MADRIGALS

I: BOY AMONG THE ROSES

Torn between blossom and thorn
in the half-light of morning-
which is it to be?
Soon
from a possible noon
will come practical fire:
just now, there is just
The desire

II: SWANS (Le blanc souci de notre toile)

Wingless littering the lake
wings open papering the void-
perfect, they say nothing, feed, take
human lovers, are destroyed.

Silence is white, an empty page
clean sheets and airless virgin skies;
and after innocence, a cage
of birdsong where the black stars rise.

III: SIBELIUS’S EIGHTH SYMPHONY

icefall nightfall the air is thin
sounds will not carry in the dark

IV: A MIRROR SINGS

Meaning and antiphon: that figure both
present and distant is yourself as yet
unclothed in my apartfulness: beware.

V: METICULOUS, PAST MIDNIGHT IN CLEAR RIME…

No sleep tonight. I know a place
where moonlight stiffens on the face

where marble gods embrace below
the cloudy falling six-fold snow

there, silent and in silence lie
apart together you and I

VI: DEADLY VIRTUE

Well-dressed, scrubbed until
untouchable, these operators near
the senseless, the nude
soon-to-be-grateful but as yet
unwounded flesh:

clean, clean, the arrogant ways
of expert purity

VII: A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME

Horizon
and half-moon
rise by one
whole semitone

Voices break
the baroque
figures lark
to their music

On the stave
a relief
they believe
the death-motif

VIII: MAY

In the middle was the word
I was an egg once calls the bird

O madrigaux the parachutes
are open falling put down roots

They come in singles leave in pairs
laughing the water runs upstairs

May probably perhaps we’ll see
a month of possibility