BELLFOUNDING
Before the world, nothing was side-by-side,
so no two things could be compared, or wished for
or become, stars had yet to function
in myth: there doesn’t have to be truth
just what we want to glean from the whole
place lowered over the mold
and clamped together, bronze pouring
between us and what we know,
pouring mouthward into a cave
that can be rung against the walls of a mountain
itself a mold the sky falls upon
as the present falls upon the past, the samurai
falls upon his sword you hold out for me,
you wait by ocean’s obfuscating grave
whose roiling echo recalls the cargo of Zong, whose
voice are we to follow or did we follow
and when did you start speaking in sun
through the fingers the trees lace in front of my eyes:
your voice was once dark, I know this
because I can see with just what I remember
of you when you were my parents
and when you were Agamben you told me, the only evil consists instead
in the decision to remain in a deficit of existence
so you lifted the bell and the soil stayed there
though nothing now is where you left it:
DWELLING
It is alright. You may dwell in me. I am the conflagration
of the never-at-home and the never-not-at-home that makes you
part of the history of people
in the evening air that Stevens speaks of. I am the here that slips
from Rilke in the time it takes to say. And though I have no holdings,
you may increase your stock in me;
you may reserve the right to vessel. To partition if you need to.
To live amongst walls and proclaim those walls a home. Even now
I have already clothed you in vanishing
numbers, which as they rise cluster in your not being
able to picture them as they are. Able to picture me without with,
without resemblance to prior dwelling,
which pulls at you now as you stand before me. Arms supporting
a door the way Mary supported Christ in pietà.
