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sky.

    Give away all that you have , it sings.
    Take your grief into your hands,
    bless it, plant it in the earth.
    And there will come a living thing, born
     
of soil, and rain.
    It will bud and blossom .

    This, the final lesson:
    the parable of the astonished heart.

Hummingbird and Warrior
    This hummingbird
    will not die again;
    your careful hands
    have made him as though alive,
    and all the birds come
    to pay him homage.

    You have placed him
    in the hand of the Xian warrior
    who is finished now, with battle
    and spends his days
    listening for wind’s song
    in the great bell
    of the sky,

    and keeps watch over his garden,
    noting the changing face
    of the moon, intimate
    with her darker
    and lighter moods.

    He has grown gentle, this warrior,
    and the bird, not afraid at all,
    waits, quiet in his fist
    so that the throat, colour of claret,
    catches the afternoon light.

    Like the last blossom of autumn,
    this smallest of birds
    has wakened his heart.
    And God stirs,
    always,
    in the waking heart.

Tenebrae
Twelve Anthems Sung by the Earth

    1. Where Are You, O Mother?

    I suffer apparitions. Ecstasy.
    Endless centuries
    of grief.

    Day and night
    the lion moon
    circles, finding nothing
    to eat.

    2. Incomprehensible and without Beginning

    My cities of memory.

    Mysterious astronomy
    of the rose.

    Compass
    of the universe.

    3. Trisagion

    I am the crumbed table
    on which the dishes
    have yet not been cleared.

    I thirst as the mouths
    of leaves.

    Wolf hunger
    of the newly born
    is mine.

    4. Celebration

    Geraniums in bloom
    on the balconies
    of Buenos Aires.

    Mediterranean blue
    seen from the caves
    of Patmos.
    Vincent’s weeping yellows.

    5. Four Elements

    Scarlet: Picasso’s Guernica.

    Blue: Saskatchewan flax.

    Gold: The hair of the sun.

    Purple: Sky behind the racing moon.

    6. Joyous Light

    Always, somewhere, the sun
    is a burnt sienna.

    Chants of the desert monks
    in the earliest hours of dawn.

    The rattlesnake praying,
    curled on ancient stone.

    7. My Heart Trembles

    A nomad, I walk
    the shifting dunes
    of Tamagesh.

    Caravans pass. What loneliness —
    their moaning wheels,
    their belled herds.

    The famine wind
    flees through the trembling
    doors of houses and of windows
    frozen in their depressions.

    The dead, underground, breathing.

    8. Have Mercy upon Us

    The chained and unchained.

    Factory workers. Skin
    on bone.
    Those who must drink mud.

    Cellists, poets,
    and the architects of mourning.

    9. Therein Remember

    Those who have fallen
    asleep. Saturn.
    Jupiter.

    Dear little Pluto, who has never
    awakened.

    How far to the end
    of the universe.

    What lies beyond.

    10. Nurtured in Love

    St. Gregory’s fowl. Its feelings
    toward the dove.

    The dog who nurtured
    a fawn, made a sacred space
    on its bed.

    How children in the streets
    of Luanda, Saõ Paulo, Chicago
    break a cracker into equal portions.

    11. Woe Is Me

    If only I could die
    for you.

    12. Be Delighted

    The cicada’s anthem.
    Women carrying fruit on their heads.
    The slow undress of autumn.

The Bandoneon Player
    No more than ten he was, a Roman face,
    dark curls in arpeggios descending his neck,
    feet bare, trousers torn. Where he learned
    to play that tango — love crashing into grief,
    sweat into hunger — was anyone’s guess. A traffic
    light changed colour; the people darted across
    like startled birds. And there in Avenida, Florida,
    a couple began to dance. Down the block,
    a woman dressed in white — white face, white gloves,
    a human statue, turned her stone eyes toward
    the boy. First her hands slumped, then her arms;
    in her, some knowing opened like a rose.
    And weeds bursting the tiles at their feet
    grew beautiful in the Argentina heat.

All My Nights
    All my nights have been one night,
    all my moons, one moon.
    The wind sings its one
    eternal song
    over all the world’s days and nights.

    I pack this suitcase with words,
    phrases folded, neatly pressed,
    send them into the light
    and darkness