Still Here
Beneath the languid day a trial is taking place, some vanishing of broken stairways are lighting the way for the bottomless hearts to vanquish love, bones and blood, pajama man talks to himself in whispers of triumph and anguish, to still himself he smokes three cigarettes at the same time for he knows the trinity will soon reappear in a night crow feasting on the air, it dissipates in a silent growth of the fields of gray paths all leading back to the center, where hearts in refuge bleed a soundless cry of meadows avenged by black doves, a hawk circles in the sky- light of a parish that is the moon's stifled space and here in the jailed summer where we spend our coins on the last dead, where wise-men pursue an education from the strangers of morning who wake with pills and coffee wishing they had never strayed from the path to hell's mountain, a coldness in the air depicts in its rusty amour, a hurricane of size destroys paradise in a bitter second, homeless now the rose grows in boats of fallen and decayed mountains, the fishing of natives in the warmth of sun-stained waves just wishing there was some sugar to taste with lemon and ice, to see the great devastation of human minds and the peril of salvation growing indignant in the old rainbows of saints with nails so heavy in their palms, discussing politics in an early morning of brain- less scorpions all feeding on distilled water and cranberry tea, to stick it out, to suffer for some higher purpose, to bring the three rings back to heaven's fingers, to sleep as if in a trance, to know that death is but the leftover side of life, still here, though it has unfinished business, it would rather first be a shaman of the inquisition, a timeless firmament of shame and lazy voices trapped in a fire beneath their skulls, kept in the wind that blows from the southern of volcanoes whispering their freedom in a hospital that houses the sick and malnourished skeletons of Time.
Reprinted by kind permission of the Regents of the University of California,
Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Gift of Diane Walker Murray