I.
—And when the uneven ones had
risen from below interpreting the isinglass

that magnified the last four yellow
apples over the entrance way to

ground (in the lydian mode: nada
with the day job, o canada

with the night job), their projects
having given way to more baffled

solitudes, a series of vectors pointing
to the cellar stairs, her not

reaching the embassy, your speaking of
barges sailing past the customs houses,

faces in the forcefield that looked
both ways before a or n

or y, long before the triple
world cast itself down in you—

II.
The dream seminars are finishing. Relief
figures emerge from the stone slabs

that leak more abstract petals into
an alphabet. The scribe who sits

and the revenant who is his
soul or sister count the corners

of their little earthly contract. Ibises
shake triangular beaks as they walk,

pecking at pears, ferns, a third
of a revolution. Who recommended fate

to the stars? Her figure shrinks
at the end of the dynasty,

or is it a different figure?
Doesn't matter; western day will take

them outside. A mattress floats by
in a roomier stanza. Everything that

lived still lives, the eaten edge, a

braided night, the missing song
that might have missed the world—

III.
They summoned you when they
removed the kite from the oak,

its tail made of worn leather
and torn hospital sheets. They tried

to contact you in the wool
of the shorn day, when you

stood in the dread of being
held beyond torment, in the absorbed

seed; and now your wounded gardener
works toward summer; don't call him

if you love him; put one
foot in front of the other,

like prose; the violins would play
so, the night ones would say

so; they're loading the notebooks on
a cart that erases its road—

IV.
The latest arrows circle the moon: a
hawk flying around the kissed target

in fog. Blue asterisks appear as
stars on dull railing: the archer

is entering the village of slow
stains, taking the byt of And

far to the right. The thistles
on his hill are rattling: the self-

reflexive whispers of the archer's assistant
joking with the catenary ashes. Sometimes

outside the black, they knew themselves,
sometimes they started circles where the

history of corners will be written;

unliteral bird, what did you think?
actual moment, where did you go?

V.



VI.
The gleam of the trustees' tower

in the lemon hyphen moonlight. Numbered
cubicles where we stored our doves

and envelopes. (Why did we take
so long to fetch our things—)

How did this existence deepen
and get lighter, disaster dreams confused

with hope like those of friars
carrying a saint's bed higher because

the mission's burning. The last day,

they forget forgetting; the stalled wide
sleep can be what they imagine.

—Brenda Hillman