FRANCIS AT AUSCHWITZ

No words to speak or tell

under a grey blue cloud

where men created Hell

in a crematory shroud

In a brief span of time

grief had its way

and crime in chimneys

Nazi Germany had its day

We look to history

for any Q and A

for a way to Purgatory

only God can say

Here is only smoke and ashes

in only a wide abyss

no one spoke under the sun

to a lonely praying Francis

Here are Gentiles, many Jews

who walk to commemorate

and file in with commentaries
by stashed up body cemeteries

There is a light rain the air
which will spy a bird and butterfly
we say never again at any cost
at this human word holocaust

We may cry on His shoulder
who is dearer than a brother
or share His love with a sister
to be bolder and love nearer,

but it is here that we die to self
putting our sins on the shelf
let us live for affection
above our own imperfections

Looking to Jesus our author
for our new atoning directions
who alone forgives sins
in our skin and bones

Forgive the darkness here
wipe away our repentant tears
we say yes to share with you
in our sentence of fears,

And through our raining dreams
of all those shameful years
we remember the hailing light
that dawns on all our nightmares,

For you care for us all and least
in spite of our failing all
we too write our names
on the wailing wall

United in the sun
and oven birds
nun and priest hear
the Rabbi's words.

PICASSO'S EASEL

Light captures with ease
the perspective
of your dada colors
on the silent inventory
of familiar canvas
brushes pass though this night
making you feel exultant
knowing this mural drawing
is primitive yet revolutionary
unveiled in an African floral
distant memory
implanted in a vineyard
spanning artistic glory
now swept
by a historical place
not contrary
to personal causation
but with coral traces
of temporal expectations
yet obliterating what faces
to shape all emergency limits
or eviscerate any other footfall
in a geometric pastiche
of kept curiosity
by waiting on honest artistry
in a mastery
by a universal reach
of form
resembling each gentian
as a revealed immensity
from a critically daring passion
in presentation
of a panel's velocity
fusing past spectacle honors
with the vocal miracle
of an easel intensity
upon stormy primal layers
of a suspended encore
in a staggering metamorphosis
of four score time
for Picasso's language unfolds
the solitude of rhyme
weighing in assertions
and solo proportion
of a poet's chant
by debating syllables
with verbal moods
from a full generational abyss
as only a lethal contortion
that language lands to deposit
his images storm
from a lyrical language
showing form, space and date
with the back brushing
of his second hand
as a commanding face
of vibrancy
before the act exists
from every bond
of a mind's state
with waiting
palette and tongue
from mirroring abstracts
to abscond
all exigencies of fate.

IN POSTWAR PARIS

We played backgammon
while having green tea
and poached salmon
by the poplars
watching larkspurs  in Paris
on the deckchair near the Seine
among radiant shadows silence
with a glass case of red wine
while it starts to rain
by the embarrassed knotted trails
along miles of a mossy riverbed
in the airless last day of July
with my friend Alain
a tender hero of the war
for the Marquis Resistance
who saved a group of refugees
on a fascist train heading for death
he tells me of his dreams
in a series of scouting episodes
like gloves of voices replying
from routes of the living dead
he hands to me his hidden memoirs
amid his forbidden bar codes
where the wind blows pages
from a loving exonerated language
he has already said opens
history's disordered doors
through a distance of voices
of chance unknown faces he lead
through marshes, swamps,
up mountains like Hannibal
in the footsteps of Swiss Alps
until his own fall in his mission
when missing for over a year
yet rising from his collapse
on his own fearful amnesia
when he finally writes his memoirs
at home in his own leisure
he autographs for me
in an inked personal signature
his shadow sinks on the sofa
under the window cry of gulls
from winds rustled lightening
on a personal dawn of sole effigies
by the Hamlet skull of those lost
on the earth of our settling algebras
of those in wisdom who have passed
Alain still says "Yes", for all our cost
of long suffering for freedom
in the prisms of our journeying
to end the darkness of fascism
as he reads me of his floating ages
from a language which presages
a future prophecy of Fortinbras.

DAY ONE


A slice of melon
taken into a voyage
to the moon
as Yves Tanguy laughs
into a colossal shadow
of the Seine
on a last July afternoon
remembers his age
with a taste of time
on days of memory
forgetting the doom
from a windy gust
of rain on the knoll
reading Proust
until the shadows
pass the liquid silence
of calcified space
in tolling bells by carousels
wakes his horizon noon
in flawed polished mirrors
birds scrape the sky
yet we cannot escape
a solitude of skin.

