StumbleUpon | Sir-Jaimes's blog posts

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Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:18:58 -0700

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/9433511/

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:16:46 -0700

For Absolution

Rising again at night under a half-lit moon,
past sleep and the morning still hours away,
I find my way in darkness, following an old habit,
to the working place I have made for myself
beneath the praying roofbeams of this house.

From her dreams, the woman who cares about me
moves to the hollow shape of myself left behind
and rests her hand in the place I last was.
The sleeping dog yawns and growls beneath his breath
The jade cat opens its eyes and stares.

What fears or wearinesses keep me from my sleep
I couldn't say. Some unfinished business of my life,
some imagined or long-forgotten sin, those old regrets
we're never done with until they're done with us.
The interest we pay on debts we can't remember.

I lean back in my chair and light the reading lamp,
take from the shelf whatever book comes easily to hand.
I'm too tired to read. I hold it for comfort's sake,
for something familiar and unchanged, unchanging,
for a sense of time and place in the drowsing world.

Here there is a kind of absolution, a sanctuary.
From here I can hear everything. The slow ticking
of the kitchen clock and the refrigerator's quiet hum
keep a lazy rhythm against which I can set my own
and lay those older voices one by one in their proper place

until I am forgiven everything -for tonight at least-
and forgive everything that needs it, too, from me.
And give a certain thanks to all the other days and nights
that brought me here and made me what I am:
a man, past sleep, waiting for morning and the light.

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/9433465/

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:12:51 -0700

A Drunk in a Bar in Illinois

Lord, Lord, Aunt Rhoda
how we'd like to hear your singing now.
The cattle are brown and white in the pastures,
the foxes whistle between the green fields.

I am old enough now to be surprised
to taste Christmas in a bottle of whiskey,
remembering (before
I became slick and city)
how you gave us each a snowflake to taste
last thing at winterblack night.
Old enough to fall asleep
to your singing about Bethlehem and (seems
I haven't heard the word for years now)
how the whole God-blessed city
shone like a star in your voice.
Seems like only yesterday that

who was it again? died and
in a minute I'll recall just who.

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/9433374/

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:07:11 -0700

From A Brass Rubbing

What then of the man, buried in a sad armor
with his hands folded meek and Jesus
on his breast, his fingers to a crucifix
they way they used to touch a blade.
Laid out with his honours on
while the gardeners shrug by the rose bushes
and the serving girl makes a face at her mirror.

He is not grieved at all.
His small and painful silences now easy
anecdotes for suitors and honoured guests
more to be confident and sure.
His dogs grow fat. His children forget
their given name, baptised
and Catholicked in his absence
while the Saracen went to the sword
for the Crown and glory.
He is not grieved. The Holy Grail means less
than nothing to him now.

And nothing English ever thinks of him
or dreams or turns to see
where he and the sense of himself
might walk in mad Africa laughing
to meet some dark and lovely enemy.

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/9433271/

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:00:02 -0700

St. Elmo's Fire

Something burned in me that didn't leave a scar. That moved in me like a tide
and kept me moving. Was restless with me sometimes and sometimes unforgiving.
I saw my own father broken by it like a weather and made my way
by dead reckoning, by grim necessity, from there. All my life I knew my position
by the master's log and circumstance and distrusted the satellite signal
and used it sparingly, to gauge the sextant or the steadiness of my hands.
I lived like a sailor, the life of a careful man. But always in a sailor's song I heard
how once a man came above decks to see the rigging straining by itself. Once
on a clear night the unrelenting sky dissolved and constellations rearranged themselves.
Everything was familiar. The sextant frozen in his fingers and the idiot compass spinning
with happiness. I remembered this better than anything I knew, believed in every heave
and swell and set a course by what I'd only dreamed of. I went through every chart
I owned to see if I could find the place myself and leaned toward a shore
that loved and wanted me and where the song said everything belonged.

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/8757746/

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:28:30 -0700

Sunday Morning

It is this morning.
We sit across the table from each other
breakfast over
the coffee steaming in the china mugs
as you read from the magazine
and I work on the crossword puzzle
sections of the news paper spread everywhere.

You look up, smile at me
and lean across the table for a kiss,
happy for no reason but it is Sunday,
we have all day to do with as we choose.

You are so sure of me
I am afraid enough for both of us.
In my life I never imagined
a morning like this morning;
the bed unmade
me in this ragged robe
all my senses singing:
This is what we share with one another.
This is the place I keep my promises.

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/7017866/

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 06:02:27 -0700

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/8433849/

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 17:39:17 -0800

Beauty and the Beast

1. The Beast

Knowing how you loved the birds
I fixed them to the trees
so they wouldn't fly away.
So you would stay.

And you remained silent
and never questioned my bloody palms
or reproached me the birds
because they didn't sing.

It couldn't last, of course.
No new birds came and those crucified
were taken by small animals or simply
disappeared from the nails.
I was sure then that you would leave me.

Finally I confessed.
Trembling, I brought you the hammer
and showed my broken fingers.
Leaves and branches in my hair,
the diagrams of Autumn
on the sky.

And you smiled and said it didn't matter
about the birds
and drank at my tears
like a rare and fragile wine
that they too would not be wasted.

2. Beauty

I came to you so carelessly
there were those who thought I had not been warned.
I could only point to the false lovers who carried marks
where you had pressed coins into their palms
and admit I was impatient for your scars.

The rumours followed us as easily
as if you murdered me every night;
hemlock in my evening wine,
a loosened bannister on the stair.
The dull villagers and daft princes
waited still and at distances
for grave news and relentless
until I could only point again
at their jealous eyes and whisper
I had discovered why you handled me
as though I were made of glass.

I know they want to know about our bodies.
Our virginity confuses them
and they are reduced to words and silences.
What shall we allow them to believe?

We are a thousand years old, no histories
and nothing to confess.

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/6997510/

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:28:31 -0800

Zapworld.com

http://Sir-Jaimes.stumbleupon.com/review/7560132/

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:45:55 -0800

Brueghel's Icarus Falling

Musee des Beaux Arts

by W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.