THE BOOK OF HOURS (2011)

I lack confidence in the wine fields.
I lack confidence in the cloisters.
The old ways of my blood will always be the source that seeing has forgotten.
I have died, and now there is no light to pray.

(3/2/11)

* * *

Our daily prayer is a time, sometimes a break
from the blankets that were to keep us warm,
a break from the wounds of candles.

(3/3/11)

* * *

God’s wrath is quiet for one left to know—
we go at peace and say, “Oh, I can make it.”
But will there be clear water on the good you do?
The mistakes still breathe inside your head.

(3/4/11)

* * *

How strange to see the curtains rise.
How strange to see the leaves are blowing—
you have not grown old.
The sun sinks into it all from far away.

So many live on the bridge.
So many live on and solitary.
So many live on and don’t want anything.

So many live on and solitary.

(3/5/11)

* * *

The old national flag is shown before the door opens,
hanging like flies on the same brilliant light,
hanging like flies on the necks of prisoners.
I’ve come back to remind you.

He walked out, and now for the rest of my life
I will have to fast.

(3/6/11)

* * *

You’ve asked me to the mountain.
You’ve asked me to set free my most holy thoughts.
You’ve asked me to the porch.

Left alone in flames, we feel you
whenever we feel that particular dream.

(3/7/11)

* * *

Drag this old body to set free my father’s empire,
pain increases until there’s nothing left under the darkness.
Keys are left under the bridge
for anyone who has been trapped by this city.

(3/8/11)

* * *

The country is this grey time machine,
an ache for a different kind of reunion.
Scratching the past, scratching the spring,
it all looks the same.

Our pious hands lay a different kind of year.
Cathedrals are open toward us.

(3/9/11)

* * *

I was there in the room on the day you were born.
I was there before, already know
the dead that walked this life.

Camping out in the thicket, no mercy has the way home.
Keep digging when too many others tell you
to let go of my being, until too many others tell you why.

Homes are too many people we once knew;
cathedrals are not real anymore,
everything that’s happened to us…

(3/10/11)

* * *

The Virgin Mary’s shattered face on the darkness
of my senses drops into the church to see it all
from thousands of distant friends.

There are faces that are so sincere and voices so quiet,
left alone in everything.
The hands lay a cover over you
whenever we feel that you are gone.

(3/11/11)

* * *

Our devout hands prepare a lonely place,
and when I am a lonely place, monks in the apple orchards
keep the silence. And when I am a lonely place,
I’ll walk with you through the desert.
Watchmen climb up to the city of angels
and keep the burned vines.

(3/12/11)

* * *

The elderly sit in the corridors, holding their clocks.
The elderly sit in dreams and pass quickly.
And I am troubled as the mob flees.

Something created from my blood will always be
the faces of tears, far from our childhood,
far from our fields.

(3/13/11)

* * *

I’ve been doing some thinking, searching for a traveler
of the spring streets of Venice. But the old brick by the new
cannot be born, and you go home when people know nothing.
We will live and die in these bodies, but I lost my way
when I lost my best friend, searching for a thousand orange trees
on the streets of San Francisco.

(3/14/11)

* * *

You took a piece of the world,
and on the day you walked through cemeteries kept the darkest night.
You took a piece of the storm, a piece of the way home.
You were born this empty child of mine,
planting the fig trees and sleeping in the fields.
And I will not break your fears, soon as you
move on with your life.

(3/15/11)

* * *

Finding the hill receives the way
by forgetting a lifetime of sunlight in every mirror,
by walking across the river that has proven its worth
in things stored up inside of experience. Today I sat
on the heavy boughs of the tree, but the pain of it
won’t unlock the future. A little time won’t change
that stumbling that leads the way
through this dark part of redemption.

(3/16/11)

* * *

It’s easy to unravel this old freedom, like a thousand years
to see a village. I sat for a thousand years to give it all
for a storm, to see that everything would be all right.
And still it’s hard somehow to dwell in treetops,
to let go of the pain of distant friends.
Today I will take a life someone else always wins.

(3/17/11)

* * *

Playgrounds are a part of people we may keep missing.
It all gets lost in front of the trees, and I will try to
stop ghosts that have no need for tomorrow.
You to the dead keep digging when my eyes close
the discovery of a sudden change of weather.

(3/18/11)

* * *

I dreamed of you, and we found each other
wandering in the dark. Even pilgrims forget what it is
to prop the lanterns high. The guillotine is delayed
and we hold our candles in the cold. No mercy
has the sea, but I close my eyes full of vengeance.

(3/19/11)

* * *

The earth still circles around, and suddenly
turns to a storm over a storm over
a thousand olive trees; my head will be tears
in a lifetime of greater ones—the fog of humanity.
I have my worries, and the world suddenly turns
to unthread this tired century.

(3/20/11)

* * *

:: For the Feast of Naw-Rúz ::

The war chest is a mystery to the grief of the door.
I know you find your way by touch, only green hills
as the path to move onto either side.

Then, with little distance between us, how to write
about you today because it will change tomorrow,
or a sudden change of trees and current events.
History will go on on your roofs and I don’t know
if we’ll be able to know, or how to prepare for a thousand
footprints.

Every place you see, what I saw before
may hold true, or maybe it is all coming to the river
that has halted for a time.

(3/21/11)