JULY PHANTASMS

Getting to the Seine
no longer knowing
which road leads us
to the sea in the rain
with beach houses
made from sandy imagination
that collapses space
in an infinite dawn garden
of hours exigencies
from breathless faith
within reach of the shore
still questioning if existence
with pardon a landscaped sky
as our day dream visions
remain as images
of two young sojourners
backpedaling on our bicycles
to reach a wayside inn
for a croissant and coffee
thinking of past lives
in the echo of images
near the distant July phantasms
and phantoms of budding images
near the garden of birds, cicadas
on a hillside of bumble bees
near nests of bewilderment
hearing the last train
inhaling goodbyes at the station
as we rest quietly
under the hot beach sun
at the knees of a lost parchment
to reach on a parentheses
of Pierre Jouve
keeping words alive
within the graffiti tongues
of the city's asphalt walls
since only dialogues of justice
is still our lonely vault of language
with an interpreter of exhumed words
of  looming dreams
covering legendary fragments
in a century's silent histories
of adversary manifestos
and a loss of identities
in the waves of children
spilling every reborn snow shower
of our passing meridian
from singing streams we know
of time's oblivion.

BEATS

We always wrote
manifestos in the snow
the now was always Beat
invading the hallways
of our photos of verse
noted in the underground
willing to be wondrously free
from Frisco to Manhattan
in the sounds of our feet
we dance in the countryside
in a free spirited pattern
and endure by our poetic words
not selling our commodity
of our unquoted surplus
but to be human memory
playing our cool sax riffs
with smooth jazz of reverie
or in the sunflower garden
reading Pierre Reverdy
relaxed amid the chorus of birds.

IN OUR SMALL CIRCLE

We played a trio and quartets
every weekend in adolescence
with Mozart and Beethoven
in our own obedience of notes
of brisk con brio
then with a slower movement
interwoven in our parts
as our own advertisement
of getting a musical share
in the remnants of our risk and hope
with a memory of being taught
knowing our musical history
as sought to be lyrically aware
from an older world of Europe's
lyrically aware as we played
under a nightshade shed
by the hot oak trees
near the cold river bed
then we spoke in poetry
of Keats, Yeats,
Eliot and Pound's words
or we were said to be renorn
by the innocent bird sounds
which we heard by morn
we learn of nature's
rheumatic and romantic notes
from the magic lantern
of innumerable meteors
recollecting our fiery quotes
yearning to be a composer
discerning in our own rights to jazz
sub rosa under the sharp and flat bars
as playing our new sax riffs
under the flowering lights
a wind stirs over green grass
as we drink tea from a samovar
reaching from our tall glass
staring at the full moon and stars
transfixed under the breeze
having a mixture of salad
with vanilla
and Russian kvass
thinking of those few nights
visiting at Akhmatova's dacha
we are the devotion for nature,
it seems in these night hours
that only our unspoken dreams
will pass  pardon and shimmer
from unbroken memory
in our culture
as the garden flowers.

DALI'S DAY

Brown, brown on a wounded elm
once tangled with dried leaves
wrapping you in garden hours
amid days of snowy shadows
spawned with Spanish whiteness
enduring as the winter's sun
shadows accumulate
your mustache and blue beret
then vanish in the soft night air
reminding ourselves
by earthy flamenco
that art captures circling dunes
with dancing grotesque indifference
hunchbacked by a canvas light flare
immobile from sleeplessness
staring at stems of paper flowers
Dali's day combing though
metamorphoses of green.

BRETON'S REALM

Connecting landscape
in a time of change
you resolve to take part
into images of the initiate
where you mentor in your folio
an ageless generation or more
intense to transfigure the silence
with the spirit of an awakened dream
for your hands paint anew
on a canvas and conscience
enlightened as if light appears
after the faint silent snow
living by a sky's blue window
waking him as if you were a poet
by a language's surprise shadow
at his century's art to insure
with a span at the risk of sorrow
expanding of old forms
having formulas of a manifesto
the way words in language do.

