dummy

They were cloying on the hills
within our feast days
and on our Sundays and on our memory days. Those peals,
how you might have gone to church with me if I asked. I don’t know
any reason to go. You gave me the look of peals,
whitening your eyes with kohl.
I, instinctually, shrank from peals, as from a scowl.
Unclean, the animal who tolerates a scowl.

Lady, I could not lie to you when
with abeyance, they were mere, ambient pearls. So sorrow
might have abandoned me once. But now,
listen to me now you can hear the peals
you can

you can
peal on your Sundays and your feast days?

Listen: Property.
In what langauge shall begone bell? Answer me
in the tongue ‘ ’ or in the tongue ‘ ’? Answer me
begone in the tongue ‘ ’?

I never did buy you a gown.

I know you are a grown girl. I crave your appetite,
your Ask Me and your Why Not,
your habit for flicker for more flanks, your filch that you keep
from noticing up into your lips,

prizing into our eyes and your throat.
Bear me any sachet of objects
from within your beautiful brass—
quiver—bear me a quiver in which you make-

believe in which you smoke,
though which you take a breath,

in which you pretend to breathe
and then your voice begins
to reject me in a room and then you say it: the room is large.

I crave you in a thunderstorm with you as rain.

I crave you in a mimes’ ceremony of tolling.

I crave the oath,
the petal that we will not perish, that we will not trust but peel paint,
the frontispiece that we will have to have been
seen.

And tulips.
Have there been any tulips?
Can you laugh with me
most important?
The tinkling of your laughter is a merry bell.
Your smile a peal itself.
You are a fairy. You are a feckless fairy.

Nonetheless, I am singing peals. Peals are sweet. I swear
I thought that I would not have the notes
tonight to lie so gentle on thee now, to lie so gentle on thee
Dear like ash—

Dear that I could not by far brush (alone so wildly as
seeing how there is no snow
seeing how we together see how beautiful it is—
I will not be thought of
as simply catching or simply polishing you)

but take me as sprung, now,
take me as anything
(rhythm) you like that is lifting and soaring and flipping and beatifying
a terror for you,

a likeness, stroke at the bluish spots
where the peals that one
were to get for you became blunt
became if
and became mute
Dear—

a name for that

as one who rubs a penny
I am
to make it shine
as one who rubs that wish

I am
for all that wish is all there is
is all the time
there is

I am
I am still the wish
I am still the time

and girl
don’t I know you from
girl

don’t I?
know you

Peals, play in F the letter forgiveness
play in F the letter forgiveness

Girl Hope
Forgive the sinners
and us the glimmer and the noise
the stammer that we are in a hurry to
the jam that we are in a hell too
real to believe

that commit sin and become adultery
that taste and become fornication
that eat and become rule

Forgive us that in our most
basic narcissism for that is the nonsense we want
to forgive one another most of
we peal the nonsense of a note ringing where it ought not

Forgive us that ought not
Forgive us the might help

Forgive us the heeded that are not needed
Forgive us our trails and our drives

Girl Hope
Forgive us that we are not bled
and that we sorrow less

Forgive this song

I love the murmur of the hour when

the lights in your pools dance
no swagger
but a mountain, liquid fire
I am there I am that swimming man

alone with you and you know

(the hours are just awake)

(our children because they have found the clouds)

(we sing a tremolo)