The Ancient World
by Andrew Haley
I
the old world baseless
form without form
a multitude of larva poured
from a withered cornucopia
students with beautiful legs
in the arms of September
a broken European car
hovering in the slow lane
on the parkway
on a sunny day in the chasm between the trees
children mewing under the orthodoxies
of their balloons
shadowing them and they in turn shadowing
mother’s long white wrist
on the walk from kindergarten
along the little rusted fence
the gardens blighted of their blooms
life returns to the leaves
soon thicken the pale roots
search tapering in the clay
towards the point of thirsting
at the apex of the quest’s parabola
poised frameless in its frame
zooed beyond the wild of time's
continual savage and meander
blank rot carousel
worted
a lye-white foam off sloughing waves
breaking and blending above and among
the true tides
complete universe
a dissipation of solid worlds
into the liquid air we murmuring in the room
murmur and inhale
transparent as green water
slipping plastic and tangible
among the stones liquefied and molded
into sluiceways before first erosion
in the chanceways of time's molding
and trepanation of glacier’s holdings
blows the appointed rut into its chasm
and the liquid world turns inward above a colored rot
of month old discarded blooms
in sun bleat
the white shadows of September lulling along the axis
of world’s tilt
light evoking memory
all fall a common dead time
a single point of feeling
returning and returned
hovering between the sessions of the seasons
life’s fluttering of episodes
brief passage of light through a prism
a colored glob dripping down a kitchen wall
and in it hovering a singularity
tiniest remembrances all shed
to a common core
fall you are my funeral
I return to you again
I return to your inevitable reunion
in the frosted hay
stacked graying in the frozen fields
dark morning’s frost
among faces that like singularities
mark forever the procession of identities
false as light split in prism’s passage
a white chance bearing the whole of light
fluttering ultraviolet
soft orange at the brim of pink
floating down a dingy kitchen wall
life in my brief forever
you have been unkind
to the lovers of memory
memory sunk like a well
in a school yard
with a little greasy parapet
and you in your sessions
bold bland lies we label seasons
hacked into facets
of a dumb quadrilateral
you coil over and eat your tail
along with the best of us
the best is behind you!
you choke
the best is always behind you!
before sucking your own head
coiled curling back abysmal into the swirl
tapering white roots swollen with the news
in the quest we are the point
which extended forms the line
of the parabola
the parabola is endless
and our passage
nothing but our brief infinite
at no phase paused
at no phase inactivated
II
Percival that dumb skirted girl scout
stands among the winter aspen
dressed in the ribbons of exhaustion
his shield draped with rags
his sword dropped weeks before
in a near frozen crossing winter ford
vanished in eddying ruffles for good
poor Percival you metaphor
not even the light will wash your stain
from the whitening world
III
clouds dreamily as dromedaries
loping slow in advance of their slowly rolling ranks
drag the sun poured among them
through them
luminous white eclipses lit from within
halos in the blue passing
advancing slow and pure
thickening
dark bellied
dragging their shadows over
the fluttering leaves
the brick walls darkening
around their air conditioners
the mirrors in the neighbor’s windows disappear
and no neighbor stands there looking out
from the room time occupies with his few talismans
his actions small and stumbling
up the gang plank
under a coolie's burden
to a ship without ship on a sealess sea
his mind contracted into a few kilograms
crowned with a scalp on a skull
container of these merest articles
movements and abstractions
he loves a coin
he found on a road
in a place one time
permanently voided
from the little space he shares
with a white radiator
he stands in his room
and he loves his coin
except he isn't there
and clouds passing have turned
their white fringes the brightest feature
of a darkening sky
against this halved brightness
his brick chimney struggles to maintain
its mottled angles
dressed in soot’s patina
from flattening
into dimmed silhouette
and across the lush leaves
