I
The Loss
Ah, you are gone. Ah you are
gone singing,
leaving this deep void in my heart ringing.
Your happiness shines through dark, dispelling
the gloom, the
quiet tomb of past dwelling.
I hide in its corners, worship,
quelling
my sorrow, my loneliness, everything
in habits of
mandatory sighing.
I cry for wind, I cry for the winging
night
owl, pray for new wisdom from brooding,
pray I will wake in the dawn
deserting
this hurt, despair, this ill favored longing.
In the
sun, with the pale stars descending,
I'll search the lawn and the
trees, the hanging
moss, the wild wind forever believing
there
must be evidence of your loving
beyond measure. As I lay
worshipping
in tender delight all the amazing
union of our
destinies like blazing
coherent light, I saw lasers scanning
the
moon, powerful telescopes peering
beyond galaxies through
disappearing
space into certainty's heart, there clinging.
I
know you'll return with kindness, bringing
fire to the hearth of my
heart, restoring
my faith and my love, my trust, my warming.
The
bond of your strong body inviting
my undiluted trust and my
twining.
Love, can I live without your embracing,
Can I wander
the world without facing
the solitude, the lack of
cherishing?
In dreams each night, I'm lost to
caressing
insubstantial wisps of remembering:
your lips, your
eyes, your dear breath whispering
the eternity of love
attesting.
I'll stay here where you were used to being,
breathe
the air hoping to find glimmering
priceless antiquities and,
devoting
my time cautiously with everlasting
patience, will
restore without shattering
infinitesimal pieces which ring
to
the sound of your gay, bouyant laughing
in the bliss of happiness
enduring.
O, can I bear the loss without screaming,
without
crying, without dying, beating
the ground where you were lately
seen roaming?
Earth, how unfair to create by stealing
the panic
of creatures you gave feeling.
Kind cats kill their mice. Spare me to
dying.
For this day I would go without crying,
without
trepidation -- not the fearing,
without the dread
of beyond, not trembling
if I could be promised total blinding
to the knowledge of love, ever having
had what could be
dissolved into losing.
The illusion of ever increasing
riches of
spirit, of lushly growing
devotion, of tropical
flourishing
exotic blooms, erotic nuturing
has tricked me,
fooled my forlorn hope to cling
for the sake of another to
piping
and singing and vaunted sacred welding
of separateness in
one consuming
whole. You are gone. I am but half hearing
the
lecture of my heart. Truths of living
proved false and slowly
degrading. Fasting,
I shall turn to the East and go seeking.
The Journey
The sun on the vast plains
high and reeking
escorts me moment by moment pleading
its heat
and its wrath, movement exceeding
the sense of a donkey at noon
plodding,
nodding when all with good sense are
sleeping.
"Desist, resist," cries gold light glittering.
Yet,
without will, my feet are proceeding
while my mind, mute, prays for
shelter, shielding.
My heart prays for the death of my
thinking.
God's and my body's will are both shrinking
before the
monsterous lust unseeing
of drives that are embedded,
fluttering
in the red blood cells within flesh pulsing,
pounding
and quivering. I am shambling
as I walk on and on through the
scorching
desert, the infinite length of scouring
years,
perpetually weary, scorning.
Not yet fully prepared to be
viewing
what the bleak future holds for reviewing,
yet ardently,
passionately praying
to never return to jeopardizing
the world's
wonder by need iterating
its mindless necessity, by
warping
pleasant excursion into harsh warring,
whimpering, insistent, blind, strangling.
I flee the louring sky. Yet
mastering
my magic carpet of complex gridding,
I glide over the whirling
world flying
the intricate, high wind world's harrowing
upsweep,
down draft, rocking and blunt reeling.
On the rug's pattern,
conning its keying,
I steer in a bound round the earth keeping
my stillness, curiosity mapping
the plains of the desert. The
canopying
forest's irridescent green acceding
to the sun's
bright probe flashes, displaying
the endlessness of one color's
healing
powers over human hearts emptying,
hoping to revive the
naturalizing
of pure loving, blessing, careful listening.
I fly
through the universe demanding
a difference from God's interrogating
gift of the great human mind yammering,
yodeling, yapping,
yawning, non-yielding.
Out-of-sync, the useless,
flawed-reasoning,
clay-built creature keeps interviewing
for
possibilities, still pondering
alternatives, other coursing
for
eternity's river while I sing.
Singing for the jubilee,
rejoicing,
steering my time woven, red, ground-looming
shuttle
mount through, beyond the transpiring,
remotest reaches of
manifesting
light, seeking new questions, understanding
the
tumbling, trampling, tossing and treading.
I will find rest, renewal. A
stinging
quotidian needed awakening.
I will find thee, I will
find revealing
assurance that the looked for unveiling
is
written on sands of time, on blowing
ingots of feathers and down,
on sinking
soft beds of future and past, succeeding
the day by
day unpledged rich offering
of surpise, replenishment
uniting
what would have been, what will be. Numbering
the
journey's final stop, utilizing
destination's code, we are
arriving
to muse keening, at the planned harvesting.
The Panegyric
Praise to
the land, the spring and the lightning,
the lushness of bloom, the
carob's calling
with its odor of musk and decaying
richness, of
heavy unguents enfolding.
Praise for the yearning and
validating,
for the rain and sun endlessly quarrelling,
the
gamelan sound of leaves xylophoning,
to the late tears and the wind
responding.
Praise the cyclone, the hurricane raging,
the
tsunami wild and high and snatching
at mountains, man's frail
effortful housing,
upheavals that end destiny's tossing.
Send
encomia, daunt God's nattering.
Humans crawl upward in spite of oozing
subhuman diseases, suppurating
psyches, still hoping for
madness' cleansing.
They shout from rooftops,
vituperating
volcanoes of sheer violence spewing
uncontainable
pain, terrorizing
their small bodies of bone and of
bleeding.
Pray for them, Shiva. Pray for them killing
their own
and their neighbor, blind fear stoking,
their rage and their tears.
Pray for their sobbing,
sweet Buddha. Pray their inhumane training
by humans will rinse out before wringing
the last vestiges of
compassioning
grace that hides somewhere in the recessing
soul.
Praise Man! Who will praise man? Redeeming
only their own soul, for
the scales tipping
may never be righted again. Jesting!
God
jests with the creatures He wrought, ceding
to their mad power and
perverse planning.
Omnipotently, He could by lording
have
sent
them grandly and kindly sailing
down rivers of a different course.
Harping,
listening: neither are God's strong points. Hewing
to
visions that don't work is describing
God made in man's image and man
conning
God's original script. Pristine, hedging,
why should
He change His plans when jaywalking
is no option in diurnal
zoning?
"Rules are rules!" -- whoever, petitioning,
might see a
different scenario ping
with the rightness of a snapped glass
zinging.
Ignore the great wind's gentle zephyring
agreement to
protect. Go yodelling
across blue-white, zincated roofs glaring,
clutching axioms too precious, urging
a standstill to change.
Everything changing
everywhere newness, except obstructing
laws
proven unworkable. God, ridding
the world of man is a thought
promising
benefit to nature. Creatures zesting
for their life
and respite from man's trampling
will appreciate Your listening,
swanning
at last the irrefutable damning
evidence gathered
against Your wailing,
rampaging, blind, deaf, befriended
sibling.
Listen! Hear this encomium ending.
You and Your
creation of clay kindling
symbiotic, nepotistic, mincing
dances
to tunes meant for the expanding
"All" that can be loved, consider
something
beyond Your own loneliness. Fragmenting --
consider
it, chance changing, revealing
what we know is the heart of Your
singing.
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu