the house on the borderland-3 (2)

7/29/2019 The House on the Borderland-3 (2)

1/29

THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND

We dragged the coal-charred childrenFrom the wreckageThe wind whipped through the twisted cageOf shrieking steelAnd splintered glassThree men produced the funeral MassThat began and endedWithout repose

The waiter then recited prose(as we dragged the wilted tulipsfrom their soon lamented stand)

Traveling lightOn a summer nightTo the House on the Borderland

We pounded our sun-swelled snaresFrom the gravestoneTen bugles belched a solemn moanIn harmonyWith the morning crowdThe parson wore a sequined shroudAnd touched the frozen faces

With a coal-scarred thumbThe waited praised the deaf and dumb(as we pounded the pine packageto the soon redeeming sand)

Traveling light


2/29

On a summer nightTo the House on the Borderland

We raised the bleached-bare bannersFrom the wreckageThe wind raced in a willful rageFrom clouds that weptWith unseen eyes

The digger found his paradiseIn a harbored hymn

Of crumpled gleeThe waiter polished up the fee(as we raised our heads in mourningaccompanied by the band)

Traveling lightOn a summer nightTo the House on the Borderland

Flagstaff, 1969

COMMANDMENTS OF DOG


3/29

I

halfway through the silent graveyard

Scarred with broken relics, stone and algae

Cracked inscriptions, shackled motion, shorn

From lights fertility in fertile bondage, lost

Within the stillness

Beyond the harvest orchard, dying

Beyond the breathless voice, pursuing time


Winter is spring and summer is fall

And waste is sweetness on the desert air

Midnight riddles light with darkness

Giving form to void and shape to fear

Leaving word unspoken, silence unattended as

Darkness finds its image on a shadow as

Darkness finds its body by the wall

And still, as motion settles (as the shadow strays)

Tush, tush, he said, it wont appear, wont appear

Life becomes death and death bridles light

And darkness haunts the minstrel as he plays

* * * * * * * * * *

Midway through that fruitful autumn

The wharf is stale, the stems are broken, dead

The snake has lost its skin, the rock has shed

Its moss within the seasons muggy womb

Beyond the barren harbor, waiting

Beyond the humpbacked lamp, disarming fate


Time withers age and age withers silence

And silence echoes rage

Unattended

Twelve oclock

The lamp explodes

A single chime consoles eternity

And lobster pots are creaking at the bay, rotted


4/29

And crumbling, caressing each other in decay

And darkness drops again, climbs along the

Shuttered lanes and creeps among the arid brains

Among the dead

And swarms up to the darkness that is light

Twelve oclock

The streets curl up into that twisted glare

And fall asleep

Silence cranes its neck beyond the clouded moon

Rolls its savage eye into the hollows of the moment

(The lamp explodes)

And scattered, hurls to flight a dozen squawking gulls

Into the void Into the stillness, squealing

A gutted rat dissolves into the shadowsOf the airless soil

Dying a tanners death in a lepers autumn

Scrambles breathbare cross the alley

Hesitates

And is swallowed by Diagos tavern, dead.

II

Three figures slouch on slouching stools

Beneath a neon-tinted haze that huddles

Sluggishly into the reaches

Of its entrapment

(Time to time the barroom drools

Its mucous fumes into the starless alley)

But smoke escapes through chimneys

men flee through doors

Three figures slouch Three gutted foolsIn Diagos doorless tavern, snared

Diago tips a flask

Of blood-red wine

*


5/29

(Time cannot wear the shadows of the dying

A wishful glance that warms the deadened face

A vision of oneself approaching silence

Downward, down upon a knotted rope

Beneath the stillness, into voidWithin the stillness is the void

Time cannot wear the shadows of the garden)

He pours a drink

Into McGintys mug

* * * * * * * * *

The wharf is stale to-nightThe fallen tide escapes beneath a fueling barge

That scrapes its lazy belly on the harbor bottom

Beneath the seiner fleet, shrimper hulls to sculling shades

Lost, lunging, grounded as the ocean wades in silence

(And draws the scant eternity to nest beneath its wing)

Howls unsounded like an insane king

bound in shadows

McGinty tastes the wine and speaks

* * * * * * * * *

The Sleeping Seadog lingers in the stillness

Tears its haunches on the silence

Rips its carcass on a star

Slips malignant through the winds nocturnal fingers

Into half-existent color Into stale fluorescence

(Diagos neon goat)

Creating midnights hollow throat within a whisper

And where is Atropos? Where could she be?

