The stingrays in my dream were almost translucent and then I saw this was Hell and they were souls which is the way of dreams. How does one explain this was a kind of happiness?
Vague convictions grow clear.
**
Upriver and down.
Mix in a teaspoon of Heraclitus and a cup of Eliot…
**
People like me, with severely limited vision, we tend to like first light or sunset best. We’re late or early to each garden.
**
Inside the eye a smaller eye; inside the secondary eye a stingray; inside this–Ekelof, Herakleitos and Eliot.
**
Oh Gunnar Ekelof, you who saw the afterlife is flat, the hours ours, and a night lamp the muse.
**
From a notebook:
Explanation
When the river asked me to join
wind was still. So I put half my arm
in there—cold bone brother
and sure
river wasn’t satisfied—
it begged for more arm.
I plunged up to my shoulder
like a man
who’s dropped his car keys,
reaching among reeds
feeling my ancestors.
Grandfather was giddy
with parturition and slick.
“God help me,” I thought,
“letting fast river talk me
into metempsychosis.”
Water flowed one way
and the dead the other.
**
Ekelof, smoking a pipe in a circle of lamplight.
Planet of the Blind 