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Simply awesome. Ken -------------- Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ "All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey." --Francine du Plessix Gray On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:24 PM, Mark Weiss wrote: > My only seasonal poem, as far as I can remember. > > > BY WAY OF THE SEASON > > > 1 > > After its struggle the gazelle > surrenders to the lion's grip, useless > to fight. Does it think then, does it think > 'if only I'd dodged to the right. If only. > Maybe next time.' > As the cat disembowels it and begins to feed. > > Farewell to the hills > farewell to the herd > farewell to water hole and tender grasses > and the joy of the young at the teat. > > 2 > > At moments when the consequences of choice are upon us we say > 'this can't be all there is,' but it can. Regret, nostalgia and longing, > on the other hand, are ready gifts, one can live > as if there were choices with no consequences, as if > the life could be unlived > and lived again. > > 3 > > Day before Christmas in the supermarket the Stones are singing "Can't get no > satisfaction," but we try & we try & we try & and we try > and we buy something. > > 4 > > No way no way > elusive as wind. > > 5 > > Stories and the stories of stories. > A vocabulary of places gathered and left. > Putting death aside, one wonders whether to climb that distant hill, as in > the conservation of matter. > There are so many windows to look through. > Opposite, a building seems to wear as a crown the trees > beyond it. Close one eye or the other > to recover its true flatness. If I say > 'rock dove' do you see 'pigeon?' > > 6 > > No gull rests now on the cross above the church's triangular facade, but > it's apparently a perch > reserved for gulls to take turns at. > So much for religion. One prays > to invest oneself in the known and unknown places, > the simplicity of the abandoned and the immanence of ruins. > Ghost-whispers. > > 'I am the demon that whimpers at night,' > he said, and the pigeons > (or doves) ride even the steepest wires. The oblique > is granted them. Across the street > in front of the travel agency > a gruff Santa makes Christmas noises > in Caribbean Spanish. For a moment I thought it the ghost > rising through the radiator from the apartment below. > He dances now to "The Entertainer" played on a portable keyboard. > Ragtime Spanish Santa from the Dominican Republic. > And what would Dominic have made of this? 'Church > of the Immaculate Deception,' he might have said. As in > 'I bring you pestilence' > he might have said. > It was an epidemic of grace. > > 7 > > That year three virgins bore sons. > > Zeus the King displayed his thunderbolts. > Chango fell as a shower of gold. > And Chac arrived as rain. > > Where you find it bring joy. > > > > > New from Chax Press: Mark Weiss, As Landscape. > $16. Order from http://www.chax.org/poets/weiss.htm > > > "What a beautiful set of circumstances! What a lovely concatenation of particulars. Here is the poet alive in every sense of the word, and through every one of his senses. Instead of missing a beat or a part, Weiss’ fragments are like Chekhov’s short stories the more that gets left out, the more they seem to contain… One can hear echoes from all the various ancestors...[but] the voice, at its center, its core, is pure Mark Weiss. His use of the fragment is both elegant and bafflingly clear, a pure musical threnody…[it] opens a window, not only into a mind, but a person, a personality, this human figure at the emotional center of the poem." > > M.G. Stephens, in Jacket. http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-weiss-rb-stephens.shtml