I.
I think even though it's a hard

task we should stanch it now,

the way the hard

pillars of slight settle hard

& fast in your “ha ha” posture.

We know you're hard-

ly a stickler to the “hard

and fast” rules of the match,

(match =

a duel, as it were), that hard

warfare of inducing a smile.

– Smile!
we've snagged your smile.

Your gaze is hard

as you resolve to smile,

as if you'd killed a smile.

Even though you find it polite now

to smile

when asked to smile,

the ragged posture

of a forced smile

is more a fuse than a match,

more a grapnel than kitchen match;
it is, in fact, a perfect match

with wilt and rot. A smile

unrequited is a damp match

at the worst possible time. Is a match2

maker visiting my wife. It hard-

ly goes away, the fear of match-

ing argyle socks in the wash – not mine. Match

stick, please. Gas cannister, too. Now

hand me her photo – Now

I need to snap out of it. Match

& mix, sort through the causes of poor posture

that plague me. One must posture
like a debutante when learning posture –

this book-on-the-head method is now

overlooked by fancy magazines. 'Posture

is a matter of vitamins,' they say; 'Posture

is a matter of X, not Y. So is a gleamy smile.'

I was never taught. Thus the posture

of a pasture very much resembles my posture –

creepy, hewn from mud and lichen, hard

and uneven in winter light. Hard-

er travel lies ahead, Ethan, posture

and feet to be tried now

by a duty greater than the planets know.

 

 
II.
– after Man'yoshu

 
Lying unloosened, bare,

crouched beside thin clothes,

nothing but rift between bare

vale and black rushes bare-

ly fingering the diamond moon,

diamond-shimmer dusting the bare

slope of – is that a dune, the bare

heap? Black garden;

then the black garden.

Pearls are bare,

grey gravities, the un-light.

In my garden of tiny lights
she gave her soft sigh, light-

ing the grove like a scream. Bare

trees, black streams, all light

remnants of the once fire. Light –

laughter fluttered like clothes.

A pall that suggested light

is just saddened lightning; light

is air aflame, every gate is a moon;

Night's a hole cut by a thief, light

stealthed away to his hideout, some garden

gone fallow. A garden
of bone. Garden-

ing at dusk, light

burnishes dusk. Garden-

ing through laughter, garden-

ing through Sunday: it happens. Bare-

ly, but God allows it. Allows detsu gardens,

gardens

where we may doff ashen clothes.

What are clothes?

Drapery to hide us from night. Garden,

o garden of black night. Moon,

o moon, you serve moon-
light like ice. Moon-

light like sad clothes

burning, smoke draping the moon.

The soul, when stung by moon-

light,

dissolves; drifts moon-

ward – or so I dream. Beneath the moon –

one of many that hang like bats, bar-

ing themselves to this little audience – bare

lovers can't stand to part. The moon

has no such trouble, exchanging light

for light, each night, like clothes.