From “Dark Honey”

I am sure I do

not believe we can

move a pencil through

a white field, pulled by

a team of upside-

down ox-head letter

As, and in real fact

furrow it. Poor old

page-earth — sized, cut, scraped,

ploughed with mule-pencils

or impressed by ink,

illuminated,

printed, obscurely

inscribed, and revered

or destroyed, revered

and destroyed, and here

comes yet another

walled-garden crop for

eye, ear, lungs, legs, mind.

The cranium dome

hangs from its own silk

conceptual thread

of thought, conceiving

its infinite in-

complete perfection:

its Zeno, its Zeus,

its Dante, its Te

Deums and freak shows,

frescoes, twine theory,

money, bread, bricks and

wine, six-syllable

abstractions, axes

and facts, its every

variation of

custom, including

vertical graves of

men buried upside

down without their heads.

(In dusk-lit, telling

ways, tell me, little

swallow, Tuscan or

T’ang or wrung somehow

from time: since I have

neither feather nor

wing, how I too can

go into a grave

made only of air.)

“For your sweet joy, take

“from my cupped hands a

“little glittering

“of sun, a little

“honey — for this is

“what Persephone’s

“bees have commanded.

“A boat can’t cast off

“if it isn’t moored;

“no one can hear a

“shadow that wears fur

“boots; we can’t best our

“fright in this dark wood.

“Our kisses — these are

“all that we can save,

“velvety as bees

“that die if they are

“exiled from the hive.

“They’re murmuring in

“the transparent groves

“of the night; the wilds

“of mountain Greece are

“their motherland; their

“diet is time, lung-

“wort, pale meadowsweet.

“For joy, please take this

“pagan gift: this rude,

“rustling necklace of

“the bees that died, for

“these had transmuted

“honey into sun.”