“What you of gossamer wove” — Paul Celan

1

And we were ushered forth:
this thin place, so lightly forged.

The concupiscence of unmarked time,
fires alight high in the ancient trees,
foreign thunder,
hoofbeats crossing marsh,
bare ground, almost inscrutable
by half-graves.

If flame is pronouncement,infinitive—

2

On the margin of the real, “this” gathers
— coaxed from the misknown —
a garment
to clothe its unbeing.

Unbury the sanctuary lamp.

— the lamp
is dead, my friend, its wick in heaven.

3

Chandeliers gleam in fakery, fête the world:
false light, self-gloried.

“The swallowed mirror cannot teach,” says the prophet,
voiceless
these seven years.

4

Darkness,
clear in its aftertaste, draws upon us;
draws out the dull amber of the age,
as if we were already encased in it,
halted tributary.

5

Low sun on slate-colored pages.
I read in the hospital bed.

I claim the past is never woven.
I am here to avoid the unceasing looms.

Frosted windows preclude seeing
and being seen — avoid things, the windows say,

 against their higher selves.
— “Send the stranger back to storm, Arsenius.”

6

Our happenstance held us
in its arms.
Dead embrace.

7

The healers avoid me.
The snake-oil men pass over.

8

I can’t bear to watch me do this to myself;

I do this to myself, thus,
with my eyes closed.

Why the dream’s insistence
to correspond to the real?

9

By right of use, you have crossed —
plainspoken and numinous.

10

There are no syllables for this.
Blood and water will spill and seep.
What plants might arise?

You are not to call this a burial place.

11

To conduct is to know capacitance, impedance,
the resistance of my bones,
the seized.

A forgotten chant

on trembling lips. A shan’t.

12

False-worded, false-wrought. What souls.
By what warrant do you compel such faith?

— “Mourn as a stone would mourn.” —

— “How does a stone mourn?” —

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