Who hasn't dared just once
to draw breath tramp and free,
and spy a Rhinewine star
on a lilac (alack!) heaven's arch?
If not castratos and dormice,
our lot is the road.
Without a friend the road is dead,
and each heart knocks "I'll find one!"

Steer clear of hair too black or red:
russet, that's the shade.
He must know how
to bow,
to rise,
romp, walk, stand,
sit pompously, lay like a child,
Gray eyes, like a friend's,
thoughts clear and brave,
and at bottom a heart like an anchor,
so that you'd be ashamed
to palter
or bustle like a woman
on empty rounds.
Campaigns
(trumpets will wake) await!
Always girded,
feet dry,
hips slim,
breast firm,
snub nose straight,
gaze clear.
Roads
into foul weather and fair,
battles, thirst,
shipwreck, -
I could bear all with him!
Forget all but him!
Extra baggage overboard!
A woman weeps.

The well's dried up, run out...
If heaven sends no rains
where to get wet?
The seabottom is dry,
the kestrel flies the hand
in search of not just any prey.
Where are children born from?
Who will fill the world,
answer for deserts in paradise?
More ponderous, ponderous
(but we ought to grow light and rise)
as a despondent sinker
downward we fall to darkness.

Cretanesquely exulting,
the stripling call
rose from the stone,
holy, from the flat stone.

Helios, Eros, Dionysus, Pan!
Twins! Twins!
Where two are bound a third is born.
But not always mortal.
Know one thing immutable:
Where two are bound a third is born.

Backs abducted
by the hollow of roses,
Rejoice: my fate
inflated, folks!

Helios, Eros, Dionysus, Pan!
Twins! Twins!

Heaven is pleased by body born,
pleased as well by spirit born...
if you're not deaf to wisdom,
you'll learn which pleases more.

Twins! Twins!

Particles, seed,
light fuzz!
Fruit tribe,
Milky spirit!
You fly not in vain,
you sow, burning!

In air, fire, earth, and water, -
the free Phoenix will rise everywhere,
our eyes are full of earth,
Viy's lids are hard to lift,
dim and blind, the mind is deaf,
if the blind sister does not come.

We see the children, towers, trees,
We see rainbows to heaven's lee,
Sea lions by the ice-clad clods,
When seas are clear we see the cod,
those who see best slice wide the gut
and hear mush crawl through tripe and glut.

But we do not see
how thoughts are born - can you weigh them?
how feelings are born - can you seize them?
how the Iliad is born - bite off a chunk!
how angels fly, - why sniff?
how the dead live, - can we talk?

At times we see and don't at once,
when the hypogean sister knocks,
and we say: "What a dream!"
but death, - who has seen her?

Moles, moles, why are you crying?
On the slender pole the shipboy sings:

Our stow has many holds,
each hoard shines in its own.
Sow rye and you get rye.
Rye from oats - a foolish lie.

What bears a child? Flying seed.
What raises cypress on the hill? The same.
What erects ringing pagodas? Flying seed.
What feeds Divina Commedia with movement? The same.
What guides round dances up in gyres
of Platonic thoughts
and Fokin's trots
and Seraphim's circles?
Flying seed.
What bears nothing
but like grave death
lies within itself
ike the grave's wet weight?
Wingless seed.

Wayfarers we, and moving is our vow,
Children of God, and making is our vow,
Moving and making are life,
the which yclept is Love.
Moving only on up:
men, mountaineers and dancers.
Lift high the cross!

In the shadow of Brazilian Broc‚liande
maidens sat in a circle,
weaving lilac lianas,
over an empty altar.

"Alas! Alack!" - the barrenness revealed!
Prophetic Merlin dead or gone to seed.
The spring secretes a spring thaw flood
from pregnant depths of valley sludge.

The wind drives off the raw, damp fumes,
A farkle bonfire crackles, plumes.
"Alas! Alack!" The hoopoe moans,
and meanwhile sluicegates dim like bronze.

Love is moves,
No moves - no love,
No moves means wingless seed,
Maidens of Broc‚liande.

Merlin's mourners answered:

Barrenness! Barrenness!
Alas! Alack!
The pivot moved,
the breast is still.
Seed flew,
away it flew and flew:
no fruit. -

Hoopoes, cockatoos, mockingbirds,
flamingos, herons, swans
flap wings
and swivel eyes.

Alas! Alack!
No fruit!

Over trees an ice-floe drifts in air;
on the ice-floe stands a boy,
he holds a compass, scales and stair.
A stair with three steps.
The stair is gold.
The boy - amber,
The ice-floe - sky blue,
The Holy Spirit - rosy.

Maidens of Brocéliande,
Can you count to three?
God will not ask for four.
1Rub your eyes:
A ladder, - one two three
Only: one two three,
And not three, two, one, -
Or nothing will be won.
I am talking of love,
just what you're thinking of.
Where there are one and two
three can be there, too.
Three does not live alone.
One and three,
Two and three,
again no life.
You mustn't gallop and miscarry.

Such a conundrum.
If you guess it all will come.
One for two
Two for one
Three for all.
If one for all
two weeps.
If two for all
one weeps
and three doesn't come.

Only three for all,
but without one for two
and without two for one.
There is no
three
for all
That's all the secret there is!

A promontory flames through schooner bights.
Waves drag at us abaft the stern like wine.
All bravery, all spirit, all that's right
I'll pass along to you when you are mine.

Whoever loves, uplifted, true to troth,
will traipse through heaven's deserts side by side,
but fate's long laid a road out for us both.
You are my friend: you're russet and clear-eyed.