— for Joe Brainard
When the windows
are silent and
thin as language,
snow falls into
rifts and valleys.
Everything changes,
even the trees
cease their breathing
in the smooth
night air. The
one world shines.
As a hand
draws aside its
exponential curtain,
the only no
spoken the length
of the sequence
knows its mind.
The temper of
water waiting for
its shape in
the unrelenting
rush of things
in their freezing.
The vacant shuttle
returning to earth,
its voices heard
on last year’s
tapes, these signs
also lurching out
to history, where
the unnerved god
sleeps on its back.
In that secret
place, one simple
branch strict with
attention lashes at
your eye. Thank
appetite for heaven
and also the
singing’s late green
leaves, thin in
the flurry, where
the deepest houses
sink and bright
smoke rises. Not
this and not
that, not even
winter asking what
you’re after on
a brief afternoon,
which of course
is pale in
cold porch light.
To be without
speech the solitary
staging: a touch
after dying or
breath in its
harness turning and
turning. There is
nothing the sun
cannot explain,
nothing too clear
for ice of
mind steeped in
its season like
body and desire,
tree and belief.
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