All the world is one, like an angry deity’s essence dropped in
      the ocean
becoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens Paris
What happens Vicenza U.S. Base or Prodi, Kyoto Accord, XL
      Pipeline
advanced warplanes to Japan—what happens?  Egypt, Yemen,
      Syria
NASA’s five space probes or Aurora Borealis where we study
      shimmering light
What happens on the Lunar New Year
I want to know, Professor, are there names for these mercurial
      moves?
A lexicon & vibration touch the complexity of gestural motion
What happened with Augustine & his mother in Ostia?
I want to know what happens Nicea 325 perhaps God creates
      the world!
Let’s go back and check this out: Ex nihilio ardore/splendore
Europe still riding the pull of Zeus a nuclear reactor not
      dismantled
Heads coming off in cruelest acts, unspeakable
And how that is part of your story too—flooding in
      Mozambique,
in Morocco, in Indonesia a part of you all suffering a part of
      you
What happens Rwanda, Darfur, Chad, Ukraine, glaciers
      shrinking what happens
when carbon-capped bombs fall on Natanz? on Bushehr
What is the poet’s job out of numbed slumber?
Entering post-poet-modernity I gave my larynx a workout
Started chanting for the redemption of Irreparable
Om Ah Hum for the Year of the Shy but Cunning Metal
      Rabbit,
Inshallah O Peace Brutal Year of the Wooden Horse
The Gentle Sheep Year O Help us Now, Shalom Ah Hum,
      Shanti

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands