Time’s Made with No Loss of Time

Valéry, hundred

Years ago or so,

Translated—Today

No one cultivates

What cannot be made

Quickly. Not true then,

Untrue even now.

More people more speed,

But cultivation,

Like evolution,

Like a watershed,

Has many eddies

Where things swirl slowly.

Not doing something—

Now that’s a virtue,

And slow craft’s okay.

Nice things do get made.

But tin and plastic

And one-hit wonders

Of streaming fragments

Foam from Earth also.

Close to four billion

Years spun downstream now,

This moment’s making.

Somewhere, a small child

From Generation

No Attention Span

Labors days and days

To craft a cheat code

Or a dancing meme

For some collective

Enterprise that takes

Near endless patience.

Pulp Friction

Above all,
It involves
No lessons.

Below all,
It dissolves
Two persons.

Between all
It resolves
A burden.

The Camp at Dawn

Opportunity’s flammable gas.
The burning heart jumps when some blows through
And sinks again once that wisp’s consumed.

Poke at the coals. Let in oxygen.
There’s a glow again. Can you keep it?
The fire dies down so slowly for some.

For some, so sudden. It was going,
Taking hold, even. And then, nothing
But a thin curl of smoke from the ash.

The Window for Cello

Sweet tradition,
Titles as gifts
For instruments
Used to play them.

Be generous
With that pattern—
Be instruments’
Songs to perform.

Doors for poet.
Constellation
For essayist
And novelist.

Days for writers
And their daughters.
Morning for horn
And soft bassoon.

A Little Proudly Minded

Thus fooled, thinking to be wise,

Become flat foolish. Crickets

Don’t pulse small hours now, too cold.

Makes you think of Aesop’s ant,

Joyce’s ondt and gracehoper.

Truth in both. Ants rule the world,

But locusts are cannibals,

Desperate to stay ahead

Of each other’s mandibles,

Hardly just playful fiddlers

Making music for the dance

And boasting of no regrets.

Most fools work hard to be fools,

To make an honest living

Keeping the well-off confused,

And some, too, are cannibals

Of a sort, when it’s called for.

Robert Armin made a meal

Of flat fools and natural,

Printed more books in his life

Than Shakespeare, his employer.

On a recent afternoon,

The return of some late warmth

Agitated grasshoppers.

One or two hop-flew, clacking

With that sharp, ratchety scratch

They make, from dry grass and rocks.

Just since nights are quiet now,

Doesn’t mean no fools survive.

They’re waiting on a good time.

The ants are better than them,

Maybe, but no more final

Winners of the tournament

Than any Bauplan is, no

More determined or hungry.

And when have you felt consoled

In the small hours, any night,

By the steady, rhythmic hymns

Strummed by ever-loving ants?

Monosensory Surgery

The singer goes downstairs,
Voice floating up the well,
A winding melody,

Not a popular tune,
Something too old to tell.
This indicates you must

Be on the upper floor
Listening to that voice
Coming from the forest

Of the lower darkness.
You must be trapped above.
You are reasoning hard,

Struggling to find your way
To a world where you know
Where you are, like Laura

Bridgman in the marble
Cell, reaching out by touch,
But for you, down to sound

Not touch, no touch, just song
Floating up from below.
Below? How can you tell?