Untitled [Drunken boaters who land]


Drunken boaters who land there all summer with candles
are ruffled points of light traveling a horizon. At night
on water you look down and know the obsidian is streamlining
animal energy. After a while, you could interpret the petroglyphs
on the river islands that were airplane spirits before the war
					and before there were airplanes.
You are afraid to open the relevant book and see those animals
which would rather be dead. You have always known your mind was obsidian
and that mind was streamlining. However, of tomb paintings
you told him you would rather remain an amateur.
Imagine that this cold, dark water expands so wide
(which it does) that there can be no forkings.
There is a death-aria which you have never lost track
of through history, which is the experience of memory
spun wide as it falls back into everything.
It flickers in a lovely dissolution, the way an eye
is wrong when boats are navigating two bright fields of stars.

From Sanskrit of the Body by W. B. Keckler. Copyright © 2003 by W. B. Keckler. Reprinted by permission of Penguin. All rights reserved.