The number of dates
Ever proliferates.
Each, pinned down, waits
Until all are done —
One and one and one.
We wake and sleep and wake
Without the slightest break
In the dropped mirror
Of each memory’s error.
I remember tomorrow,
Waves of it, row on row,
Just within my reach
On this particulate beach
That myriad suns bleach.
Dreaming isn’t thinking,
That hypnogogic sinking
Into the unblind unblinking.
Its images are un-clocked
Memories, mostly mocked
Distortions of what we are now,
Hurt children crying “Ow!”
We meet there the half known,
Not projected but shown
Us for no intelligible reason,
A fifth, black and white, season,
If wish fulfillment, unfilled,
Or a silent movie unbilled.
Though occasional nightmares
Will scare us with dead stares,
Only awake will we, screaming,
Take for real the seeming,
Mistake the dream for meaning.
Parallel lives will never meet.
They walk on a different street
Though both are equally fleet.
Perhaps at the vanishing point
They will end, a dovetail joint,
That nothing can pull apart,
Not a hawk, nor a work of art,
For there’s no change of mind
Can allow thoughts to unbind.
All, futile conjecture.
(Is the math of parallels pure?)
Lives do cross, were meant to,
But in sum they are so few.
So many hearts do not reach,
Not even trying, each to each.
Rolling, rolling like train wheels,
None knowing what others feel,
Each of us made of flesh and steel.
I own a clock that can’t tell time —
Acts like an unruly street mime.
Not only does it refuse to chime
At any quarter of or on the hour,
It always runs faster or slower
Than time itself, and often backwards.
Its hands clap out nonsense words —
There are no numbers on its face.
I turn a ring to change its pace,
As though duration is relative.
Its works know no imperative,
Not like an hourglass, but a sieve.
All directions are a trap.
Do not follow the map
Or be caught in amber’s sap.
Oh, the body can move
With the fevers of love
Or the lifted brow of thought,
But don’t learn what’s taught.
The aimlessness of dreams
Is only the ripping of seams
On a child’s outgrown gown.
You can’t dream up or down.
So do not try to run away,
Dear one. Stand still, sway,
And you’ll not wander astray.
There is one word that stands
Alone from all if’s and and’s,
Which has no face or hands,
Which, like a glistening bubble,
Floats above the verbal rubble,
Floats too high to be obscene,
Moving moveless and serene.
The word has never been spoken
Past teeth perfect or broken.
No tongue has been known to shape it,
Or fools’ babble to leak it or ape it.
Desperation, fear, or hatred’s keening
Can summon the word’s meaning,
But not the name of the word.
“There's no such thing! That’s absurd!”
Men cry — not quite saying the word.
Damn you, Thomas Eliot!
Why did you have to be a bigot?
Someday they’ll say, “Who? I forgot!”
At first it seemed a forgivable blot,
A line here and there, not a lot,
A silver string with a nasty knot.
Now it reads like an aneurism, a clot,
A stroke, or babble of a bibulous sot,
Unredeemable, no innocent mot,
But the crisis of your poetry’s plot.
Then you wrote the Four Quartets.
Your hate may be forgiven yet.
