New Year’s Eve Madrigal
The trough between this evening window
& horizon’s falling, sleet-smeared show
is the stretch between the old year on spindle pins
& whatever’s coming, passing as the new, as “in.”
From here, it’s all a gothic, dishabille heap
of horsehair loveseat wire, creep
of bamboo, kudzu, in which the crickets
no longer weep too little, too late, decrying debts, debts.
Unrest always. And my mouth’s too small
to tell what’s beaten from the rug, the caul.
I used to use the word. Said “pleasure trumps pain,”
&c. No longer. But I’m good at punctuation.
Which this is: the year’s last, or almost last, syllable.
For which I hope my love for love is always liable.
* * * * *
Baroque Madrigal
Prone to ornament —
crooked teeth, skin-tag, dented
collarbone, a long, heavy sheet
with nothing underneath —
I believe possession’s somewhat
for to hold, flaming clot
of any day, so close, so, so —so —
above horizon’s proof, old
magnetic sill. Prone to hide,
the soul selects, debrides.
The soul escapes. In closets,
bushes, beneath a desk.
Small & folded am I always, then.
Baroque-ish. Strangely unbroken.
* * * * *
Breughelian Madrigal
Winter, The Birdtrap, Pieter Brueghel II
A matter of low countries —
ice-stunned canals, dusk-cheeky
planks scalloped with steaming bowls,
skates, a scape theatrical & claustrophobic —
multifarious concoction on view
but private too, woman with hiked wool
skirt peeing in snow, old shed door
propped up, rigged with trick stick to trip & floor
unwitting doves: scant meat, true.
Wicker bones. Steep rooftop snoods,
black trees, vista latticed, un-baited,
single black crow bearing the weight
of thought, pre-modern, anachronistic
& so already slaughtered, I know myself in it.
* * * * *
Great-Horned Owls Madrigal
Over winter’s pit, orchestral tune-up
of settle & unrest, un-tuxedoed,
comes her dactylic whooooo, ooo, ooo,
occult, unorthodox, muezzin hiccup
whose source I’m always searching out
inside a camoflaged theater, gray scrim
tangle, kudzu, ivy opera cloaks, pines,
a mistletoe-gibbeted dead oak.
High up, she’s there! sturdy as a contract,
ruthless satellite, cat’s ears, head swiveling.
From eave above my window, in answer,
another winged span swoops, alights upon her back.
As in a mirror, two bodies make one
new thing. Silence then. Blenched, unharrowing.
* * * * *
Vulnerable Madrigal
Susceptible, pre-disposed, lies
the new year. Aloft, a day moon,
half a cracked egg against Titian blue,
uncompromising yet untrue
to all but itself. What I do,
watching sky, is what words do to what
we’re liable to do, love.
They diminish. Mistake.
In a sudden liquid blink, dusk.
No claim here, or anyplace
but the jumble two bodies make.
Listen: verge of syllables. Nerves.
Earth’s uneasy pew. Footsoles
lips press, anew. Close as cloud floes.