MAX ERNST'S WAY

By way of exile
you think beyond borders
of secret machinations
in your many scarred lives
until you reach us
with rolled up art sleeves
in new canvas experimentation
for art is not mistaken
in a futurist new world
to be taken only as abstract
as you revolutionized
your speckled visions
of music scattered language
hovering inside five acts
birth, talent,color fields,
a fringed travel map, new horizon
your voice expanding
to make us human
if our memory holds up
beneath a dark historical time
breathing in astral justice
of a four seasoned trial
a frozen stranger to America
without second  howl of guessing
enters your icy moonstone directions
in a moment's gaze to thrive
for our modern art reflections
as now your chosen destination
from your ironic era archives
eyes chimeras of light
masks a solitary wind
of a visionary kind
as an owl of the night.

AT THE SAVOY

in jazz
with animated tempo
as a boy
in the setting sun
marching with his aunt
of lines in a row
carrying fresh croissants
to a gig at the Savoy
as I'm asked to play piano
though only seven
with notes shaped
in colorful rhyme
and logarithm's rhythm
play my blue heaven.

ALONG THE PROMENADE

Along the promenade
there is a Sunday band
and prominent parade
yet a poet sits alone hidden
on a bench amid the July air
in the gazebo's shade of breeze
reading Baudelaire in French
alongside the sandy beach
near the park's well and spouts
hearing the boys play bocce
reaching for the ball
with overwhelming shouts
he's wondering about
the chorus of singing birds
feeding on daily bread
their wings open near
tree leaves and branches
wondering what is it all about
while the pigeons in the sun
by the river bed follow
with only a shadow in the shade
of the coiling pavilion
as sparrows drink in
without any lonely sorrowful words
or vision of doubt for tomorrow.

NAZIM HIKMET'S CRY

in chaos
and loss
your country
in censorship
dictatorship
false worship
you crossed
the line too, Nazim
yet we belong
in song
to your cry.

ALONG THE CHARLES

Along the Charles
after an hour at church
a child of eleven
hears an angelic songs' litany
at St. John the evangelist
near Harvard Square
bz searches over the river
in early dawn among the canals
for bread crumbs
on the shining rays
of a fairground
with some birds amid philodendron
suddenly hears bacchanals
and a lone sax riffs sound
relaxes along the greensward grass
and wildflower shore
to his back a sailboat is down
near a kayak full of fraternal
Harvard companions
and Platonic friends who pass
hidden amid the sun cast canals,
there is one black swan
turning almost in a nostalgic form
by the day's marathon runners
bz writes down salty words
with chalk on the graffiti wall
as a future free spirit bard
painting over his courtyard hall,
and learns to draw
on carbon copy
a favorite Roualt clown.

BASTILLE DAY

Trying to feel
a joyful spark
on Bastille day
like Jeanne d'Arc
only dying to pray.

ON JULY 12th

Leaning over the Atlantic
embracing nature
by a falling rain spiral
and a sleepless sunshine
by a ship wreck
in the home harbor
from a surprised
and capsized kayak
in an exiled mirror
back from lanterns
near the birdsong shade
of the sea's wildness of wind.

JOHN CLARE'S HOUR

The second hand
has caressed an hour
gesturing there is rain
on the way
still on the grass with
a beckoned expression of
one remaining sunflower
though caressed by the earth
on this fecund day.

THE LAST DAY OF SEXTANT


The last day
for the sky's nourishment
of blue
feeling the elements
of rain showers
along the urban roads
of the city's dust
your hands crossed
isolated from reality
with no absence
of long suffering
in the fragile mirror.

HYANNIS

It is early by the roses
of the iron gates
in garden plots
families gather
to eat strawberries
hearing the wind by the sea
you step out in faith
that quickly drawing on
a blue painted landscape
of the tide will sustain you
eyeing a friendly dolphin
near the edge of the shore
as you dive and swim
under rays of first light.

ARIEL

Too many tears,my Angel
pogroms, massacres
too many years we dwell on
the past sorrows of Man
and the sadness of women
in our life span
when enemies could tell us
to put on yellow stars
yet we are set free,
today we weep for you
a shining light
so young and strong
with Solomon's love song
as God is sharing His words
with you for you belong
sharing in the land of the living
taking away our tears into the sea
and we ask for your forgiving
that the enemy be also aware
at those who took her away
who do not understand
that in spite of it all
we are sure she is with you
please restore us in Zion
please take away our thousand
and one fears every day
for you are all in His people
under the wonders
of a Jerusalem sun
and steeple
whom God cares for.

