Soon-to-be / Hiding Your Present From You*

No center trapped no
Ageless words the center
Of our soon-to-be
Innocent fire
Fingers flick string
To air happening again no
Center trapped the fire
Of our soon-to-be
Our
Soon-to-be
Words fire fingers
Flick our words
Light reflect
Soon-to-be an innocent world
No present hides
A thing of mesh

No present hides in truth
No center trapped no
Words immortals trapped
The string
Fire fingers
Flick heart breath to
Bow
Our soon-to-be will
No past negates

A thing of mesh a
Thing soon-to-be
The lights the fire flares-up
The string song bird return to the fire
To transvalue a thing
This moving
Force against the bow
Stretch
Stretch this present yet

Spire the reverb the
Verb ticking as wood spies
A light changing somewhere
Inside the song
Somewhere hidden
A thing of mesh
Some violent present almost
A violin box
Almost a tick
Against the bow wood

Some fire soon-to-be next
To these gifts somewhere
In song where is it
And which somewhere in the
Song hidden spirit
Of his child-like violence
Distortion
The way to the verb
Tapping his passage

Somewhere in song a delay
Of the thing thin mantle
Mesh hiding your present
Blow distorting
This passage to when and
Some drums
And some
Drums pass as cloud
He therefore claims them
As movements

Or stillness to still the
Bow song space throughout time
Wait for the voice
To get there to get
Where
The song unsettles waves washing
These words
Suddenly the
Closeness of clouds
Soon-to-be

Suddenly the closeness of
Listening soon-to-be
The soon-
to-be words
Sing the
Soon-to-be things of air
Break your phrasing
The charms of
Your frame waves
Washing the strings
Who is still moving suddenly

Cut voice from air unformed
Unformed mover in the
Soon-to-be words
The soon-to-be names of things this
Bow
This bow against
Our sudden lips
The unprecedented
And present light
Nothing will hide

Unformed mover who can’t
Give up this place
The center
A bow
Cut clouds clouds cut what a gas
To find place looking
Down
Looking down at
The center
The center
Of our soon-to-be
Innocent fire
The present of
His violence child-like

Eager gifts
And patient ones to find where you will
See where it is and where
You won’t know where it is
The coming drums of
Your voice
Your sudden voice
Of stillness

Looking down where you
Won’t know where it is
Your purloined lips the lips of song
Somewhere in song
Something in
The light the soon-to-be
Stillness
A voice moves

Finds fills and moves
In circles soon-to-be
Fire of what we weren’t and what we are
The soon-to-be breath transvalued
Without resemblance this
Speed
This stillness of gas

A gas to cut the strings
To cut the quiet names
The mind mind of this
Play or suffering mind
Suffering
The delayed waves
And playing upon the eyes

What the fingers can throw
Thought rain luck talk
Through
This part to enclose
A cloud and to free
A frozen wave
To think these were once my words
Lucky cloud leave it alone
I’m watching
Out of my ears

California here I come
Distorting what the fingers
Can throw
Rain talk
Talk against the bow
To be a gift to be
A soon-to-be gift
Treating the strings

Frozen wave of these
Strings moving frozen words
Of this mind
Here come the drums
The strings drums talk the coming words
Out of soon-to-be cloud

Coming home coming through
The little words of song string bow
Drums echo
Echo for the present
Of this next home coming
Returning through
The simple words

The coming air of this
Inside the
Inside outside
Little words of song still
Happily
Happily inside
The coming of this inside
Soon-to-be
This
Outside inside
Happy and
Still weather as it moves in place
Weather
The song times

Tapping happily
Tapping
Claiming the clouds clouds hide
An innocence
Child-like violence
Of their soon-to-be light
Light through the
Clouds the end of this
Claims
A soon-to-be
Voice lifting-off
Our last night together

Somewhere in the song
Tapping
Happily
Clouds hide
Claiming the coming air of this
Inside you’re coming back
O your coming back
Inside

composed winter '04-05 for Arthur Russell.