i
the only object is
a man, carved
out of himself, so wrought he
fills his given space, makes
traceries sufficient to     
others’ needs
                     (here is
social action, for the poet,
anyway, his
politics, his
news)
                             Charles Olsen

Breathe deep of the
freshly gray morning air, mild 
spring of the day.
Let the night’s dream-planting
bear leaves
and light up the death-mirrors with
shining petals.
Stand fast in thy place:
remember, Caedmon
turning from song was met 
in his cow barn by One who set him
to sing tye beginning.
Live
in thy fingertips and in thy
hair’s rising; hunger
be thine, food
be thine and what wine
will nit shrivel thee.
Breathe deep of
evening, be with the
rivers of tumult, sharpen
thy wits to know power and be
humble.


ii
the task of the poet is to make clear
to himself, and thereby to others,
the temporal and eternal questions
                                                Ibsen  

Barbarians
throng the straight roads of
my empire, converging
on black Rome.
There is darkness in me.
Silver sunrays
sternly, in tenuous joy
cut through its folds:
mountains
arise from cloud.
Who was it yelled, cracking
the glass of delight?
Who sent the child
sobbing to bed, and woke it
later to comfort it?
I, I, I, I.
I multitude, I tyrant,
I angel, I you, you
world, battlefield, stirring
with unheard litanies, sounds of piercing
green half-smothered by strewn bones.

                         
iii
And virtue? Virtue lies in the heroic
response to the creative wonder, the
utmost response.
                             D.H. Lawrence 

Death in the grassblade
a dull
substance, heading blindly
for the bone
and bread preserved without
virtue,
sweet grapes sour to the children’s children.

We breathe an ill wind,
nevertheless our kind
in mushroom multitudes
jostles for elbow-room
moonwards

an equalization of
hazards
bringing the poet
back to song
as before

to sing of death
as before
and life, while he
has it, energy

being in him a singing,
a beating of gongs, efficacious
to drive away devils,
response to

the wonder that
as before
shows a double face,

to be
what he is
being his virtue

filling his whole space
so no devil
may enter.