Love Poem
All the various incarnations of
Buddha are telling me today
Combinations of elements that might
Direct me toward you.
Everything is emerging in its true and violent
Forms as the turning world
Gravitates on its absent stem.
How am I to know one of your
Inventions from the next? When crates of
Jelly explode on the docks, when
Kernels of unpopped corn are found
Loitering in the bag’s bottom,
Maybe then you will turn to me,
Naming them one after another,
Opening with your tongue the inscrutable
Progression of letters that rear their
Queer heads above the chain-link fence.
Rather than finding each its place, you
Signify them by their hopeless
Travels beyond what is known,
Unmarred by the fatuous
Variations of time.
Where will they go then, this
Xylophonic bestiary,
Yowling unspeakable names to the
Zero of hearing?