4 Poems by Larry Beckett

46

Kerouac’s walking in the memory snow,
in a short story, over the lost diamond,
dusk coming on, he’s got to hurry: after
the lover’s sonnets, holy psalms; summers
of indulgence, this winter of sacrifice.
The low down sky; no choice, flakes fall,
dome of the Pioneer Courthouse, drifted
with mail; I meditate: —White pages, unique,
like whorl or iris, unknowable, unknown.
I see you lift a finger: —From what temple?
In the air, bells. This frost won’t last:
days melt; like in your song, memory is
water. —You know what thaws, what cracks
the isolation, the ice, the I? Your voice.

51

Leonardo dreamed flight, the open question
eye, by embracing, not betraying, beauty,
trues art, and leads us on into the strange:
light all the way, midsummer, over the pole,
old love over and under the ruddy horizon,
wing’s edge, the stream tailwinding me as I
slip zones, to the day after. The stay at home
hero, the minimum man, wagers, ballooning,
extravagant, his sidekick, the skeleton key,
in fiction, and, a quarter century down, our
wavering ship: all scud, our say, or does
it linger? As I email you from, not heaven
but air, I’m translated across the Atlantic
of clouds, of chance, into the mother tongue.

Theme & 2 Choruses: for David Meltzer

Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,

in body: as revolution: a soft Brazilian song:
ah: for the language: for time: past & to come:
where roses blow: for words: from skin: no cover:
and so knowing: mortality: but it’s gone in
that sting: of pleasure: & the strength of dreams:
possessing us: passing between: self & other

in memory: of the one music: the etymology
of loss: the seminal man: what seeds: how holy:
as the rain does: its minstrel show: & showers you:
but so knowing: devotion: as long as blood is
flowing in you: after Emily’s hymn: hidden:
“do nothing”: “done nothing”: but: these spots of ink

But beares it out even to the edge of doome:

Grand Central
(from Blue Ridge)

In the anonymous night, the sultry air,
no rain, the naked man, cock under wraps,
the god of messages? on his roost, time,
12 number, a circle, through the façade,
on my lonesome, I go into the tabernacle

of motion, on the ceiling the zodiac, and
after money changes, my prayer’s holding
a blue ticket to the back country, love
gone cold or in its early fire, twanging
on the salvation radios, without a body.

All strangers, but we’re strands in a cord,
one direction, for now, out of the belly,
under the black river, to the ghost whinny
of the iron horse, pitiful lights, the rough
city, go sliding past, I south, oh rocking

in the rails’ arms, a pilgrim, with faith
in nothing, with a tale, a blue-eyed girl
by me, it happens, ah talk to her, make
up for the old days, lifting their arms,
as we highball, the American dark, opening.