Works & Loves

Works & Loves

Works & Loves

               1

Rain fell as a glass
breaks,
something suddenly everywhere at the same time.


               2

To live like a painting
looked into from more than one angle at once –

eye to eye with the doorway,
down at the hair,
up at your own dusty feet.


               3

“This is your house,”
said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket,
and I entered.


               4

The happy see only happiness,
the living see only life,
the young see only the young,

as lovers believe
they wake always beside one also in love.


               5

However often I turned its pages,
I kept ending up
as the same two sentences of the book:

The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.

Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish.


               6

A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain
but not by its flies.


               7

The grief
of what hasn’t yet happened –

a door closed from inside.

The weight of the grass
dividing
an ant’s five-legged silence
walking through it.


               8

What is the towel, what is the water,
changes,
though of we three,
only the towel can be held upside down in the sun.


               9

“I was once.”
Said not in self-pity or praise.
This dignity we allow barn owl,
ego, oyster.