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letra de first meditation - william bolcom

on love’s worst ugly day
the weeds hiss at the edge of the field
the small winds make their chilly indictments
elsewhere, in houses, even pails can be sad;
while stones loosen on the obscure hillside
and a tree tilts from its roots
toppling down an embankment

the spirit moves, but not always upward
while animals eat to the north
and the shale slides an inch in the talus
the bleak wind eats at the weak plateau
and the sun brings joy to somе
but the rind, often, hates thе life within

how can i rest in the days of my slowness?
i’ve become a strange piece of flesh
nervous and cold, bird-furtive, whiskery
with a cheek soft as a hound’s ear
what’s left is light as a seed;
i need an old crone’s knowing

often i think of myself as riding–
alone, on a bus through western country
i sit above the back wheels, where the jolts are hardest
and we bounce and sway along toward the midnight
the lights tilting up, skyward, as we come over a little rise
then down, as we roll like a boat from a wave-crest
all journeys, i think, are the same:
the movement is forward, after a few wavers
and for a while we are all alone
busy, obvious with ourselves
the drunken soldier, the old lady with her peppermints;
and we ride, we ride, taking the curves
somewhat closer, the trucks coming
down from behind the last ranges
their black shapes breaking past;
and the air claps between us
blasting the frosted windows
and i seem to go backward
backward in time:

two song sparrows, one within a greenhouse
shuttling its throat while perched on a wind-vent
and another, outside, in the bright day
with a wind from the west and the trees all in motion
one sang, then the other
the songs tumbling over and under the glass
and the men beneath them wheeling in dirt to the cement benches
the laden wheelbarrows creaking and swaying
and the up-spring of the plank when a foot left the runway

journey within a journey:
the ticket mislaid or lost, the gate
inaccessible, the boat always pulling out
from the rickety wooden dock
the children waving;
or two horses plunging in snow, their lines tangled
a great wooden sleigh careening behind them
swerving up a steep embankment
for a moment they stand above me
their black skins shuddering:
then they lurch forward
lunging down a hillside
as when silt drifts and sifts down through muddy pond-water
settling in small beads around weeds and sunken branches
and one crab, tentative, hunches himself before moving along the bottom
grotesque, awkward, his extended eyes looking at nothing in particular
only a few bubbles loosening from the ill-matched tentacles
the tail and smaller legs slipping and sliding slowly backward–
so the spirit tries for another life
another way and place in which to continue;
or a salmon, tired, moving up a shallow stream
nudges into a back-eddy, a sandy inlet
bumping against sticks and bottom-stones, then swinging
around, back into the tiny maincurrent, the rush of brownish-white water
still swimming forward–
so, i suppose, the spirit journeys

i have gone into the waste lonely places
behind the eye; the lost acres at the edge of smoky cities
what’s beyond never crumbles like an embankment
explodes like a rose, or thrusts wings over the caribbean
there are no pursuing forms, faces on walls:
only the motes of dust in the immaculate hallways
the darkness of falling hair, the warnings from lint and spiders
the vines graying to a fine powder
there is no riven tree, or lamb dropped by an eagle

there are still times, morning and evening:
the cerulean, high in the elm
thin and insistent as a cicada
and the far phoebe, singing
the long plaintive notes floating down
drifting through leaves, oak and maple
or the whippoorwill, along the smoky ridges
a single bird calling and calling;
a fume reminds me, drifting across wet gravel;
a cold wind comes over stones;
a flame, intense, visible
plays over the dry pods
runs fitfully along the stubble
moves over the field
without burning
in such times, lacking a god
i am still happy

- william bolcom

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