and left barges to rust on salt plains that used to be seas

– a sound louder than the memory of rushing water,

a drumming that beats and soaks and drains

the darting signs on which you’ve pinned

yesterday, tomorrow, up, down, strange, charm, beauty, truth,

faster than you could ever hope

to scan and set them in a flowchart of home.

Rothko

Shimmering through pillars of flame:

the zero field, a burning gate.

Tablets blurred by the haze:

not yet word, not heard,

not thunder-voiced law.

The eye, before sleep, had taloned

a long groove in the night sky.

The darkness closed every door

in eight directions. The ninth is dawn.

Now the horizon folds and twins itself:

saffron-scoured, scrolling westward

to seabirth. It sparks to flame,

spells out an arc of foam

across the ocean.

The eye opens wide

in the house of whispers,

the house of sand

where eagles’ feathers swirl

in eddies, and the terse earth

empties its veins.

Hangman’s Song

A tired man will hang at dawn

for hearing voices in his head.

Tomorrow’s newspapers won’t be read

and the Republic will sleep peacefully.

The Rottweilers have been taken off the leash,

they are nosing out children in the dark.

Tomorrow’s joggers will stumble in the park

and the Republic will sleep peacefully.

A white crow settles on a branch

stripped of its leaves, which boys shred.

The flayed rain trees will soon be dead

and the Republic will sleep peacefully.

The lion’s open mouth is foaming,

his keepers have foraged for flesh all night.

They will pile up their plunder at first light

and the Republic will sleep peacefully.

A man is horsewhipped for bringing the sky

into a cold room without after or before.

They will nail his shadow to the door

and the Republic will sleep peacefully.

A man swings

like a broken clapper in a bell.

The hangman knows all but cannot tell:

the Republic must sleep peacefully.

The Oracle Tree

The woman walked up to the oracle tree

and bled its bark for answers.

It’s no use trying, said the tree.

They’ve tied me up with holy threads.

Roots burn through my shoes,

leaves cloud my eyes.

I’m not me. I’m

that man jogging along the promenade,

arms outspread,

scattering fistfuls of feathers

to the winds.

At Twenty Paces

You thought he was a rumour

when he first rolled into town

in his straw hat and red neckerchief,

whistling at the pigeons and handing out

bagatelles at the café for free.

Then one day you saw him staring straight at you

across the stoplight. You weren’t going

to pass him in the street without speaking.

You waved out, said hello, crafted a smile.

He didn’t wave back. Broken

pieces of sky for eyes.

Sniper’s Drill

Depending on where you’re crouching

you can parse the gaseous middle-aged man

as slumping over a newspaper in his stuffed armchair