By D.C.

FOR HIM I SING

FOR him I sing,
I raise the present on the past, shells of nebulae / shed by a supernova
(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)
With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,
To make himself by them the law unto himself.

WHEN I READ THE BOOK

WHEN I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and infirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.) I thought we might sing
Of the wire wound round the wound of feeling.

in the shattered absence of an unraveling cosmos

BEGINNING MY STUDIES

BEGINNING my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

mushroom spore/
dandelion seed

The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs,
With the water a deep dark blue, an almost
Indigo we paled from the well before sail.  BEGINNERS

How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,
How they inure to themselves as much as to any — what a paradox
appears their age, small particles, tiny bits of debris.