SINCE

Since the sign
of silence
signaled immortality
in a spiraling portion
of awesome wisdom
we were caught up
in the freedom of green guitars
on the sailboat vessel
caught between sun showers,
since I do not wake up
without a poem and music
of six strings in my spirit
by the shady purple trellis
dreaming of a changed season
in a foreign language
and am granted to sit
under the juniper on a July dawn
despite the heaviness
of the heat I consume an orange
reading Hart Crane, Frost
and Emily Dickinson
drinking in the singing carols
feeding the wrens on the branches
whose mouths taste
my bread on the waters
as swans wander under waves
along the hide tide off shore
off the Cape,
since I'm under an umbrella
of a hot sun
you provide me with shade
of my kingdom's spirit
knowing the poet's silk
restores the kinsman's wisdom
of bardic ancient mariners
in the island home harbors
of all who are exiled
or coming the the shore
like the faithful birds
of Capistrano wishing
for a respite of bread and water
and cold milk
resting on the virtuosity
as a daughter from Spanish airs
of my Sephardic ancestors
on my grandmother's side
who came to America
as a young bride
eating dates and figs
under the wispy canopy breeze
on white curtain lace
to take a lottery chance
after the long ceremony
as a witness to Jacob's God
to accompany the ancient chants
at rivers of peace and grace
as my laughter's ink dreams
increases colors
upon an afternoon portrait
along the Pyrenees in the snow
with fleeing refugees
of Picasso moving to France
the willing angels ask
only to sit by the carob
near the hyacinth trees
since the sound of silence
explodes in a new world.

BECAUSE

Because the voice summons me
in my wound of memory
from a millennia of visions
in seeds, dreams,saints,glories
and because my brother and sister
are not to be judged
but already have an epitaph
in this world and another
and because the moonlight hides
in the Evergreen by the Blue Hills
and the birds are wandering
amid the branches under sunshine
because all that I was and am
reporting is in the mangroves
after the rain shower
do not ask me to be silent
at afternoon prayer
or going about a pilgrimage to Sarah
at Hebron in the moonlight
in dusty sandals on our feet
and breaking the glass
at a wedding after the wine
or hearing the sea
from my Cape window
or the image of Chagall's angels
with trembling hands
nailed to a tree
I have already bathed
in the Jordan over the river beds
three times seen baptisms
by the midsummer pomegranates
and tasted the fruit of Eden's garden
known of the loins of my Savior
rejoicing in the wood
of the Jezreel Valley
got lost in the desert
found the Jerusalem stones
to be very handwritten on walls
of prayer wheels
expect the seraphim and cherubim
to arrive in early harvest time
in the brick crescendos
from the vessels of trumpets
with motioning lips
yet thirsty for a dig
of a lost map of the holy land
in the carried off topography
by the open fields
wanting to rise in sunshine
of the ocean sails
reading Whitman
on a banana boat in Jamaica
with Derek Walcott,
taking an escalator
in the Moscow underground
with the Beats.

THIS SUFFERING

This suffering
of poets like Clare
Lowell and Plath
in the hell of despair
from a path
lined up in madness
next to another bier.

OUT OF TIME

Your mind is an escalator
of ancient manuscripts
loaned out to despair
and modern sensibility
I'm not believing what the ear
and eye elbow in sight
to bare with the creator
here in the lost night
only Auden may share.

NIGHT

Night has been hushed
that only the bluebirds
at dawn's nexus
are caught between branches
of rain shadows
by the orange trees
in a bloodshot eye of a poet
from a Van Gogh landscape
draped behind the curtains
as waterspouts overflow
in sandy footprints
near steps of the gazebo
over the tiny words drawn
onto an miniature portrait of me
by the July breeze off the water
with a rescued junk yard dog
is being loved
under the weighed down window
draping with Ivy.

VOYAGE

So are we only stars
in the night air
or by sand on the islands
near Bar Harbor
floating by an anchor
of my kayak
from a collage of water
backing out in the depth of wind
being lead under the sun
to another mouth
speaking of poetry's declension
in words conversing
with the scales and bones
that daylight converses
while a right whale, porpoise
and dolphin vie
for our attention.

WHEN DAY SETTLES
(In Memory Annie Menebroker
1936- 2016)

When day settles
the poet is still at home
on night waves of the sea
to fulfill her wish for wildflowers
when hourly dreams sparkle anew
on the watering mirrors
with words winding by her side
she still loved the marigolds
by the edge of the shore
and only her memory
of journey will endure
only the third person diaries
of films which she adored
turned into a play on words
imagining mushrooms
under afternoon fields
she would gather from earth
in a painful first light
when she fed the birds.

