The Cage The trees were steel And the ax of wood In the desert of God Where Jesus stood Cut down this forest Satan said And use the steel To bake our bread And when you have This ration baked Prove yourself Your own namesake Throw yourself From wall to rock If angels are Your […]
Everything A swarming of ants Bellies drawn low As the small wings beat Seeds of the maple Unbalanced in weight Spin and fall The dome of eternity Everything All Pavel April 29, 2011
Wizard A coyote running for the brush Behind a screen of sun-lit leaves Ginger-ivory, blur and flash, Through the trees it bores and weaves Wizard go and find your den Dogs have traced the scent of you, Enigma of the race of men The slavish kill the feral few If they catch the mark of […]
Butterfly Effect The little girl has caught the yellow swallowtail She holds it prisoner in a jar – Release it, child, release it soon Quickly, quickly It is the butterfly effect’s Epitome For when the wings have fluttered once The tides commence And when the wings have fluttered twice The ocean’s flood tide will return […]
One Small Room Is the past a house with doors and windows, What is to come a citadel one blind entrance? There is no past or future There is a room with open windows The wind blows through from one side to the other Curtains billow out like banners Shadows move too quickly to be […]
As Sure as the Moon and the Sun I’ve written no poem so far While I wait for the words to be blessed, In a little green porcelain jar The wrens have returned to their nest It swings from a beam of the porch Glazed with the O of a gate, In the O is […]
The Great and Splendid Hunched on the limb of a young green tree A red-tailed hawk in a crowd of yelling jays Hemmed by limbs and leaves Close confined, a cage of wings and screams They hit the broad brown wings and swoop away Crouches, helpless to strike back, to apprehend The midgets who assail […]
Freak When dogs grow antlers, hooves, And stags loll out their tongues, When from the throats of wolves A sparrow’s song is sung When from the backs of whales The manes of lions spring, When lizards shake their tails Like puppies beckoning No reason makes a change Except for nature’s play, The commons of the […]
Vortimer Bury me at Richborough, for then Barbarians will not through here raid Britain Though through other ports they may attack, By my body’s lying here they will hold back He was a warrior of Christ, this Vortimer, Though pagan were the Saxons off the Saxon shore, Flesh of mortal weakness now and in the […]
Untold The shrilling of the wren so loud Surrounded by a hollow bird, A nest in which a voice resides, A life that has a life inside So the spirit in the flesh A hollow with a living guest, Spirit hatches, fledges, flies, May be of no or any size As we are small the […]
Love as Mongrel We will be forgotten Here and on this world As worlds themselves go rotten Dispersed into the void Paul the last disciple Said wisdom, strength of will Loveless be and futile As empty broken shells But even love as mongrel Deformed with grief and rage And savaged by the devil Will long […]
Chance We can’t go on the way we go, In moving darkness ruin grows, Living in my eighth decade I see the bedlam we have made What’s to stop the monstrous form That we have made, already born Engendered of a crippled lust Conceived within time’s uterus Matured become the king or queen Or both, […]
Must Wander Go up or down, whatever scale you see, A caterpillar crawling on a tree, A vapor-bloated cloud that’s sailing east, A beetle to a dead mole for a feast All in motion, tell, what is the soul, Cloud or caterpillar or a mole? Does it move or does it rest the same, Vapor […]
Weapon The cross is deep, a dagger, So firmly fixed is evil, Who can pull it out, extract This weapon of the devil? A relic in no reliquary, Heirloom of the race, It stands upright as humans do But has no human face And what became of Jesus’ cross When Christ was taken down? It […]
Late The Holy Father is expected But has not by this time arrived To celebrate a Mass outdoors – A stadium is set aside But not too large, a pocket field That holds a smallish crowd of faithful, Even so, the seats not filled Empty ones for late arrivals Scattered in the sloping grandstand And […]
Columba in the Church Alone Columba in the church alone So long ago on Iouan island Light streamed through the shuttered windows Through the seams of doors it flowed Did he not converse with angels? Fantasy and myth and legend Say the ones whose shutters close Whose doors of love are firmly fastened Whose house […]
Down From the Night A humid night, a balmy dusk, Fireflies on summer leaves Bear flashing likeness to the stars, but how Do rising stars resemble these? Think now, think, how can it be That suns can glow like fireflies, Attracting what above themselves, Flashing, burning as they rise? Both are temporal and pass – […]
You and I Alone In this desert nothing lives but prophecy, Lightning in the sterile sky but never rain, Search the future in the desert secrecy, Torah of the line of the horizon Turn around the circle that you turn, There is the far meniscus of the shape Of earth that has been molten till […]
No One Knows How Far What is the future like? You have not been there yet, A time you have not visited You need not now forget Someone saw me walking Down a foreign street Long beyond the telling Where past and future meet There within a city A square within a square, Infamous to […]
Those Who Have No God I saw a buzzard floating with its black wings outspread To see along the alleys the living and the dead Above the pale white city on a motionless March day – What can the wind be thinking of, to blow and die away? These are the prophet scavengers which gather […]
Rara Avis in Terris Nigroque, Simillima Cycno — Juvenal [A rare bird on Earth, like nothing so much as a black swan] But who will know when rare birds come That may take form as any shape, In greatness or as modicum, A man, a woman or an ape And they will walk and they […]
The Ants The ants have built their mansion in a pile of sand, Are we not better, wiser, larger, The cities of our comforts better planned? Clever, they misconceive the great backhoe The concrete mixer and the dredge, For at their scale how is an ant to know? The mall was in the blueprint […]
Stranger of the Night Barred owl, what are you doing here At bay in a tall pine tree Where the small birds curse and jeer? This is mid-morning, not evening shade – Glide quickly to the hillside den Where shadows of the moon are made , Turn your rounded head and stare Swivel at the […]
Why Do You Say…? Why do you say that Man is the king of creation? The robe is too wide for his meager, rickety frame, The crown of a king is royal for his skull’s dimensions, When a summons arrives he can’t even remember his name Not upright nor wise despite Linnaeus’s flattery, Swooning over […]
