1
Surrounded by great thunder-floods
and rending storms, a small face,
wrinkled as a peach pit, is seen
for an instant in the sky, wild hair
and bountiful beard the whipping
manes of rainclouds and winds.
A split-second reflection of stillness
and pause, it disappears at once
into the wide tangle of the fracas
covering the heavens.
2
Within the family portrait, a circle
of painted mirror above the mantle
reveals the artist at work both within
and beyond the frame and reveals
as well the window behind the artist,
outside which paned glass a moon
cat with round yellow mirrors
for eyes sits looking back through
the moment when we first perceive
the center and the score
of the before and the after.
3
From a train traveling
through a midnight countryside,
one might glimpse on a distant
hill a hut, scarcely detectable
in its passing speed. Inside,
a tailor, by lanternlight
at his machine, bends over a single
stitch, then vanishes into the unseen
needle and wheel of the proceeding
history of his work.
4
A cliff swallow soaring above the river
stops mid-sky, not hovering, but ceasing
all movement-negative-beat, negative
breath-a bird-conjunction of the recognized
everywhere, before descending again
into the rage and vacuum of the rock
canyon below.
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