Zk | Ideas for some music

The seasonal storms have poured upon the grassy flat, The leafless stalks abound like thirsty mouths. Puddles form and soon are swarmed with little fish, And all the arid life has fled despair. And here, wrapped in rain, lies the oldest soul, The changes wrack his bones with painful cold. His skin is like the sky at night, as many scars Have marked his hide as there are glinting stars. At once he feels his lungs become bereft of breath, His daughter nudges him, to no effect. She walks away rememb’ring days they stalked the plains, Within her womb there grows a golden bloom.

Summer, season of hot insomnia, That much never seems to change at all. Laying awake in the red desert night, I shape forest from shade and wait for fall. Ten years now gone, and who thought I would miss Cricket songs, cicadas and katydids? Then I’d gladly have grabbed a big hammer, Smashed them flat as Pinocchio’s conscience. Testing palisades of clocks and yardsticks, No advent waits for the restive dreamer. I bandage my tattered, bitten left hand And shed the smoke rings on my cloven finger.

We crawl through moist humus like millipedes, Feasting on dirt and dead, crumbling leaves While striped skies cycle through violet hues, While time’s kisses take the shape of a bruise. Endeavors wear the warmer years away, Reduced at last to heaven’s dormant clay. Alive, I lick brambles until my tongue Tears, despairing ever being so young. I think of you. I don’t smile when I do. A moment more and then the day is gone, In evening grey, we mourn the vanished dawn, And so on, maybe waiting for someone To come drag us back to where we belong. In dreams we interred, with your pure throat bare, I know your breath, your jasmine-scented air. Alive, a god to mites and mud-daubers. The harvestmen scuttle and bob onwards.

My garden of foxtails and milk-thistle, Alive and wild, more so than tended rows In growth, has died. I killed them a little, The crab-grass clumps, Datura and nettle. “Time and time, I commit these small murders, To whose benefit?” I ask why and wonder, The scent of sap on scuffed and bloody hands. If I indwelt some luring scrap of land Far from here, secluded, my own to call, I would welcome these same weeds, one and all, To plant their roots in my warm, earthen roof, Just they and I, with no need of reproof, And thank the thorns for making a hale fence, The compost for being my winter blanket.

I. The snow is falling, sleeping, whispering, dreaming of water. II. Gold, silver, iron, stone; pure and gentle, silently melting, the sun sings softly through the quiet ice. III. A single snowflake awakens, shimmers, glows, watches the world with weary eyes, darkens, settles, and disappears.

Lament for Pasiphaë Dying sun, shine warm a little longer! My eye, dazzled with tears, shall dazzle yours Conjuring you to shine and not to move You, sun, and I all afternoon have laboured Beneath a dewless and oppressive cloud– A fleece now gilded with our commen grief That this must be a night without a moon Dying sun, shine warm a little longer! Faithless she was not: she was very woman Smiling with dire impartiality Sovereign, with heart unmatched, adored of men Until Spring’s cuckoo with bedraggled plumes Tempted her pity and her truth betrayed Then she who shone for all resigned her being And this must be a night without a moon Dying sun, shine warm a little longer! Like Snow She, then, like snow in a dark night Fell secretly. And the world waked With dazzling of the drowsy eye So that some muttered ‘Too much light,’ And drew the curtains close Like snow, warmer than fingers feared And to soil friendly; Holding the histories of the night In yet unmelted tracks She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep She tells her love while half asleep In the dark hours With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow Despite the falling snow Mid-Winter Waking Stirring suddenly from long hibernation I knew myself once more a poet Guarded by timeless prinicipalities Against the worm of death, this hillside haunting; And presently dared open both my eyes O gracious, lofty, shone against from under Back-of-the-mind-far clouds like towers; And you, sudden warm airs that blow Before the expected season of new blossom While sheep still gnaw at roots and lambless go– Be witness that on waking, this mid-winter I foudn her hand in mine laid closely Who hsall watch out the Spring with me We stared in silence all around us But found no winter anywhere to see Intercession in Late October How hard the year dies: no frost yet On drifts of yellow sand Midas reclines Fearless of moaning reed or sullen wave Firm and fragrant still the brambleberries On ivy-bloom butterflies wag Spare him a little longer, Crone For his clean hands and love-submissive heart

Ware to kite asobeya oya no nai suzume which translates to: Come over with me and together let’s play Oh, motherless sparrow.