The time is mine
I am of normal night
There are many heads
Wrenched upwards
From the tidal swarm
In the antipodes
But no man who dies here
Is buried
In his opposite yearning
Thin ground that blends feet to dust
Here is a placid library
Only stacked with the written rock
Some horde must steal the ship now
And sail out over what is written
Steal all heads stiffening upward
Riding on this… rodeo hide
I’ve never been sold
To the bragging operas
I tear only tunes from any score
Believing song a vice, a tornado
I’ll bring a dance storm for the dead, now
Who must strangle rocks even
To own their broken fingers
We’ll go marching rightside up
Against the opposite tide
Here’s the white bicycle
Where a man fell down, unfortunate
He was not buried there
A mere insomniac
On his own block
He follows me, sleeping now
While I drag his loud forest scream
At the crossing of wide streets
Here many drunks fell silent
Lamenting as I do, of burial and upward air
Struck by sudden impulses, I’d think
They decided then for themselves
And march, if they please, very loudly
While I tune up the edges of our own private tide
All these deaths written
Are so easy to ride on, their memories…
They toss me forward in pure folly
And I shock them beyond burial
As always toward Antipodes:
“I will untrace
What you are written
I’ve come to sow you
As forgotten”
Windows slammed then
And shutters too
And my written trade
Became too rough for wrangling
The winds that sting sideways:
Blood had swarmed here wrong
Stumbled neither toward me
Nor lively death
I could not read this sidewalk
Nor sing the dance of onetime
Toward the brutal broken truth
I lure only the dead from cities
But I know not the living spell
To break those shuttered windows
Rats, I believe, someone, who charmed from there
And children too, according to good legend
Was never paid in gold, but took his own…
I wish to peer inside those faces
That drop their terrible fear
On sidewalks the dead must leave
I am only caretaker
Of the Antipodes
Wrenching heads upward
From its opposite tide
To trance their spirits
Downward toward good ground
Still I wish to peer
Inside the sound of slamming
Shutters, do you sense
What happened there?
Those seamless whispers cause
My robes to crumble…
I am a legend too, no ghost
And remember nothing of my birth
But it was some shuttering window
That crumbled me to this:
Sweeper only of memories
Herding always the glad willing
From such places cursed by living hearts.