And where the darkness flickers from a muzzled chandelier

Diago slides his paunch along the bar rail

Where the darkness stirs, uniting void with substance

Slides a grin along the haze

Strides into a

Riddle


6/29

Caught

Diago keeps your spirits up

Measures gin with a two-jig cup

Between a cobweb and a candle, caughtBetween an eyelid of the final figure, caught

Among the dying and the dead, illusion strays

McGinty slouches

Nudging neon with an empty shoulder

Budging darkness from an empty shoulder

Half-dropped, drooping

In the pallor of a crouching moon

McGinty slouches

Raps his mug with Diagos snare

With dust that rattles rattlesIn the strangers eye and

Clink

Clink

Clink

Peels pack silence

Drinks fer 's chums withuhfistfulla grog

Layer by layer

Hes a nick-nack paddy-wackin good ol dog!

And where is Atropos? Where could she be?

(Time cannot wear the shadows of the dying)

Time cannot wear the shadows of the dead.

III

Br-r-r-- just, just then, did you hear the thunder?

It cant be raining, not tonight


7/29

Did you hear the thunder?

Lets go out and seeperhaps its rain

but no, no

Nothing more than fallen angels, mumbling

Nothing more than echoes in a void

(And yet, perhaps I do have a certain fear of thunder)There! Your eye turns up! Turns up again!

It could be youre afraid yourself

Of wind that whirls, whirls and lashes out at silence

Wailing like a crippled leopard through the streets at dusk

Or else, a fear

Of frozen rain in

August? December slush

On autumn leaves? Hailstones?

Gravestones? Storms that chill the soul

Ah, yes,,,yesI know your brand of terror, friend. I know it well

You carry death

Death that rolls its weight against the weight of Time

Death in every gale that rises, begs for life

Then fails to die

(though falling breathless to a fitful slumber)

Death in silence when the clamor fades

And when it fades, silent wind shakes granite, walls, rivers

Of the city cower, minds cower without reason, tombs blaze

still nothing

Blazing bones raise nothing

still nothing nothing still

Without reason

Without hope of reason

Without hope of

Hope

Nothing more than death

silent death silent grave

And autumn mourns the fall

Still wind whispers, shakes illusion with a sneer

And summer is dead and summer is

With a cold, reflected sneer

(and you fear it all)

Still, you are no doubt a thoughtful fellah


8/29

Do you have the time?

Sullen, yet reflective, I suppose

the clock has struck it must be after twelve

Twelve? After twelve? Lets go out and...go out and

Is there ever rain?

After thunder, is there ever rain?

Often when the boats steer into bight

Drop their sheets, crop their bleating horns

Angle through the jetty, rumbling, rumbling

Then it all comes back

Mumbling words and blood words and blood

And summer is dead is with the shark that

Breaches, guards the ocean as a lion lords

His turf, snarls in silence when the surf

Is falling withEach rudder-beaten wake

And I have seen

The swelling sails

Tuna trails that

Dance into the strikers eye

Dance beyond decaying remnants

Fishgut spear, gutted calves, raveled gullets

Dying as the noon wing whispers

Nothing

And Ive heard the roar

The bilge pump choking

Heard the toll bell striking with each breath

And I have seen the sea refuse to die

And summer is dead and

The flame that quivered once is dead and

Shadows crown the rabid wolf, devours light

And light is dead And hope is dead

through words in blood and laughter, wailing

Each afternoon at four oclock

I watch the fueling barges as they

Raise their circling banners to the wind

Drift beyond the signal house, beyond the Skull

And disappear like spirits through the mist

And, Ive waited with a little patience

And I have waited with a little patience


9/29

* * * * * * * * * *

Twelve oclock

The lamp has fled(A single chime consoles eternity)

HOWL

Howl

howl

A single rhyme unsouls the dead.

