Dear Univocals

~ to Lori Anderson Moseman
after T.S. Eliot's "Virginia"

"Red river, red river
Slow flow heat is silence
Now will is slow as a river
Still..."

Stiller flame is this heat here
Subtracted still from obsolescence suppposed
The resilience of actual handedness

Polish forms numbered one by one
In the heat of this movement what motions
Gesture before description should be made

--Ever a place to put us

"...Will heat move
Only through the mocking bird
Heard once?..."

Never heard once and often with both
Ears held binocularly to a percept
None shall cross twice except no place

Shall always be here or there
Where time wasn't before us after all
But in us dear Univocals dear organs fleeing

"...Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait wait,
Delay, decay...."

Our stand-stills still like justice, this
Is the shudder, for all movement commas,
Rove in our thinking, the colors of that thinking

The gradations of this, as notes desynchronous
Moved, to that like synchronous birds,
Seen in waters warbled reflection, this inflection

--Our life as we were undead

"...Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thought came with me
And go with me
Red river, river, river."

To repeat with me children
Ever moving with the living
For the dead what
Makes the writing undead

Uniquely a color moved
To with and repeated
Like a sound for being
Overburdening signs

Such was an image in-
Crementally of voices flocked
Subtracted from which
River below or above?

Coda:
Why "Virginia" but for the war
Dead buried between
This border song subtracted
From their repetitions

Anthems like a blood released
From like or appearance over
Our battles of salvageable sky and earth
Battle again like we were

No when no where else
But in this flow no one but bullets
Where wounds were unthinkable
Canons persist internal to us.