Poetry
Anthony DiMatteo

Dialogue In a wood, two poets wander, bent and straight, Old and new, light and dark. They greet, Taking delight in speech, the young man first. So what's the latest from the mind-curve, What has the sibyl newly declared? She speaks in signs when purest In her mystery, in words rarely, But declare? Never. That's a recent innovation. If you know of earlier times, tell me. I love to hear of the mystic past. She has opened the darkness for a thousand years With eyes that turn the night into vision. She knows how to give herself to things, Her throat uplifted, exposed to the wind That cuts, shakes and penetrates her mind Lucid and calm like water in a silver basin. Yet no god ever comes upon her because She enters into godhead itself, golden place Of her bending thought before creation. She sees what has been made, unmade and what is Yet to tremble on the edge of the leaf. In words strong with the true and the just, She arches towards all mankind, not any one Of her bright concern. What lasts, she knows, And her signs point to it, strange, rich, not seen, Before her in shimmering sensations felt Though to us never known without Her notice candid and deep. O sibyl, I cannot return to face your power, But your truth has wrenched its way through me! O what a sight you are, old man, old friend, Blinded by those tears you hold back. Save them for the real, and what you fear In this dark wood, a mere dream of the world. Let your superstitions go, Stand under the moon and sun Not burdened by your own years. All that is is what is now for us, Ours to touch. The mind is only brain, Looking for itself around a page, And that is enough. Stars are beautiful In their pale light, but they do not speak. Where you stand in this wood is of your own, A man under water whose surface seems a glass To more watery air above. As the days Peal away the layers of your flesh, You will see with the soul. Those distant points You think in the sky are at your feet, inside Your mind, the surface above no window But a mirror of what we have become And must be in this slow-turning tide That makes even oaks drink the light. Be we no more than belly, even the rank Of Caesar would gain us nothing. Lift soul from the mud, and the path is clear. How few stay sober with the end in mind! Stars and waves, bones and eyes, what difference To the bottom of the basin where we hide? Seek for what you would not know, death. Its strange shadow against the light, How it humbles the self, a black sun. Feel how it bathes all, turns silver into flow, Mountains into dust and back again. This the sibyl teaches to feel in the wind. She is her own mother, her own child, Beyond the moon's changes that makes all yearn. What you see obliterates life, gives way To darkness when flowers have their right. Their scent is more than the purity of loss. It is the gaiety of life. Those deserts of light You think you see arise when no longer Roses can be gathered, but my dear man, Smell anyway however dull to senses old. Enjoy what you have left. Take pleasure In sadness too. It's better than the dead Who feel nothing, themselves nothing Beyond the memories we ponder and hold. And they are weighted with our own soul. Release the hold you have upon your flesh Which has no wings. Fear not the drift As you unsettle your body from your mind. No one has a certain home. Live not In the prison of the touch. See your fog! That is what her thousand years signify. The mind takes so long to leave the mazed grove. See how death lives in life and fly away Into the freedom it can bring. O god - Or whatever dropped from the pearl of heaven When first worlds were made - hear me! Bless this young man whose words would be wiser Than wisdom though they are well parsed out. Let him not think the power to sing Delays the night that consumes all things, Making them spin at the well's deep end. I thank you for your kindness, your prayer, Your great knowledge of how time eats worlds. I too would wish blessings upon you, Humbly, like meadow-filled flowers, Sweetly, like the joy of passing hours. O be a light for the young with your mind. Regard the sibyl's ancient ears and eyes As wise with motherly regard for us, Watcher of infinite stars for finite man. We stand child-like before her gaze. Out of tenderness she mocks our fallings. Her stern mind bowed with years of woe Must still find comfort in what she does know. Let her drink from the skies what she can, We shall find the blue there, days of bliss. Would she banish the pure joy of a kiss, The earth would have no love, no spring, The vast scope of time, all for nothing. Let go pleasure and the spirit dies. There is no mother who has not spawned. And so old man and young their passage spent In a dark wood bordered by the light. Half of everything can be seen only As all by each of us, and there is no changing. Let us imagine what we may never know. This is what I have learned from two poets Overheard in the forest of my mind.

Food Eating with the muse, I forget to eat, Seeing the morsels of light on her lips That curve the way wings do in air. At best, a mist has already risen Between us, at other times, dense fog. She enables my fictions, herself not One of them. She stands outside my mind. I yearn for traces of whatever food Her milk-laden mouth has left behind. The crumbs of things speak to me clearly. That is her power in me that uplifts me Out of myself. The words begin to tumble. A blade of grass, some spilled water On a broken table, reflections in ice Made by a tilted branch against the moon, The dancing stream of desire in your eyes - How the gold loves the soft dark brown there! All these are intimations Of the powers nature has in open display. Feed the mind, leave the flesh. Consume not what inspires you.