Los Angeles, 1972

A DRY SONATA

I

Dry


10/29

The hour is dry

This rude soil

Inconsummate air

Lip and lung

Dug and dung

Rivers mouth andLepers tongue

All locked in Times

Insipid bent

All dry

A word through you

A voice through me

The damp hour of our

Damp youth

Spent

Dat hooded man, he chasin us

What once was knowledge

Becomes our vision

What once was vision

Becomes our hope.

Los Angeles, 1974

THE BARDO THODOL

I


11/29

Life is an echo and we are the scream

Life is an echo and we are screaming

Blind attraction to unheard repulsion

Screaming

As the funeral door is roused and born deadDeaf and dumb and blind

We are the scream

Where did we go wrong?

Again, the dancing light evades light

Clear light not clearly light but that

Which draws the blinded owl to blinded flight

Still light of senses

Plucked and gouged and snuffed

Still light of darkest night ofDarkest void of

Darkest

plight

Trapped

And seized into a monks mad eye

And from the dancing spawns lucidity

(Seeded with a thorn when recognized)

And through illusion springs lucidity

Open the mouth and open two eyes


Life is an echo and we are the scream

* * * * * * * * *

II

Where did we go wrong?

Again, in order that we may resign

Face our ancient guise to face with liberation

Reach beyond the sunken womb of Sun and Moon and Fire

Here and now, in order that we may relinquish light

We must embellish darkness


12/29

When the mastiff pack has conjured up our trails

Behind us at our back Samsara wails

digguh dum

Resign(Again, in order that we may resign)

To heaven, as we mount the throbbing scales

And intertwine the jackal and the cow

digguh digguh dum

Forever homeward here and now

And we have eyes

Leering eyes that see the world

As God has never seen

Our senses are

Precisely tuned and geared and stirredUntil our path is ruled absurd

And then, my love, might you exchange

A torso for a limb?

As the duck honks thrice

The moon throws rice

And the bearded lady raises voice

remember Him! remember Him!

Turning from that horror-kindled flame

Life is an echo and we are screaming

As light responds

Our voices snag the wind

And we exist among the brutes

And we prevail among the muted brutes

Burning as the axle burns

Just as all the fools before us

We shall eat the eye of Horace

digguh digguh deedle daidle dum

III

Rewoven in a hollow skull

The Raven picked our bones, a fortnight dead

Illusion plants its hoof into the sand


13/29

(Dismembered as it lashed a squall

The shoreline wails its blissful call

Shall make the pocky corses crawl)

And we prevail among the brutes

And we the scream

Heap of form

Heap of flesh

Heap of impurities

Turning from the cradle to the tomb



Life is an echo and we are the womb

And this is so

(Through wind and hail

and dry grass, screaming)

And this is rightly do

Los Angeles, 1973


14/29

A DRY SONATA

II

The mantis asks for nothing

Hidden word or psychic voice

Salvation, revelation

Deliverance from the karmic ties

A place to chant

A place to defecate

Nothing

With antennae erect

Infant arms that grope above her lone torso

Aged and stoopedShe shuffles into an unassuming dusk

Busy old night

Half-steps echo on the silent plain

Los Angeles, 1974

MAYAYANA RYAN

Droolin mustard down is chin

(The victim of a merciless stroke)

In nomine patris et fiddle-ay-doo---


15/29

The Bishop, repairing his eyebrows with glue

Fixes is collar, nixes is girth

Our primary fear is the fear of our worth

(Inspectin Hildys after-birth)

O! Tell em (as they titter)That idly ad er litter

That the altruistic vulture

Ate the hedonistic doe

And tell em: O ladle-ai, ladle-ai-O!