MODIGLIANI

Born on July 12th
with beauty no boundary
only an animation
of duty to art
in portraiture of culture
an exile, bon vivant
with vistas of new language
in an open color book
with a smiling frame for us
as your natural landscapes
lives on beyond the midnight
moon and tomorrow's
tiny lemon suns of the air
shaping our belief
in the dark studio
from your sidelong hours
as you are entranced
by Baudelaire
glancing at the clouds moving
in your bas relief and name.

A MANHATTAN DAY

Reading Whitman at ten
when feeding pigeons
at the brownstone
on a sunny Manhattan day
while having salmon salad
on a cream cheese bagel
at an outside cafe with dad
others are playing
chess or backgammon
talking about Hegel
who digress on Stalingrad
with a dream for peace
if we are to survive
going for my violin lesson
a Woody Allen comedy movie
then to visit the abstract artists
the Strand a used bookstore
and listening to jazz
on a Harlem bandstand
to make us feel alive and free.

SEARCH (A PLAY)

A-Looking for a circle

B-In a box of chocolates

A- Too sweet this morning

B. -Wait till later

C.- I've been waiting all my life for chives

A.You were always the chivalrous one

B. Looking for formulas

C- And answers for our existence.

B. But not finding the location

C. In the locution.

A-  With poetic elocution, however clever

B An intonation

A- But all the torments,sleepless days, angst, anxieties, worries, was it worth it for your poems

plays, maxims,fiction?

B. Marcel seemed to think so, Plato , Sartre as well

A. Looking for an answer, a strategy, eulogy,

B. And what  have you found?

A. Insistence, resistance, persistence in my parts I gave out

B.Or gave in

C. Or sold out.

A.Or reformed, reformulated, or created out of imagination in my creation at a cremation.

RENE CHAR'S WAY

Faithful and urgent son
of living tongue transparencies
opening expressions
infant in its solitude
from the winds mid-dreams
recollecting your sustained fluency
over the recollected shadows
ambushing the mirrored prompter
in banishment and exile
from ashen forgiving remorse
on deserted midnight streets
crackling in the pea-green Seine
by the morning gorse light
a river of fiery painted visions
translates in a rapture wave of grief
battering the ending of sorrows
we watch the floating oars
become a new lyrical lover
as the rain intoxicates
into a fraternal metamorphosis
your refrains of belief
eyes the exiled migrations
wounded by conscience
as the wounded silence joins
your eternal pilgrimages
on our earth's abyss
to the miraculous azure sky.

A MORNING ON THE CAPE

A morning of shadows
of an adolescent's hours
on a park bench
counting the boats
anchored by the Bay
now moving out
in the silent daylight
scenting flowers by the sea
who connects each fold
of French hydrangea
near floating marigold
motioning my viola bow
on the greensward lawn
playing for tourists
by the ocean dawn
for apples and honey.

ON THE CHARLES RIVER

On the Charles River
listening to Handel's Water Music
with a group of poets in sandals
eager to read out their dreams
and share their wounds
by delivered sailboats
prevailing here in a flotilla
filling in Eastern winds
visiting me in every age
from all over the universe,
there was the topical painter
and bard at the helm
William Blake
just waking up from Paradise
and the just St.- John Perse
at the stern by the docks,
Whitman from Manhattan
Emily Dickinson up from Amherst
both at a chance encounter
join in the variety of speech
as Paul Eluard from France
waves to the crowd
yet Chimako Tada reaches first
floating in from Japan,
those influenced by dada
Tristran Tzara or Hugo Ball
or by listening to a cantata
like Wislawa Szymborska's words
set to a call of stirring music,
sharing the boat is Petri, Csori
from Hungary celebrating
and deliberating with Rosetti
Zagajewski ,Vasco Popa
those who were called prolific
like the wise Italian Zanzotto,
Dylan Thomas, Celan ,Pasolini
with Gonzalez ,Vallejo, Lorca
vetting or outsmarting
their Spanish words
or reinventing language
for our martyred vanishing age
and those who in bereavement
summarize and analyze as critics
all these poets' achievements.

