Pixie World

For Helen? The cosmetic sap conspired in the darkness,
The unsolvable light in the black-hole silence.
The migraine of summer was assigned to certain birds
And the appropriate calm to the inestimable
Mourning barge moving through currents
Of death’s love letters and dissolved perfumes.

For Helen?—after the time when the stonecutters’ wives
Whistled to the cascades in the smokey blue ruins of the forest.
After the time of stonecutters, the red bells of animals sounded
To the echo and cry of headlights in the valley & steeps.

From Helen’s childhood—the furs of shadows now tremble
For the breasts of beggars & vagabonds, their spiry tales
Of heaven. Her green eyes dance and sing to the canary
Mines and shafts of impossible light, to the impersonal waves
Of the satellite & stone beaming in for the disquiet of this moment.