Thomas Jefferson Abroad

– Quis est homo, qui non fleret…

1. Dark Tales

Stripped, and strapped to the bed; or standing, shackled,

hands and feet, a twisted column. Questions, questions….

O the windowless cell, the coffined light, men in their masks,

towel round my neck, the slingman's collar.

O the music, the noise of the new, and the news

shame and a shadow, a blank. It's a lewd law

that levels us, now, and the wrath of the righteous, the black

horizon of words, takes flight, but for us leaves no trace.

2. On The Road To Babylon

Broken vases: formless the flowers of the night –

light on the bees' back, star dust; fallen walls,

and of our lives, and longings, too.

Greed and freedom the same. And they betray us still,

the words. O the men and the women bent to the seed,

sower and reaper, the long rows without number.

Oil and asphalt, the desert. And what's done

done in our name, crossed in the sand, the iron

door of the dark as it opens, opens and closes.

3. Shopville

Faces in constant light: the faceless underground –

promise of paradise, diminishing accounts.

O the beauty of train tracks, crossed parallels,

gold and guilt, our purchase, imperial thread

made real, unrealized, unravels in our hearts,

our heads, the nightmare dream and dread.

O the flaw in the story, the silence that stutters,

the lapsed apple of life, unflowering legends,

the future fallen, and the rage that preys

not of the gods, dark blind nocturnal days.

Ciphers At Citeaux

– Thomas Merton in memorium

These are the monks, then,

whose order shall endure, the tall

in stature rooting in the one

undying dark, all

alone they know

the way down to the sun

is how to grow,

and humbly in their robes

of winter hand

shade to us, here, and

if they appear to stand

apart from the world's

walks it is to be

as words are, quietly,

part of the light

they lean to, silently,

as if in prayer,

and, claiming nothing, purify the air.

Underground Water

– For C. C.

It will never be quiet, that river,

plunging into the underground, ripping

dirt from the banks, stripping

root and rock and branch, damming

all that it cannot take into its shade.

Only when lost completely do I think

of it here, at home now, bowing an ear

to the earth, fabled belly, as if to hear

what it is that I wanted under rock,

in that down darkness, in the cave

I never visited and could not have.

And that one who dared to turn back –

unmothered, mothering, a child

savaged in the seed place she could not leave,

winter in fields of the heart, the frozen hurt –

more than the dark, a look

had to be torn, scattered, the blood

song burnt back black, the sun

sown where it sank, the silence fiery

as it flamed in to flower.