Reclinin in le grand boudoir

She gleams and gleams like a chandelier

Whatever is proper shall thrive, says the Queen

(But curled in her psyche are matters, obscene!)

She fastens er eyelashes, tugs at er dressShould I be forthrightor leave her to guess

(Clearing er gullet with, ah, such finesse!)

O! Tell em (as yer hackin)

That it aint the Swan thats quackin

That the Knight as shed is armor

Ands been eyeing your trousseau

And tell em: O ladle-ai, ladle-ai-O!

Undaunted as he claims, a certain

Fear of maggots tween the toes

The King recapitulates matters of age

If life were unblemished and feces perfumed

Then Ryan would be quite impeccably groomed

With a rose in is collar, a flame in is eye

He chants, Nom myoho renge kyo!

(With his cobra and lotus appearinjustso)

In nomine patris et fiddle-ay-dough

He tells em: O ladle-ai, ladle-ai-O!

Los Angeles, 1974

ALL HALLOWS EVE

The silence lasted;


16/29

nothing happened.

In that pause, expectancy faded.

Presently then, the Shape went out

And we were drawn, steadily

Everlastingly

Inward and down

Through the bottomless circlesof the Void.

Charles Williams

Here there is no motion, no hope

There are neither acts of despair

Nor Acts that result in faith of Separation

There is no knowledge more than knowledge known

Already known, already buried, construed

Between broken words and whispersHere and there in the outskirts of the City

There is only gossip, useless mute gossip

And the backwards Word

* * * * * * *

Wait!

This is not the

Way to say it; Not

The precise way in

Which Id dare to say it!

Perhaps Id merely say that

These are mere streets of a mere city

That turn and turn merely for the sake of turning

That guide this stale wind, stale word, down and down

Rebounding down the Hill of Voices

Through the streets that shudder

The streets that cross themselves

Thrice

With garlic and a candle

And watch this shadow click its cloven heels

Ive had enough, dear one, had enough

And what if this should be a dream?

If the twilight and the grey moon

The gutted bar, the lonely rectory

Those distant voices that I cant decipher

What if this is all a frail dream?

Then, perhaps Ill awake by midday

Shaken, beaded in a cold sweat


17/29

Beyond memory, without relief

(Drooling on your favorite linen)

He looks so gaunt and useless

dont you think?

* * * * * * * *

No! I must design a propitious scene!

A separate City, alive with city sounds

Jackhammers, noon whistles and whining hounds

And how it would be

To smell cigarette smoke and factory fumes

The faint, musty odor

Escaping from under a landlords sleeves

And urine breaths of powder rooms

Just then, perhaps Id

Stroll down Interlaakan StreetDown into the Poets Square

(At lunch-time, when the deli is swarmed)

And then theyd shout their old ballyhoo:

He looks so cultured and so debonair!

Id cock up my head (as the actors do)

And edge back into the turning street

Round and down to the Bridgewater Zoo

* * * * * * * * *

The porcupined cheetah, the ring-tailed amoebaShall join the blind zebra and dumb cockatoo

That paralysed force shall take flight on the horse

And tonight well all dance

To the top of the Hill, the top of the Hill

(Dance hand in claw

Dance lung in gill)

And how would it be.

When the twilight hour of this grey season

Joins that still still moment of momentous fire

And when all that is already known

Is then un-known and then unknown, ensnared

In faded words and fading blood.

* * * * * * * * * *


18/29

Then Ill prepare a masterful verse

With words in tongue and blood of sorcery

Ill pound this heel upon the pavement

One and Two and Three

And then, my love, then youll appear

With a jigger of brandy, a pinch of snuffAnd a whisper that tickles my innermost ear:

O, Henri, I love you still

For better or for worse;

I shall never again leave you

If our days are resourceful

If the times are rough

Ill never leave you, never again

The groundhog cocked his severed head

and said, Enough!

