Hidden Refuge

 
Flowers in fields, rain on pastures,
warmth in grain,
old love in women's hearts,
mothers or toys in children's minds.
None of this pulls at me anymore... the night is too black, and unknown.


If they head toward Pharaoh's tomb
they will find me once.
No, that's wrong. They will have to seek me out.
Moonlit nights will form in the desert.


My two nails, my fingers
rising from sand—you'll see.
Break open what's inside you, dig through sand
and search:
my heart,
my treasure,
all my secrets.


They sing with me, and they themselves
trembling, carry me on camelback across sun-carpets
toward the eternal tomb forever.
There I have never seen anyone else.


On uneven ground, with spade,
I seek autumn courtyards, draw incomprehensible signs.
Shivers rise at dusk—winter must be coming!
Seeing all this, it occurs to me I may have learned to dig.
The deeper I go, the shallower the night becomes.


Much of what we know about form, or what we've been told,
is false.
Beyond all signs and customs
some invisible yet imperishable spirit
hides. Cruel and inevitable
truths, tired of living
in darkness, eventually
roll to the river bottom.


You see a house and declare
it has four walls.
This is not true.
You've learned hair's structure, but don't know hair itself.
You call a flower soft,
but that's not right.
You say of woman—
goddess—there too you err.


After dusk I want to name them anew. New names.
Their unsafe words have reached me,
their invisible armies have embraced me and wept so many times!
And they seek some secret shelter like my mother's safe lap,
along with a little indulgence.


I am writing destiny.
I cleave steel vertical rods
and carve nightmares on feathers.
I lift the girl's forehead mark and dip it in night's black essence.
I write fate on ice fields, on walls of blind nebulae.


I saw my hard, stubborn emotions
standing motionless.
Listening to angels' long delirium
and tremor-born music,
the brave man weeps, clutching a pole in equatorial regions.