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At the Hour of Love and Blue Eye Lids
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138 dArren JACkson At the Hour of Love and Blue Eye Lids I It was a lavender blouse Hiding nothing in the deep blue Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay. All look and likeness caught from earth Only because behind it the sky is a doubtful, a doubting In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue. (We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon.) When the mind’s wings o’erspread That pale, serrated indigo on the sea line, Your white face turned away; I weep; and walk endless ways of thought Through the narrow doorway into the sunlight dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope. The last memory I have, Of aught on that illumined face, Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. But the south wind blows the sky clear at times And, oiled and scented, urges you on To feel in sad amazement then The fool’s gold of the sun. 139 II Our face like a crumpled sheet Then the space where the face has gone and the gaze remains Where nothing can erase it, The screaming face it was before it cracked, Poised, unanswerable. If it is without Measuring the full cadence of bare Cobble of milky way That leaves bright flesh like sand and turns it chill, Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die. And open to the bright and liquid sky, Moon of a hundred equal faces Where the ordinary hornets in a human’s heart Reveal the crimson flower flash Tumbling like a waterfall of China silk, Autumn and silk and nothingness. . . Give me a thousand kisses. Then a hundred. . . But I know better. When desolation comes, Clouds take any shape they fancy. But whose is this vapid face Where the illusion of hope means skin torn from boxes? [54.163.62.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:24 GMT) 140 III It was not dark at first, that opening onto the red sea humming The white ink of clouds, each with the scalped face of the other, The white cobwebs and the dust on the eyelashes. Above the end of the sky of my dreams The light moves slowly past morning to afternoon While even the wish to be Melting snow, forest, rushes, river and boats Returns, on unshod pale and coughing horses, descending the ladder of Red birds new grass a yellow chair— Heart of the ice-light emptiness, live, intense— The poem of the mind in the act of finding A clear curve of stone, mottled by stars swathed in exotic finery, in loose silks. And when darkness folds this day empty, so that, before the other empty, a Ringing like the voices of birds, in very grave distress, All the resources the tongue braids Are unclenched. It is night. songs have blossomed With a thread of moonlight. 141 IV For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives Like the bird bones on the beach The salt of the bay had worked on for a season. empty perfection, as I take you in Under the incalculable sky, listless, diseased with stars (and the wind whipped my throat), something startles me where I thought I was safest: Perhaps half out of some speechless hope, He battles heart and arm, his own blue sky Of my skull shell of sky and earth Already half a spirit, mumbling and muttering sadly From the tangled web of thought and sinew. In my heart, a scatter like milkweed. Later thousands of dreams Loosen the cord of years: Long live the weeds that overwhelm The green sky from which rain was falling; And beyond it the deep blue air, that shows, Through deserts of erotic flowers, The carmine printed mouth. [54.163.62.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:24 GMT) 142 V nothing has remained for me except language: The fire red forehead—unconsumed by The lips of those whose lips Broke into a cataract Then faded, and to follow them I burn’d An urnful of ashes. divine Poet! did the pyre’s flames Quiet the barking distances? now that the moon, who remembers and only cares That we arrive here improvised, Is almost down, an answering gold That leaped through the dark, Observe the swelling turf, and say: You could lose your heart In the dark blue kiss, And the turning disk preserves, longer even, The trace of a bird in snow (as always Knowing in you, that we do not exist)— enough! enough! It...