CON'S HILL SUITE

(1)
You can read these hills in translation
but to capture the thrill of their speed
you must hold your walking stick against them
stand still and allow the squandered rain
to roll from their backs with gossip.

These hills are sly and playful
they reach under seas when the seas least expect it
they tickle the waves, they clown around at night,
at great vitesse -
you can hear the pitter of little foothills.

Listen, they prance to a long gone melody.
At dawn the tired rain will murmur
lovely prayers from the book of stones.

(2)
The lexicon of waves
is filled with the marks of
whispers and deep pauses.To learn the speech of waves
you must caress each one, fathom by fathom.

Their accents deafen our doors - if only
we could lose our own grammar
we might, in a salted conversation,
have something to say
to them, to each other.

(3)
The woods opens its carmine pages
and closes again
and in that moment
when dogwoods sigh and savage birds
tear at the leaves

there is a glimpse
of an old memory of your name

and a sense that forgiveness
awaits your perfect
bird-like dive -

(4)
while the wind, handwritten in loose cursive,
is not cramped with lights at all
but rests on the powder of your shoulders

rolls lightly in robes of blue and midnight
irrepressible, sweeping the woods, disturbing
the seasons that roll through waves

with remarkable clarity -
even through your offerings of smoke and songs,
waiting for nothing.

(5)


Salt water. and faces dying


everywhere into forms of fish


- Frank O'Hara


off they go to throttle their vessels
out in the mouth of Harbour Main


while the salt air blows and the salt sea crumbles

serious boats, unlike the Portuguese,
witless and white, of handmade lumber


work is work and play is drink


while the salt air blows and the salt sea crumbles

what happens now
in the empty waters?


the salt air blows and the salt sea crumbles

(6)
My god!
Look!

The trees in their cages are rusting,
the lips of the sea have grown cyanotic.

The hills are bristling with shivers
and a steel net of clouds
scrapes and hardens our roads.

People are burning their boats
and an icy sun is hung in the crotch of a tree -

Shaggy-maned horses and knitted sheep
rise like mist from cut-over fields.

Alone at the crown of Con's Hill
an old kabbalist crow plays with a deck of cards.

(7)
Vague sundials
and thick meat -

what else is there,
really, to say?

(8)
I love the sound
of my boots on the stones as I climb

I love the sound
of the complicated sun
working its habit through the trees

I love the sound
of strange birds taking flight,
of gulls chasing hawks, and the lovely sound

of the hills, rising from the vanished weight
of retreating ice

oh, and the sound of the wind
the plain, plain sound of the wind

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