Two poems

Thoughts on college no. 4

In the blinding daylight
Of gilded future,
A boy releases a bird –
Two birds, five birds, and another –

And sits and stares and bathes
In the undulations of the daylight,
Blank-eyed, bleak-eyed, dead-eyed;
And the daylight dims as vision vanishes.

And out! a whirlwind – and a bird
Bearing a branch half-withered,
And another a twig, and another the same,

And another a branch bearing buds –
Almost alive, as though struggling to be alive –
And another a branch which had atrophied
Suspended in purgatorial stagnation –

And a last bird (a dove were it not trite)
Bearing a branch, a bird that told of the
Quiet deluge, that the flood was nearly over,
And that there would soon be dry ground –
For the boy hung in empyreal daylight –

And that the boy must soon descend
And dig his toes into the earth,
And grasp his fear and toss it
As a handful of wet dust,

And taste the fruits of the kingdom
And realize that the kingdom is not yet,

And feel the limestone edifices
And feel the marble, holy columns,
And feel in his heart a half-satisfied longing,

And feel a hand come over his eyes
And feel the earth come into his eyes
And feel the deadness come out of his eyes,

And that he must See
Into the gilded future, and See
Inside the gilded future, and See
Beyond the gilded future –

That he must See
And become a man.
____________________

Why I read fiction

On deep blue bedsheets
I knock on the door of a paper house
And open it, unbidden,
For no one is inside to let me in;

And in I go.

Sometimes I knock
On the door of a house
Not of paper, but of pixels;
I knock –

And in I go –

To Spain, to the gothic South,
To be excited, to get depressed;
In I go
In order to be moved

Without moving.