In all the ages
The clouds had made a crimson crown
About the mountains high.
The stormy sun was going down
In a stormy sky.
Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,
And hold your breath between?
In all the ages this can never be
As if it had not been.
No beauty save impermanence
I don’t know the Latin names of flowers.
I know that there are cities wherein stars
Will labor to appear in bursts of as
Or under, will command the color green
To work with from or of or in in staves
And paragraphs, will demarcate the limits
Of the sky. I recognize the colors
Of acacia from paintings and poems.
I know a high wind carries rhyme across
The ocean. That smoke, it coaxes signals
From the fire. What words you speak I too
Have spoken of: of of, the turning back,
The opening beyond and up above us,
The movement forward and the reasoning
Behind. I know that the horizon falls out
Of perspective, that toward music the sea
Will harken back and find in language
No beauty save impermanence, a minor awe.
So clean
This
time will wash
away
so
clean not a
cry
will
be left in
it
An inch of air there
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.