Is it a how or a why that you’re here again
at the bottom of the year again?
What’s to be done with your frustration, your fear again?
Driveling sickness, nagging notion
of a marriage fading to fondness and resent?
What’s to be done?
– hark!
hear the bells
Spring is implicit, one supposes, in the swim down
into darkness, but there should be a deeper,
soberer, more permanent name than “patience”
for what you need (“grim grit?” that’s not it)
For the faith not only to believe
that the days won’t keep shriveling
forever but that there’s even a sun still
somewhere above that blanketing lichen sky
(no, that’s not it
more like a ugly gray breaker
punishing you down, naught to do
but give up and hope you don’t drown under
(Sweet silver bells)
no, not quite– heavier…
leaden– pummeling dimly shimmering molten cold–
that’s the sound that spreads to the West
beneath your high-rise conference room illusion)
And it’s not an old glory that whips in the sound wind
And it’s not the wind that whips either,
and, no, it’s not your mind, clever, but nothing moves
except that one forlorn electron
back and forth through time,
infinitesimal pin-prick nose-so-bright.
Drink to that!
Three Maker’s Marks for Mister Quark!
Hark.
The herald angels sing glory
Sing, bourbon, glory
Hallelujah
–2005