* * * * * * * * * *

Here is where the shadows are

Where those faceless shadows are

Here, upon this crude and ancient crag

The indolent potters wheel

Has ceased to turn

No motion, none is left

Among these bleeding thorns

Here, within this whisper, that sigh

No time or sense or meaning left

* * * * * * * * * *

Look! Is that your head amidst the smoke?

Your lips among disconsolate bone

The girl in the orchard

Is covered with mold

And I, who wear neither youth nor a cloak

Have lost all sensation

(and have a fierce cold)

Shall I return as a psychicOr as a baboon?

Perhaps as a leper who

Howls at the moon

And the fools shall applaud

And the dwarf

Shall wear her eyelids rolled

These words have lost all sense


19/29

This voice is growing old

And here, among these tired streets

Within these uninspired streets

Weve heard and heard

That savage Word before

(The ancient chant that bloomsWithin a thoughtless skull)

At some moment, heard before

Between the dream of passing

And the dream that thrives

On the moments past

The hooded saint then took his leave

And the scream within the silence

Shakes the hollows of the eve

The City drawsIts final dumb breath

And waits surrender

Los Angeles Fall 1973

CANCER WARD

Let them write above,

Here lies no oneThen afterward

Let the World take its course

Nothing left

Back is stooped, numbed

By knowledge


20/29

Limbs that once

Rebuffed the leopard

Fail to thwart

The aged centipede

Organs that digestedPumped, excreted, throbbed

Hold this arid plain in

Shriveled atrophy

Dust that once was motion

Dust that once was time

Nothing left

The smiling wolves

Have robbed my jaw

Robbed that toothlessRuthless jaw

O spare me

Sight of dry bones

Smell of proud flesh

Taste of

Bull dung

The starving winds have

Plucked

This wretched eye

I, who once was tall as you

I, who once had eyes like you

Creep in foul fear of

Foul fear

Dust to dust

Foulness to foulness

O spare me spare

Me thedung, dust, bone and entrails

Yelping

Los Angeles, 1973


21/29

SCATTERED ASHES

I El Dia de los Muertos

Know, my name is lost

My face is gone, the night has shut me out

Upon the farther shore, near better streams

The faithful gather where the fire redeems

Yet here, my dreams are daggers as I drift about

Ive seen my image stagger from the jaws of fear


22/29

Then watched it vanish down confusions snout

Still, the wind reveals no signs to question

The thunder wears no wounds to doubt

My eyes are beggars eyes

Three days Ive stood where waters break

Ive watched this journey sink in time, the climb these tides delayThe light that leads the way as it restores

Ive risen hand by hand upon the shadow of a word

Then spilled my faith unheard between two shores

Departed on a groundless path

Too numb to know the horror of its wake

Three days Ive searched this channel, searched and prayed

Ive seen my heart laid open, edging bared into the dark

Then dared to mark the course this soul should take

But now, my head is filled with poison

They have tied me to a stake

And through these quarters, worn by thirst and drought

Through breach and blast, the night that fouls the shipmans card

Ive left my conscience torn and scarred, my hope stretched inside out

And heard the fatal bell that cries each promise Ive undone

The silence that this howl denies, the seasons Ive outrun

The bleeding Captain, fallen blind, perceives the scene

And weaves a tale of distant lands, of battles lost and won

Yet, through this vacant plea, so frail and hardened

Ive crossed the final strait where judgment stands

And watched my courage flee through empty hands

My spirit neither damned nor pardoned

* * * * * * * * * *

Tomorrow, when this tale is told

Ill drift between two lives, so rudely led

As my last response is left for dead, my final shred of wonder

Between the dream of passing

And the dream that passes into dread

Ill have no dreams to fill this head, no memories to plunder

After fools destroy what fools defend

After each beginning haunts the promised end

Tomorrow, when this pace shall fall

When friend is foe and foe is friendIll seek the grace that made me crawl, the tide that drags me under

And though this maze of screams and echoes, through it all

Ill find a separate silence to attend, another skin the shed

And go to bed at noon, in spite of thunder

Knock. knock. knock.


