Simon Perchik – Ⅰ
Five Poems
*
Some fishtank motor :rain
pumping this rainbow and around the world
seas overflow –my heart
the same spiral each sky
learns to climb –all morning
sways, plunges, taking root
–only one flower will open
–years from now, alone, reading outloud
–each Sunday more funny-pages
and under the warming colors
only one looks up –rain is there
and the brightest red in the sky.
*
Even this tree :a stranglehold
once used for calling you and now
means the night –this low branch
still ruffling feathers
can’t recover its faint cry
its warm breeze that shelters you
now that every stone is sealed
is pressed to my lips
as if some trumpet or fountain
or filled with ecstasy
ready this time –even the sun
broken in two and now
your light darkens half the sky
glows over my arms and the moon
that can’t look away :this digging
has to stop! the tree can’t hold on
–not all its shadow will survive
–these leaves will shatter, the sun
in bits onto the ground and the neighbors
say they can’t sleep
are tired hearing about when I find you
and it’s already almost morning.
*
Even on the bottom sand
no one’s there to stop my fall
–the sun must know why
its needed rest will be its last
already pulling back
shaking its head no, sideways
then no, all the while downward
–must hear my heart
whose constant sparks :each wave
leads the other back, by night
two more tides
falling through the world
–must know why its light stays warm
leaning against a great wall :the sea
almost ashore, a boat suddenly
tied to the dock, the man
tracing on a name, the woman
and sandbars no one’s noticed before.
*
This heat still underfoot
reminds you how the sun
would come to your grave’s edge
with flowers, with a sky
whose season now is lost
and the listening
that goes on forever.
You can tell from the silence
I’m standing close, my footmarks
stopped –for a while we are both dead.
Who but you would think about daylight
how colors tire so easily here
biding their time, listening
to one foot beside the other
never letting go and the warmth.
*
Don’t act surprised.
After the funeral I entered your house
from the roof, even the sink
was turned on its side, the faucets
still leak –who, let alone you
is buried on a wall
–your wedding photograph framed
old, homesick and you
wait facing the door
the constant open and closing.
Believe it! Your coffin
has more glass than wood.
What did I think you would see?
How close the rooms are?
That they still huddle? The cold too
has taken shelter, longing
to stand upright, to leave with you
young again, and on your strong shoulders
hammers and boards and the tuxedo
just perfect! any minute now
returns with your bride
with the feast and on its knees
spilling over the dead.
Believe everything. This face cloth
as if the clear glass means something new
and your cheeks bathed by water
that never stops asking –this rag
and from my hands enough light
to warm the black-red flower
hardened on your lapel.
*
Some fishtank motor :rain
pumping this rainbow and around the world
seas overflow –my heart
the same spiral each sky
learns to climb –all morning
sways, plunges, taking root
–only one flower will open
–years from now, alone, reading outloud
–each Sunday more funny-pages
and under the warming colors
only one looks up –rain is there
and the brightest red in the sky.
*
Even this tree :a stranglehold
once used for calling you and now
means the night –this low branch
still ruffling feathers
can’t recover its faint cry
its warm breeze that shelters you
now that every stone is sealed
is pressed to my lips
as if some trumpet or fountain
or filled with ecstasy
ready this time –even the sun
broken in two and now
your light darkens half the sky
glows over my arms and the moon
that can’t look away :this digging
has to stop! the tree can’t hold on
–not all its shadow will survive
–these leaves will shatter, the sun
in bits onto the ground and the neighbors
say they can’t sleep
are tired hearing about when I find you
and it’s already almost morning.
*
Even on the bottom sand
no one’s there to stop my fall
–the sun must know why
its needed rest will be its last
already pulling back
shaking its head no, sideways
then no, all the while downward
–must hear my heart
whose constant sparks :each wave
leads the other back, by night
two more tides
falling through the world
–must know why its light stays warm
leaning against a great wall :the sea
almost ashore, a boat suddenly
tied to the dock, the man
tracing on a name, the woman
and sandbars no one’s noticed before.
*
This heat still underfoot
reminds you how the sun
would come to your grave’s edge
with flowers, with a sky
whose season now is lost
and the listening
that goes on forever.
You can tell from the silence
I’m standing close, my footmarks
stopped –for a while we are both dead.
Who but you would think about daylight
how colors tire so easily here
biding their time, listening
to one foot beside the other
never letting go and the warmth.
*
Don’t act surprised.
After the funeral I entered your house
from the roof, even the sink
was turned on its side, the faucets
still leak –who, let alone you
is buried on a wall
–your wedding photograph framed
old, homesick and you
wait facing the door
the constant open and closing.
Believe it! Your coffin
has more glass than wood.
What did I think you would see?
How close the rooms are?
That they still huddle? The cold too
has taken shelter, longing
to stand upright, to leave with you
young again, and on your strong shoulders
hammers and boards and the tuxedo
just perfect! any minute now
returns with your bride
with the feast and on its knees
spilling over the dead.
Believe everything. This face cloth
as if the clear glass means something new
and your cheeks bathed by water
that never stops asking –this rag
and from my hands enough light
to warm the black-red flower
hardened on your lapel.
