NAMELESS IN THE DARK

NAMELESS IN THE DARK

            Poetry is the music of what happens.   

                           —Seamus Heaney

We are nameless in the dark.

I imagine myself as a stalk of asparagus.

Wild sparrows come to feed on my red berries

and weave between the green pillars in the garden.

Parthenogenesis, apartheid, Parthenon.

Gods come to live here in the mud

to separate fact from reality.

What did we cross over to become human?

Here in this room where our hearts

write about what passes,

nonsense is a kind of sense after all.

Cool-headed poets walk

with smoke rising from their feet.

Who slept in the depths of the deep night

whispering, whispering until my eyes were heavy

as gravel beneath the foot of the elephant?

A steady stream of students grab paper

as the words flow like run-off after the storm

Chairs squeak to the counter rhythm

of scraping pencils.

6/85

from a CPITS workshop with Mike Tuggle and Susan Kennedy

I found very different versions in a journal dated 6/85, recopied, but from when? So I've moved them all to 6/3/85, as I think the 5/31/84 is  an incorrect date. I lost most of these poems due to epic ASCII failure. So this is the facsimile.

first draft
We are nameless in the dark.
Imagine yourself as a stock of asparagus. 
While sparrows come to feed on red berries
and leaves green pillars of sparrow grass. 
Parthenogenesis. Apartheid. 
Gods come here to live in the mud. 
Separate from reality. 
What did we cross over to become human?

Coolheaded poets walk 
with smoke rising from their feet.
The orange octopus slept
in the deep, dark night depths, 
whispering, whispering, 
until my eyes became heavy as gravel. 
Beneath the foot of the elephant, 
a steady parade of students 
grabbing more paper 
as words flow like runoff after the storm. 
Chairs squeak to the resident scraping pencils.

Moonlight grabs him by the forehead
Heart's own mountains
To be here, now, fixed under the stars. 

6/1985