Three Variations on Elegiac Themes
I: 1821
By the lakeside where
water batters the flat
beach white where
dunes gather their own
waves curled larger
than the lake's showing
the force I can
hear or see changing
in bubbles
By the lake these
too ephemeral to
fill that slap and
roar I can't see
what they show they are
only notes that
keep changing not
like the sand here
lies one whose name
By the lakeside each
particle lifts drops
only the wave moving
forward shows
what was but is
not the name writ
here not in dunes which
move yet hold what
pushed them in their shapes
II: 1832
What you make
survives in the changing
light that others will
see when you see
nothing you seem
fixed and still we
whirl on the wheel of
light from stars marking
an explosion of time
What survives you
made in time swirled
from escaping light we
see as scales belt
a great bear hope
for those at sea as
one might cry
to what seems permanent
dark more light
What you make
permanent is more
light surviving to
mark beyond
cries or bright
figures hoped for
in the dark what
keeps escaping what
you no longer know
III: 1886
A stillness in
the air you heard
a fly buzz in as
between them and silence
the blanket that would
hold you blank as air
that circles the dear
globe turning erasing
in heaves of storm
Your stillness resting
in the calm between
measures a current
under the layers strands
of bound air that
gather to wrest
voice from an empty
rush to resist
in dashed song
A stillness interset
with breath clouds
on the world's shell
of gas parentheses
between us and the dark
effacing waves your brief
lines altering the fall
of light you could
see to see
Structure
84 lines · 30 stanzas