at the level of the neighboring roof
as if rising from the same tarred lead
as the plumbing and exhaust
the cross on the spire
of a distant church
is two black lines
flat as a singularity
two strokes against the sky
as wide as the world’s room
IV
Percival you dumb musketeer
you forgot your mead cup
your lead lined stein
your whiskey jar
caught in a fool's mala fides
mumbling over your ashes
blessing the crumbs
you scrape from a moth-eaten towel
blowing a cold fog on a cracked mirror
to determine with primitive certainty
whether you still have the strength
to carry that broken shield
while Ronsard wears a garter belt for a crown
a maiden’s thighs fixed to his ears
in an aventail of adolescent skin
bleating love-torn songs to a tune
we wrote together
remember
on the ramparts of Col-de-Cuisse
that was 1069
your eyes were luminous
I feared I would give it all
for a moment pressed to your black beard
the ghosts cruised over the heather below
mixing with the steam that rose
from the backs of unsaddled horses
and those putrid gasses the bloated
bellies of the slain no longer could endure
we were the picture of happiness
twelve tones on a twelve stringed lute
twelve strings struck on a guitar
our faces as white as the inlay under your palms
our minds as blank as the candle’s golden tapering
its flicker on the white wrists
of the dames who had come on donkeys
sidesaddle up the cliffs of Roth-Händle
word of your singing had reached that far
Alexander was dressed in a suit of blood
you sang
the elephants slept dreaming of tigers
and the maidens shifted on their crushed petticoats
to get a better glimpse
of those remorseful sapphires
your wear in place of your eyes
V
from the lid of the holy mountain
with the sun behind us
and the sun spread before us over the turquoise bay
we watched sliver dolphins
in the few fathoms
day lit to green coral
flowering from the sand
that day we leapt from the dinghy
and swam deep
to the enormous tortoises
grazing on grass that floated long and lean
from the fine white sand
five fathoms down
we swam with bull sharks
in a murky current
and fear livened us
when we climbed back aboard
the water running over our up-pricked hairs
made our skin seem smooth
as if invisible crystal cream
had been poured over us
as if we were the light
flowing in the crystal
as we rocked in the sun on the tip of the tide
fetching those dripping bottles of ice cold beer
you nearly capsized us
Percival
you klutz
do you remember
in the glare of summer
the episodes
you passed through
my little proton
my singularity
do you recall
the kelp draped on the keel
the prayer flags red and fluttering
from the anchored prow
do you remember
the light of summer
as it seemed to hover
in the mosquito netting
and the way it turned to shadow
in the folds
of the young woman's skin
the two of you naked
and glowing
under that light and luminous parachute
do you recall anything
my melancholy fool
of the summer nights
in the Quonset hut
on the mountainside
where in the afternoons
you wandered the shorn hedges
of the tea plantation
and hitchhiked to the greenhouse
for strawberries
you sat on the terraces
of the apiary
eating honey made from roses
and the light on the wrought iron sign
shining tropical at zenith
seemed to incise the sharp shadow
of the words on the wall
do you recall
fool
tired and broken down
in motley
clinging no longer to the bare twigs
of winter aspen
content at last to collapse against the beam
of a broken wikiup
with a sharp stone
in your tailbone
and dirt scraped in the holes
worn in those old Sienese boots
while the ants crawl nibbling beneath your shirt
and the clouds turn each white black trunk
into one another
under a sky
as gray as skin
your hunger grown so small it finally
crawled out of you and disappeared
do you remember any of this
is it all
is all of it
gone done
the gray hairs among the black hairs
of your beard
VI
where is
this autumn
that calls me back
to pure clear loneliness
among the visions
where I wander
where I sleep and sit
in rooms I will not enter in again
with faces or better bodies
bundled and exuding frosted breath
not what they were or will be
but what they are
along the tiniest spell
of my parabola
where is it kept
a room or a wide field
blotted with frozen hay
locked somewhere
along the flattest trace
no wider than a singularity
curled brief white root
under the lightless clay
