Wednesday, February 15, 2006

For Your Son When He Can Read*


to Alasdair Schlesinger

Pick a time and pluck
The printer thinks in ink
The eyes see mimicry
And pursue it
To their blankest song

These pulses are of the eyes

To blink endlessly
Blink
Among anything your
Body can know
By loving the world
Which you seek

This feeling which is first

Walk amply
In this time
Of letters cleaving thoughts
A body of your
Speaking
Simple whips of talk

Of this prairie green
A myth of this greenness

Initially this spectrum
The mouth is its
Own motor
The body becomes
The world in words
Going a million miles

Green preceding waves
Green conceiving

Attend seriously to
Attention
Errant in its emergence
Flick eyes sing
The mind that is
The body flashing
In a time it leaves

These letters playing their love

Graphically this integer
This year, this
Tear
In time
That is your birth
Against any drudgery

Overtures that overturn all

Attend to attention
Attend
A time of marks, of
Lines again
Your grace is not an
Artillery
Nor a crick of clocks

These pulses are of the ears

*composed February, 2005 for the occasion of Alasdair Schlesinger's birth.

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