23/29

IILachesis

A cold coming we had of it

The beacon crept unseen above the ragged coast,

Spread its image upon the senseless twilight, and was gone

Driven back beyond the flicker of another passage, against a blind sea

We hauled our wind to weather the point

At the first terror of the silence unredeemed,

scudding away on a larboard tack

We fled between the fury of the dream fulfilled

And the dull retreat of the last sensation

The voices of the past we fought, the thoughtless skull of restoration

Whispers of a tide, blown cruel and black

A dark voyage we made of it

Darker than the womb was dark

On such a night that deepens as it robs each breath

We, the passing, who dash our mark upon this drifting wreckage

Led all this way to shuffle at the edge of doom

Led all this way for birth and death

We prayed for knowledge

And the darkness left our eyes too blind to question

We sought the silence

And the thunder wove its voice into our doubt

* * * * * * * * * *

I stumbled when I saw

After the pain unravels what the wounds reveal

After this path, reduced to darkness, seeks to word unheard before

I trembled when I faced this shore, the face behind this stare

After my heart has traced the moment when the moments cease

the peace that wretches feel

The taste of hope on unsubstantial air

Again, I trembled as the night was lost to silence

the dark in its disguise

I searched to find the faith these dreams refuse

After a life undone by whispers from a shifting mind, as many dreams

as I hand dreams to loseAs many oaths as I had lies

Against these seas, I crossed between the echoes of a fitful sight

the fear these winds expose

Upon this plea, I shuddered when each year has tossed its course

A most poor man, made tame by fortunes blows

After all the remnants of an empty night

a life too vague to trace its source


24/29

too faint to stir the path of its demise

Condemned to pace unknown between the shadow and the light

I had no way and therefore had no eyes

And through this night of skull and spirit, through this stare

Between the heart that sheds its last resistanceAnd the mind that wriggles from the jaws of fate

Through all the fragments of an end too blinded to begin

the will to rise, the senseless calculating

The prayer that spreads its faith too thin

the cries that murder what the eyes create

Through words in blood and darkness, waiting

Waiting as the world shall wait

Los Angeles, Spring, 1984

A SHELLED PEASCOD

For every vibration

there is an opposite vibration

For every corpse there is a twisted rose

For each fond breeze, a reckless squall

Draws the blind sailor homeward

Ah, homeward to his tackle, nets and noose

The leopard in the garden laughs, licks his wounds

We sow our shade

Couched between dry birth

And arid resurrection

Our fear is not of ragged bones

Of purging winds that lure

The night hawk from its lair

Winds that spread their ancient wings and


25/29

Cackle smilingly

The scarecrow dropped his liver, bowels and brain

Ours is fear in an eyeful of rust

And this is so

Ice to freeze the carcass

And this is rightly soIce to freeze the spine

Should we reconsider

Spirit dust?

Skulls that glow?

The fortune teller and her leaves?

Mantras, chakras, karma, masters of zen

Gotama has thrown in his sanctified towel

We sow our shade

Again, our only hope

Is in our hopelessness

In the darkest fleeting moment, undiscerned

In that pursuit which is our apathy

In that knowledge which is lunacy

Beyond these cold, expectant eyes

Beyond approach

We must prepare our feet

To crush the brambles and the briar

Into a still silent echo

Into the voidBeyond the psychic and the fool Los Angeles 1973

THE SECOND KINGDOM

I

The dogs are silenced

The fit has shook its course

The howl is yelped

Beneath the burden of a crushing stone

We dragged the carcass bleeding, bleeding


26/29

From the wreckage

We who knew nothing more than nothing known

We who heard the Word and chose our own

Proud heart to proud bone

Burning

From the wreckage

Left to our own devices

Ten years left to our own design

To mount each crisis

(We who were so quick, so quick to rise

To a life of rank affairs and blank occasions)

It seems a wonder that we made this shore

The lot of us, each

Lashed to the same crude squall

Even in our dreams we were divided

Ten yearsAt our knees without the sense to crawl

* * * * * * * * *

The air went dead. The valve slackened.

