

Not of their characters,
Pretended divisions,

The rising and falling
Actions, clipped conclusions?

Stories don’t just begin
In the middle of things,

Sometimes. All stories end
In the middle of things.

There are no monster spores
Or settler heroes here

In eternal middles.
Snip threads, make opposites

That look like ends, that could,
And will, tie up again.

And Don’t You Forget It

People who are most ashamed
Of what they’ve done in private
Vs. people most ashamed

Of themselves in company—
That’s another way to slice
Your personality cake.

It’s memory, either way.
Public humiliation,
By whatever means passes

For ostracism, outrage,
The stocks, works mnemonically
In the end, as evidenced

By your need to remind each
Other, you should be ashamed!

Description Doesn’t Do It

A website juxtaposes—
It looks like by accident—
Hagiwara, Pasternak.

Pasternak is poetic
In describing poetry
Through poetic metaphors

Of whistles, cracked ice, the night,
The duel of nightingales,
A sweet pea that has run wild,

Fine sorts of sensory things,
While Hagiwara responds,
As it were, through quotation

By translation, poetry
Has no demonic magic,
No mystery, is nothing

But a solitary soul’s
Sick, lonely consolation.
Well, ok, what is it then,

This poetry—poetic
Or sorry compensation?
It’s something, as it happens.