Tiding

poem #94

photo by the author

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I know I could have fooled you, but really
I’m out on the pale strand,
caught in the high and low estrangements
of a translation I can’t manage.

Something like: the tide hovers,
unsure of anything but cities
in the cradle between these three northern seas,
who hide their young from the ocean’s sad eunuch...

             I come back in like I always do,
under the leather canopy of black maples 
composing winter papyri that are doomed 
to drift into an obscure literature;

back in under recent increases
in aerial activity. The houses
are being hollowed out by something
that must live in those new towers,

visible, unlike the old neighborhood,
from the barren strand of my translation
efforts. The colour is shucked from their siding —
muscled into those high, gaping faces...

             what would there be left to say anyway?
What in water is old enough that it recalls
the prophetic weight before lightning 
achieves its fiery kenosis through the Tree,

before four winds pour through 
the crown of the tower, and the dream inside 
the architecture comes tumbling
in stunned, languorous torrents?

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