I saw it coming at breakfast, from out on the veranda

That sound, that awful sound from his chest

The doctor told me what I should do, but

I couldnt think. Honestly. I just couldnt think.

Three tanks a week at the end. Hed fill his cup

So quickly. Now look, he told me

Give Father Nino the list. Its all here, signed.

I left the dates blank. Everythings in order, so

You have nothing to worry about

I rode with him in the ambulance. Conrad and Sons.

You know, the ones with the waterfall.

He was such a meticulous man.

I worry about you, Nella, he said, You need to

Do something with your mind. Something to let

Go of all this. Something to let go

Of me. The garden needs work. Thank God

You have your program

O, little fish, dont cry, dont cry

O, little fish, dont cry, dont cry


27/29

II

The silence bore us

The silence ravaged us

Beginning with our journeys end

At the crossroads of rose and bramble

The juncture of wisdom and faith

On that solemn ledge between birth and death-of-self

Where promise meets redemption

And the echo meets the voice

The voice that bore us

The voice that, on a whisper, stilled the scream

Stilled our beating mindsFrom wind and flame and whirlpool

On a dark, dark night

At the gate dividing sense and spirit

In the womb of joy, the belly of silence

We, the living, who wear the cloak of lives confessed

We, the dreaming, who strive to put our dreams to rest

Scramble breathbare up this faceless cliff

Our knowledge spent, our houses laid to ruin

Burned by thirst and fire


* * * * * * * * *

The promise bore us

The waiting ravaged us

Upon the timbre of the wheel

The weary craftsman tunes his fate

Undaunted as the winds conceal

The distant thunder of the gate

Throughout the night, he weeps and sings

Beyond the ancient call to flee

Until the darker darkness brings

The hollow throat of memory

And through that silence turns the stair


28/29

And from that darkness paths descend

The weary craftsman prays for prayer

Beginning with his journeys end

III

The voice went dead. Our faith slackened.

Not for the duration of this dark night

But for one moment, one chord in time

The point between surrender and denial

Where the rhapsody loses pitch, falls

Out of tune

Descends into the dissonant strain of a life undone

Spreading words in blood, rumors of mortality

The rattle rattle of bone against boneOne chord in time that

Turns saint into sinner

Turns father against son and brother into exile

Turns us all to fools and madmen

For one chord in time

One moment, unattended

On a dark, dark night

Night of disguises

At the point where moving forward is fruitless

And turning back, unthinkableAt the last shudder of our last resort

We, the dying, who rally in the face of fear

Then watch our nerve sink downward, down in fright

As Truth shall fall on ears that hear

We see our courage stiffen, cold and white

Without the seed of faith to trust this night

Battered by darkness, knee deep in a fading dream

At the last measure of our lost hope

The last movement, the final stretch of rope

Our hunger starved, our vision robbed of sightAt the end of our beginning

Dwells the Light

* * * * * * * *

The dogs are silenced


29/29

The fit has shook its course

The howl is yelped

Though the seas threaten, they are merciful

The tides that swell, the winds that crack their cheeks

The night that pounds the bark ashore, the Word that speaksWithin a roar, within a stalking whisper, seeks

The face that loses face to seek, the wounded voice

Of decades lost, the choice that Birth and Death exhaust

Our laughter as it laughed before

The child that waits behind the door

Though the fire consumes us, the flames restore

At the first turning of the first day

Under the limbs of thirst and reclamation

We, the waking, who climb together toward the sacred banks

Our path laid bare, our prayer a prayer of thanksTo the breath that moved the current, the hand that drove the oar

The Grace that brought us to this shore

Our lives renewed as we ascend


Los Angeles, 1984

the house on the borderland-3 (2)

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