The savour of distant things:
far stars unruffled as to how they shine or swim
beyond our closed, fishbowl horizon of reaching drives,
itching at equations.
Within some formula all lost things brighten,
and laughter in summer-vivid leaves is mythology re-enacted,
though revolving hub-cap philosophies
toll of Bardo*
where through each motive is a clawed terror
stumbling on a fiery ledge,
a scream streaming through electric phantoms.
Sunlight and dream sing out the blue
back to it;
a smile, stepping off the curbstone casually,
ripples the lean street's foolish frontage.
Clean winter robin trill
flourishes torpid boughs
beyond crumbs of a gratitude.
..........................
Bardo is an inbetween place (between death and re-birth, for the most part) in some Tibetan Buddhist schools.
"According to Tibetan tradition, after death and before one's next birth, when one's consciousness is not connected with a physical body, one experiences a variety of phenomena. These usually follow a particular sequence of degeneration from, just after death, the clearest experiences of reality of which one is spiritually capable, and then proceeding to terrifying hallucinations that arise from the impulses of one's previous unskillful actions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
The term can of course also be used metaphorically, as I do use it here.
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Tapestries
PoetryPoems from 1978 onwards. These poems are in a different style from the later MajorSeventh, the earlier ones often with more of an Eastern-influenced cadence. Later, they vary a lot in form and style.
