The Far Mosque (4 page)

Glacier

The wind tells all the dream-lives:

in one, walking alone in a cactus garden.

Or there's another: me, old, dying, in a wind-filled beach-house.

Polished hardwood floors, the kitchen full of relatives and friends

who have come to be with me at the end.

We sometimes find ourselves on the widow's walk watching the water,

reminiscing about a life that hasn't happened.

Cactus garden, you are a ruse.

Beach-house you are only an echo.

My seventy-third year is a glacier,

advancing across me in my sleep,

decanting my dream-lives,

sculpting new topography as it recedes . . .

The Book

Before I came into the air from my mother,

I breathed her water.

Below any temple steps, there is always a beggar

who having renounced the world, seeks forms of direction.

Blind sometimes, or in ecstasy,

the book has become not a book.

Sometimes I wake up starving.

It is hard to know when to eat.

The page, square cover, sewn edge, table edge,

my weak sense of direction, collapsing to smoke.

When I wake like this, when neither the dream nor the day

have ruptured themselves into belief, the book unbuckles

and I think all of life is by faith only, that we are never delivered

from original water, that we are all a single equation

that approaches the axis, never arrives.

The New World

Ask your brother why he will not come to you.

The moon has fallen, spilt from your skin,

and all the broad fields are crying

we are done.

The lion-flowers flare once to tell you we've been here before,

we know the end: your hand, the long road in your hand,

the forked tongue in your hand.

Your brother is coming to speak in tongues.

Saying:
let the molten mortar of the fallen walls cool.

Let the temper of the men cool.

We've burned out the rainforge, collapsed all the predicting tables.

The sky has turned into a blue stone, rising out of the sea.

Imagine the geographic possibility:

your brother, again in the trenches.

Still, there are other chances: sculptor, sculpt it back to rock.

Thrash the bread of this back to bran.

Return the lost dove to its sea-faring perch.

Now, dove, re-seed the burned fields, travail the sated,

and guide us to the new world, quite lonesome, quite far,

but agreeable, and green.

Danger

The sky-wheel spins and a voice unravels

Now you will need to weave without thread

Now you will no longer hear

Yesterday a voice talking with me slowly, quietly

A silver thread going from her mouth

Into my ear

Lying in bed this morning giving everything up

The years

The years

Well

The brook flowing slowly

Endlessly rowing through impassable dark

Urged on by a rattlesnake soundtrack

Plain blue, solo, artless

I am kept unto prayer

Returned again to unbelief

And when she was sent to me

The well

I sang
thou art my sister, my broad year,

My seed-ear, my leaf . . .

July

We lay down in the graveyard, hinged there.

Emerald moss growing thickly in the chiseled letters.

You're explaining how trees actually breathe.

Green in the names and trees went up to join gray in the sky.

Then the gray-green sky came down in breaths to my lips and

sipped me.

NOTES

Gallery:
“The Man Who Taught William Blake Painting in His Dreams” is a painting by William Blake.

Renunciation:
The epigraph is from Dickinson's third letter to Higginson.

Travel:
The italicized quote is a slight adaptation of George Braque, from
Painters on Painting,
edited by Eric Protter, Dover Editions.

In the Agnes Martin Room:
The Agnes Martin Room is at Dia:Beacon Riggio Galleries in Beacon, NY.

Night Boat:
Mister Stevarius is online:
www.stevarius.com

Cemetery at Montparnasse:
The epitaph is carved into the headstone of sculptor Leopold Kretz.

Event:
The first painting described is “Seagulls in Flight” by Nicolas de Stael. The second is “L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise” by Van Gogh. This poem is for Catherine Aga.

Dear Rumi:
Shams-e-Tabriz's name means “Sun.” The “a” in “Shams” is pronounced like the “a” in “ago.”

Rhyme:
“All the words in the world rhyme” is rumored to have been said by Olga Broumas at a seminar at Sarah Lawrence College. “Green Notebook, Winter Road” is the title of a book by Jane Cooper.

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has been publishing poetry since 1973. The press was founded in Boston, Massachusetts as a cooperative wherein authors performed the day-to-day undertakings of the press. This collaborative element remains viable even today, as authors who publish with the press are also invited to become members of the editorial board and participate in editorial decisions at the press. The editorial board selects manuscripts for publication via the press's annual, national competition, the Alice James Award. Alice James Books seeks to support women writers and was named for Alice James, sister to William and Henry, whose extraordinary gift for writing went unrecognized during her lifetime.