Elegy

Elegy

Elegy

You count the cows, wrapping up the day
winter up in the barren hills means isolation, that much, and writing
is hard, it keeps sprouting from your head
like fire grass, and you must size up
to those writers who walk in many far & strange cities
who must have dreamed your days and nights
they warm your ears, like a felt hat, figure out your steps, and say take care
of the lungs, the backbones and the walking shanks;
with them you draw and trace maps
of the future skies, a topology of signs and key words
drugstores and theatres, ports and habours, and the Presence, youth.
your lines, scraping against the worn out terrain, draw a contour
shall be back to the house, shall perhaps, if permitted, have a desk
the animals are scything the feed and the mountain stars
run to the low ends of a stream the tribal children
bathe in, their parents keep guard
Water. This, the feverish shout of the first Spring, a rusted key, a vacuum flask
on parole in a library, you translate texts as a job, live and think
war routine days simply continue from where the hills end
changing of objects in heaven or changing of guards
has less to do with this turning the key, pacing the human walks
on the street there’s always a new grammar,
for the immense, the incongruous and the lonely