invigilator · Ottoman urn
Viking indigo · sauterne

ruby of lost sunsets · psaltery twang
slowly they burn

the song · no longer dead on the page
its portals · the one return

i have danced there · though i do no more
the place is finished · and rimed with firn

i cannot make amends,
a stranger to this shore;
what's strange in mountain lands
is stranger on the shore

the moon is ice on ice
still colder in the dawn
the ocean's hiss defends
no stranger on its shore

if any passage swerves
it seems to find no term
i know this passage ends
though stranger with its shore

those who leave it write
the melancholy scroll
in time the rhyme descends
a stranger on that shore

Graywyvern cocks an eye
at trees of flame and finery;
the season understands,
stranger, too, to this shore

    "Red Plenilune"

go on foot; and go · armed
scarecrow's grin and crow-armed

white phosphorus the candid garb
snowman's coals and snow, armed

Graywyvern swinks a nesh farm
gingham-legg'd and calico-armed

When I will wear a garment all of blood
and find my clouds · drawn with a scrawl of blood

i want no high & low, exquisite things,
if twilight launch the delicate call of blood

not useless, next to useless; gray skies curdle
as here below cavorts a doll of blood

two abjads, same root-language; inbetween,
mountainous, ascends this wall of blood

Graywyvern sets his course at summer's end,
crossing his fingers 'gainst a fall of blood.

take away the name & i know
i do not know this city

why do i aspire in vain
even to dream of another city

i walked the cobblestones, i spoke
with what i thought were denizens of the city

different pathways, tasks, circles:
we hardly live in the same city

as Graywyvern weaves through traffic
he imagines the future ruins of his city

Dallas errands, through Seattle weather
on top of all, i have to battle weather

he whispers poems in the coruscating night,
into the sudden window-rattle weather

these Chinese clothes, this coltan-hearted cell
twinge one's conscience mildly in chattel weather

a few charred skeletons guide the way · Graywyvern
sits in his car at a light, in prattle weather

the standing dead · and all the lights they bear
out there · beyond the dark glass

the standing dead · what parley have i more
who stare · through the dark silent glass

i stand as dead · and do not yet require
such star · in the night of dark glass

clepsydra of fog in the dog days
build my fane of slag in the dog days

what autumn remembers, itself fades
as Mongols disembogue on the dog days

a garden's belated provision
gars my spirit beg in the dog days

the cripple, the leper, the orphan--
parables not vague in these dog days

dapple-dawn-drawn hurls graywyvern with care
small weapons are real big in the dog days