PICASSO'S RECOGNITION

It always begins
in exile or banishment
to discover a new way
for art to paint
a personal history filing
in a patina on miracle ashes
by a spray of the passing
lyrical crying river
brushing to shape a geometric line
on the poetic canvas
interpreted by a life signing
of awaiting his signature
by risking nature's own statistics
in poster and sculpture
of a prodigal of dissonance
the century opens up to you
as you transfigure time
shape, dream,form, voice
in an iconic chance way
of paradox and paroxysms
in a recall to shift his choice
to utterance and acceptance
of an invitation of surreal
evaluation of contradiction
from a painter's brushing
evaluation on genius scales
in a romance at patience
looking at the dolphins
in an ambitious summation
from anguish at his horizon
by modern interpretation
over the sunlit drawings
of a substance of reformulation
at how to create a language
of a universal journey
into a voyager's reinvention.

CESAR VALLEJO'S PLEA

Even the sky is abandoned
by the birds
doubled by your sorrow
to bring prosperity back
to the long silence
in anger of the poor
in the sugar fields
yet you find an orange
at the side of the river
write a few lines of memory
breathing in salty waves
of sun soaked mirrors
for those who love the sea
murmur of a hidden lover
falling through pages
of a many worded diary
hoping after the siesta
the birds will return
spreading their wings
on branches to discover
screaming for a place
like you to sing
under a patch of sky.

A DREAM MONTAGE

The Beat is in a cinematic dream
with a technicolor vision
of his iconic organic poetry
in celluloid words
watching the making
of Percy Adlon's "Baghdad  Cafe"
spontaneously rising
like a phoenix here
in the myth of the desert
here in a dynamic film set
in California's Mojave's caves
basking on my unconscious mind
as a myth maker's sublimation
seeks to encompass masks
of alchemy's extraordinary powers
by proxy of psycho dynamic images
taken by camera for his creation
in an iconic and mystic world
of his own screen phrases
and dialogue of metaphors.

AT THE CAPE

We move on blankets
of first light
by ourselves wishing ourselves
to tape our memory's footsteps
ever so silent as salt
adolescence breathes
by your snorkels
we dive in early
our toes curl
along breathing fish
we are as shadows
in the deepest mirrors
opening the visible windows
of nature's warmth
airing out our communications
with our eyes by waves
in raising our fingers by fins
wrinkled and bottled up
from mermen and mermaid suits
opening our adventure's windows
with new strokes as we wave
to each other motioning
love bubbles to each other
in this metamorphosis  of ocean
down here by slanted goggles
at humpback whales
who play reading out headfirst
and then spy a porpoise, dolphins
smelts and salmon
expecting it's lunch time
on the bedrock beach.

ELlE WIESEL'S TIME

Words in whispers
that labor in the veneer
of war being benign,
caught up in tension,
shut up by memory,
worthy of attention
and humanity's cost
in an age of fear,
is not lost;
you who made us aware
to love our neighbors,
for a witness to care
about every holocaust.

BOSTON CHILD

Left off on the Boston Common, Perry had one green eye which he viewed as if he were in tunnel vision.

All alone, strangers came up to him, who was seven but imagined he was eleven.

"Free green monster seats at the Red Sox game .Be early."

" Free the Milford ten."

"I'm too busy passing out my tracts to tell you about God."

" You are on revolutionary beds. Remember Revere."

"Save the whale and the climate."

"Free flute lessons at the Conservatory."

"Visit the Constitution now docked."

"Win the lottery, be set for life."

" A poem for your thought."

"Join the chess bums at Harvard."

"Holocaust memorial nearby."

"Dog walkers are here for you."

Perry stood there as if paralyzed by all the voices. He starts to cry at all the confusion.

He sees an angel or someone dressed as one apparently quoting Rilke and takes off.

A STRAVINSKY MOMENT

Remembering each note
floating twelve tone
sharps and flats
over the stage of the ballet hall
here at my tender age
dressed in a tux
wearing white short pants
asked to play first violin
glancing at the audience
with the harp of consciousness
of an utterance in a visionary
trance at tumultuous throbbing dance
with masked costumes of Bakst
as tentative lovers at last word
in their own witness of calling
on Stravinsky's moment
of his "Firebird"
desire in memory of romance
to discover a luminary's world.

STEVEN'S ECHO

Missing pieces
asks the metaphor
to elevate lines
of space to insure
a poem is finely drawn
in his armchair
feet flat on the floor
spies at a Hartford window
with a glare
like two weeks ago
as releasing a sky
when flakes of snow fall
awaking children's laughter
like rolling waves
as the wind breaks
on a winter afternoon
will show we are
but shadows and masks
of beauty's manifesto.