Why worship whiteness always, what virtue
in that candor, what quality? Face
always the same, same turning away
when you turn, same singular routine
hypothesis: one man in one posture, one world
like a relief map of the world. When he turns
you are turning from the summary glance, a little
light captured in the momentary retina, but
reversed. Forget the long discussions of the soul
you might have held while weeks fell into winter,
forget the death of Socrates, a paper cup of wisdom
spilled on linoleum. In Hesiod’s Theogony, I’m told,
the Muses say, We are capable of making lies sound
true, but we can also tell the truth. You wander
like a blind cat through your night, first
idea of sky which weather only contradicts. Headlights
and streetlights shadowbox across the shades: you too
will never touch. How many nights
have you maintained pale skin nothing mars
(walking out past three A.M. to be convinced the true
can become beautiful), until a sleepless dawn
allows for no more stars and allegories? Algol,
Regulus, Altair, Rigel and Betelgeuse, the lights
lesser and great with Arabic or Latin names, white
luminosities. That man and his blond cowlick live alone
in paradise with a forecast of light rain, a tenement
of token clouds against a tarp of blue felicities. Down
from the Great Rif to barrier reef, the snow
goes where it will, and when. (I have come from going
to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down
in it, but I have come.) Your winter steals the signal
flesh and ruins it, leaves limbs at broken angles
on the slope and green bottle glass
smashed into the speckled pavement: a sheer waste
of transparencies laid over midnight. It keeps
a flawed reflection of the sky, constellations
past the tree line blurred by the walking
streetlights home. The glassed-in contradictions keep
their distance, but they keep. (You made your myth, now lie
in it.) The body stiffens as it wakes, sheathed by a cold
window left open, the recurring dream of glaciers, lying
in its mirror. Open your hand and let it go, zero
down to less than that, and then less than what’s left.
That’s you. The snow begins as clouds and ends
as any water. Navy, royal, azo, aquamarine
and indigo: I’ve drowned too many nights
in blue. Even historical weathers leave a trace.
