You’re Not Wrong

We dreamed this page,
This poem on scenes—
Plum shades in snow,
Sun on the cliffs.

Whole old worlds hide
In such small words—
Gold flowers of dawn
Bloomed on iced grass.

I have to go
To work, you laughed—
Brand new worlds sprawled
On harsh new terms.

Who has the time
To find old scenes
Drawn in blurred words?
We’re not your dreams.

The Whole Is One Piece of Its Parts

If a cube is how all things
Tend to fall, how can we make

Use of this? Tile time back, no
Gaps, like the floor of a bath.

Chop up the world like a root
To put in a pot for stock.

Next, look for the text that’s locked
In the book of change. What shapes

Show up in snakes’ nests of signs?
The mean count cuts a slim swath

Through all the picked paths, which means
The whole is, of course, the god,

Each bit a piece of its face.
Yes, Blake, each grain of sand casts

Its own spell, and all the small,
Like spray from waves, hold the whole,

And is each a wave, a face,
A whole, a self. But the whole?

We can say the shards break well,
So that they all seem to work

To hymn the shape of the source,
The first force that made them, but

Breaks in plates that hew by eye
Can’t say how we had the source

That broke as it had to break,
The face of whole from the whole

That was the shape of the break,
Face that broke in the first place.

The Well of All Shows

Is the night, the whole world,
The pit of lights, the soul
Of the beast that bore us,

The huge corpse that flung us,
A tip stretched from a limb,
Vast bulk all tips and limbs.

Depth is not down but up
And out, the well of stars,
Of waves as long as years,

As long as time, as change,
The font and source of all
Else, and there is no else.