Mary Barnet
DAY
Calculate the length
of days seemingly forever
stretching past the clothesline
in the sun on the lawn
minds travel through trees,
sparkling!
where creatures play,
through octagonal windows:
rainbows everywhere
real as eternity.
cut short only by the duration
of our eyes extending
through every breathing creature.
beyond the axis
earth spinning in the sunshine:
the everywhere
that is space and time,
In the memories of man
eternally recorded: sparkling!
brilliantly sparkling of now
experience holds forever in our arms
this revolving day, and night, and day...
SILENT TRIUMPH
Nine Canadian Geese at first light
Swoop in through the low-lying fog
Onto the Glimmerglass surface of Manitou Lake.
A young chief softly propels his maiden
Over the smooth waters
In a canoe whose strength
Is in the pressure of the water
On the almost tissue-like bark
Of the canoe he has made.
They glide together through that dawn
Like the hawk and his mate who soar above
Watching with two-foot wings
One hundred feet over the ground
With eyes so keen
They can see the heart beating
In the tiny chest of the mouse they will devour.
Terns and swallows flit and dive
With blue-green wings around
His Princess with the dove-brown eyes.
Captured by him on a dawn like this
From her elderly mother's longhouse
Near the mouth of the river
so recently called "Hudson"
By those who came to live on its banks
From across the Great Sea.
Beneath the earth on that hill
There is solid rock
And Indian Pond lies only a score of feet away
In a grove of elms, maples and willows.
Now the mature male turtle has boldly climbed
Onto a tree stump near the shore of the lake
They canoe today
To sun himself on another glorious morning
Of another glorious day.
GUR EMIR : KING'S GRAVE
I can only see Samarkland in a picture
book
One of the great cities of Central Asia
Where ornate gold and lapis stucco
decorate the mosques and
mausoleums
Great kings and thousands of slaves
Labored centuries to build
A flourish of color in a mosaic faience
---like the tree that falls in the forest---
Unseen by western eyes
Timur, a fierce conquerer
Builds himself a mausoleum with
yellowish green onyx tile
on the walls waist- high.
The railing around the tomb in finest
alabaster.
The slab covering the grave is one great
piece of nephrite jade;
One conquerer tries to lift it--it breaks in
two;
Then on the day Hitler invades Russia
The soviet archeologists lift the great
Timerlane's crumbling corpse from his
grave.
UNTITLED # 31
I have said good-bye a thousand thousand times
In years that passed like fog;
I have seen the sunset as through a mist;
I have drunk draft on draft of grog.Reflected in a vision's glass
I've seen mist after mist pass into tears;
Til at last I said good-bye
To all the spectres of my infant years.
IVY
From out their hanging basket
The vines drop to the air
Draping themselves
Through shafts of billowing breath
Like strands of fresh-smelling hair
They cling like lovers
To the skies
Growing always, more bounteous
Green and luscious to my hungry eyes.
THE AFTERHOURS
When women of the night
slink "home" with men
who do not know their names:
mornings that are still
wet with hangover headaches,
forgotten cooing
that knows not any
day that follows not-love
whirling skirts, dancing hips and double drinks
gone with the dawn.IN THE DENTIST'S
they said,"he was here, he was here."
I said who
the father you never knew
they said good-bye
for me, I guess.