I Lucifer, cast down from heaven’s city which is the stars,
soar darkly nights across the water to islands
and their runway lights — after sunset burning petals;
sights, sorrows, all evils become the prolonged shadows
and lightning through palm trees and the ancient oaks.
… And ride with darkness, dark below dark, uttermost
as when the cormorant dives and the fish dies, eye-deep
in hell; the bird is I, I hide in its black shining
spread of wings raised drying afterward on a tree bough.
Nothing more onyx or gold than my dark wings.
Yet Venus rising, the off chords and tender tones
of morning birds among the almonds, small flames
of lemon flowers, phosphorus on the ocean,
all I’ve scorned, all this lasts whether I leave or come.
The garden fails but the earth’s garden lives on
unbearable — elusive scent on scent from jasmine
mixed with brine, the smell of marshes, smells of skin
of fishermen, burned rose and a little heroic
while leviathan winds rise and darkness descends.
Sin and death stay near, black with serenity,
calm in dawn’s light suggestions. If the future is
a story of pandemonium, perfection’s close —
from the sea the islands at night, from the island
the sea at night with no lights rest equally, lit by
a wanderer’s memory bringing dark and light to life,
luminous and far as dreams endure, charcoal and flame
in a fire, the embers of pride and pain in each breath.

Man-of-War

From the somber deeps horseshoe crabs crawled up on
somber shores:
Man-of-Wars’ blue sails drifted downwind
and blue filaments of some biblical cloak
floated below: the stinging filaments:
The cored-of-bone and rock-headed came near:
Clouds made wandering shadows:
Sea and grasses mingled::
There was no hell after all
but a lull before it began over::
flesh lying alone: then mating: a little spray of soul:
and the grace of waves, of stars, and remotest isles.