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THE IMMENSE DAWN
The Early Poems
1959-1967
Flown up
from the deep valley darkness
a bird alights
upon the narrow bridge
of the heart, alone,
to await the immense dawn.
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WHEREVER YOU ARE
Wherever you are,
Walk out into twilight
And gaze at the blue
Long enough until you hear it.
Then breathe in deeply, deeply,
Until you have drained
The last blue sound
Into your soul.
Then close your eyes
And listen to the color
Fade within you.
When you are invisible
And have grasped the meaning,
Open your eyes,
And gently, let them go.
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WISDOM OF CHILDHOOD
A man's ignorance grows
Once the years project
A clarity so remarkable,
Into his visions,
He cannot recall
The wisdom of his childhood.
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THE EDGE OF DREAM
Deep in my soul,
a lost fawn is sleeping
in a winter forest,
how soon until love
cries out
from beyond the edge of dream?
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WHERE NO SPRINGS BLOW
I'll take my visions wandering
Past the ghosted air of cities,
Past the billion fireflies weaving
Through darkness below,
To the serene and empty air
Where no seas peril our chains and shores
And no springs blow
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YOU AND I
Come, my love, let's not
be sad. Nothing will harm us.
Look - the moon is slowly
drifting westward. Venus
is going down on the horizon.
The milky way grows dim. Soon
it will be dawn.
Don't bother
about the great questions,
you and I are eternal enough.
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SICILY
In the deep of night
you speak of biting insects
and passing fishingboats,
at least if you were to say
the heavens are opened
and God is watching us
I would know how to answer.
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CAPRI
While you soundly
dream in moonlight,
drifting muted
through the leaves
are the cries
of wild animals.
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FIESOLE
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LIPARI
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LOVE
And when love, as the sea,
invades the obscure flesh
and coils around those stones
from where you once towered
over the heart, you now lay
shipwrecked in the bottom
of your ecstasy, as alone and nameless
as seaweed on the sand.
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FORTUNE TELLER
Ah you, fortune teller, pure one,
Looking straight into your lantern
To what lies between fate and our existence.
The moment is instantaneous and fading
Through the planes of experience
Up the slopes of the background
to ghostly aqueducts and the springs of memory,
Diving under to the stars within -
The stars of soul.
These are the eyes
opened toward their destiny.
And when sometimes you gaze into them,
We think you weep.
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CAROUSEL
After you have been mounted
and start up within the circle
of spectators
every now and then you come and go
like images of childhood
fading away only to return . . . and fade
and yet again return and slip away,
ever fleeting and imperceptible
on the more slowly turning earth.
Sometimes in the sound of laughter faraway
you awaken from your dream,
wearily gaze outside
to what infinitely whirls around you -
and when you have grown dizzy
in not catching sight of it, you yawn
and close your eyes . . . and ever still
and ever motionless, you go back to sleep.
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TO MICHELANGELO - DAVID
You had to distill a legend
and extract an infinite thing
more flawless than a swan . . .
Yet he was ever swift
until you slowed him down
to absolute stillness,
making him, effortlessly
in his tension,
pause,
as though he were dissolving
into the image of his own beauty.
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O
O.
I hear your silence
speak to me through steady undertones.
Your finer lens
illuminates my hidden sanctuary.
Soul
breathes in sacred rhythm
and a bell echoes.
Clear reflections
ripple on the dawns of vast plateaux.
All
boundaries implode.
Life moves around
a spiral cycle
vacuumed lightly in the void.
Pupils
flawlessly align
a mirror with the temples.
Universe is ours to know
in the few square inches of the brain.
Image
speeds along synaptic walls
flashing in slow-motion.
A breakthrough
forces one to burst anew and BE!
Visionary
hearts may sigh
how deeply down do feelings go.
It only takes one man or woman
to Love . . . . . infinitely.
Poetry
distills an afterglow;
the essence will be found,
inscribed between the lines, unrhymed,
beyond the clash of sound and nothing.
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