Four Poems

I

Above the Gates, the enduring night of the

Hill watcher. The ow] like a beginner whistled

To keep his fears down,

And so I turned crossing the eye with a specter

And the idol before me was a sign of death and very

Far from the lidless town.

Then it suddenly rained and the dry grass became

Great animals living without head or sliding eye.

And the wind shouted down its rusty hinge

Recalling hands to harbor: the bird burned slowly

In his song.

Il

What seeds the mind rolls down its veins, carrying

Shadow bids of the King.

Someday

Some long dead king will lift

His shadow in the wake of knowing

Some sun spill out blindly on a

Rim of island. The acres we have silently

Sighed about can clutch cemeteries

Like night in their hollow, can leave

Dissonance in the vein of valley

Beneath understanding, for the world

Flows: this alley cruelly simple

Blunt and forerunning is understanding

Stripped of core, of wheel, of tangent thought:

Stripped of mind that seems to guide its blunder.

ul

Never dead, never hung the halved

Held by moorless hinges.

None, never; oh who was it wrapped

The raw wrong, the canyon clutch :

The warp and wabble of seasons

Then struck up his clarion,

Changed the cold climb of reason.

And will not turn, not again hove heal,

Twice tread of time, loose crutch, who

Was it came, clung like a nod of last knowing.

IV

I am the stranger who has become king

In my right hand I hold a scar

Bold as the face of dominion

And in the left a silence

Greater than presumption.

Beyond the door this

Path leads like the bladed tongue of a traitor.

Rise up and from this sterile land will pass

The birds of the bonded eye. Tight as a pack

They.

Old man with feathers on your hand

Mouth hanging open like an hour

Against what unquiet vapour do

You press your chin, old unopened

Dream of forgotten listings?

What break through

Do your clocks afford in this

Land of the dry season where everything

Ends in question and desire

And retreat has folded his hands on a meal of murder.

Don WogBEr