Hope of Love Poems

[This sequence of poems from the early 1960s was recovered, along with numerous others, for Retrievals, a volume of Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010, to be published early in 2011 by Mark Weiss & Junction Press. Seventeen previous installments from Retrievals have appeared since 2008 in Poems & Poetics. (J.R.)]

1

.......................A season in the mind
.......................of hell, the furthest
.......................opening, a passage
............starting from the eye
............then journeys
............downward, further down
......................it meets itself
......................the meeting
is another start,
the passage out
returning

2
........................:
........................in mud, the silt
........................from Euphrates’ banks
........................he saw

........................THE CREATION

This was the silence of the beginning
& spoke

........................TIAMAT
........................APSU (abyss)

A woman without hands
with pierced sex crying

Who dreamed it: was it death
or hunger then: in whose mind
was the water born, whose image?

.......................CHAOS
.......................was its name

& there were colors in it, lines
in all directions, such fine animals
of every kind & faces without end

: chaos with colors with bright eyes

*

& ATUM grew restless
too but found no woman

bathed in NUN he felt
his member swell, its lips
would open toward him
then he took it in his hand

3

(These were the notes, the words written in the first phase. I read them over until they blurred, until they were words no longer but music, until the music was music no longer but light, until the light split into small suns & moons & spun around me. What did I see? What could I report to the others? So deeply imbedded as no longer to be a part of me. Light we cannot hold, but goes from us

4

& filled it with shapes
........................bending around the curve
........................a star breaks
........................two stars
a yellow tree grows toward the opposite light
as song

foliage of morning, water
....................... your body that falls
........................the empty light no longer
........................your body in the morning air
...............................forgive me
........................your body in its latitudes
...............................forgive....forgive me
as the yellow tree was music
grew................that I will know you
........................only for a day
forgive me

5

where does it start in us?
........................each time I draw breath
........................the pain
........................feels even deeper,
........................signals a loss
that leads beyond my escape to it
the face
detestable face
smiling at me over the black lamp
........................breaks the spell, hope
........................dies again
........................always the procession
........................of the eternal marchers
........................begins
but
“willing to stake your life & risk madness
.............................(writes Snyder)
how far already
........................when even the poem
is more than I wanted

6

A KEY. TO SPEAK THESE WORDS IS TO BE DELIVERED: AVOID TERROR AT ALL COSTS, OR ELSE KNOW DREAD AS ITSELF A KIND OF JOY: IT IS NO LONGER THE EYE THAT SEES, BUT SIGHT EXTENDS FROM THE OPEN POINT TO WHERE MOTION IS FIVE-DIRECTIONAL AND ETERNAL: FROM HEREON THERE IS NOTHING THE MIND KNOWS THAT IS NOT REAL

7
....................................for Robert Kelly

Strange
............that it takes so long to die

............: my father’s words
............stay with me are heard
as impulse.....as the image
say, or pivot
.......................lingers (Duncan tells us)
.......................in the melos
all the rest is
senseless
.......................although we sing it
.......................(as the garden spinning
turns
to join her body)

............& in perfect health begin,
............hoping to cease not till death