A Quiet Meditation at L’Arco near Victoria Station
I am there; beyond the first memory
certain later ones now hold up nothing.
I know the waiter feasting on Maxine’s face
mirrors the minute my father found Jesus:
I knew there was no God and the stones knew
in death there comes such a clear feeling –
an opening for the free child to be
suddenly on top of the world and stress.
There becomes a space for other pastimes
for allowing the rich to get richer
for the ability to lie still in tall grass
as the crazy laughter of ants
carrying back a dead grasshopper
fills the ears of a dog sleeping
on the bottom step of a stoop.
I have my own watch, my own weights.
I look to the nightmares ahead –
as lamps with lazy songs of orange light
as elbows of skyscrapers block out the moon
into distinct districts of the old and the new.
The dead proceed in the darkness
in order to hold and be held.
I often wonder about my own mother
descending constantly down and deeper
unending complexes, unending spells
occupy the dwelling place of my grief.
She grows angry when I push her aside to sleep.
In the heart-beat of a spade digging up
a bare plot of earth, the repetition
of headstones covering the bones of the dead
grows easier to bear. I am not sure
the old myths make any mention of me:
I am I see a flag at half-mast,
a voice waiting for air.
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