Tom CLARK
Adversary
Echoes rebound in the ancient ball court
Against the wind singing in the trees
There is a silent helmetted adversary
Flames glimmer from his deep eye slots
Moths swirl upon glass as if to speak
One sits solitary by the lamp hour by hour
The gleam that keeps the night awake falters
Time as it passes fills up with something else
Invisible gaps open to the past
The clock does not strike as expected
The cavalcade has dispersed without lament
Words have been forsaken by their letters
But day and night still struggle on
And though day noisily contends
At the end shadow stands alone
Masked in the dark clearing waiting
Intermittent Tempest
The rain should be able to understand your tears
The moon appears through clouds between fingers of cypress
In the whirlpool after the shipwreck
Dry leaves drift and blow over blue sand
A heavy curtain opens upon fogbound birds
Retarded clouds trail past unconcerned
And a low pressing voice in the wind
Disturbs the variable calm of the summer night
Drowning out the words to which the moon would have wished to listen
Prophet
So then he wandered out into the street and began to testify
Something about life being a long journey of the soul
An endless voyaging turning into a voyaging with an end
One knows how but one does not know when
No one yet knows when as the traffic bore down on him
As the traffic bore down on him my mind drifted in the wilderness
Or was it that my mind having been adrift all along
I've just grown to regard the wilderness as my resting or laughing place
He cried but those were not yet his last words
As the traffic parted around him as around one charmed
The Day Goes On Forever
We're alone my shadow and me
You're alone with your shadow too
The first day and the last day the same
First song same as last song
The stream weeps passing under concrete
Habitual deer have retreated
The earth is covered with vehicles
Meant to secure the unknown against us
The caged bird said this place is very pretty
Excellent for lunch fine for sleeping
But if I might ask one thing more
How come nobody thought to put in a door
At Life
I am no good, nor, I have to allow,
Are many others so much better at it
That I might learn to be good from them.
And besides it's too late now for the blind
Clown to take up the scholar's hornbook
As he pedals off the unobserved cliff.
"I've worn the dress in this role long enough,"
Says the speech balloon that suspends him,
"To know how to catch the wind in it
And on this billowing chute to float me down
Gently to touch the fathomless drink
Upon which the dying sun breathes its meanings,
Shadows born yesterday to die tomorrow—"
The ice shelf collapsed, the dust cloud swiftly coming.