selected poems

a few representative selections from my published books
On White II, Kandinsky, 1923
From Reviving a Dead Priest (translucent books, 2018) :
Song for the End of Time
“And so, in time, will come the end of time.”
– Anon.

All that has come before is gone.
All that is yet to come will be gone.

There is no Beyond –
Beyond all bounds, the boundary
Beyond which there is no beyond –
Yea, even beyond the Boundless.

All is contained within Itself
And there is no Other.

Sloughing off its burdens, borne
Always and forever, one by one,
And all at once it will all be done,
A final moment and a final sound
Without resound:

A dull thump, a sudden pop –
But no musing, no astonishment,
No time for thought –
Only Naught.

Planets will be smashed to smithereens
And ground to dust,
And the suns themselves will fall,
And all the mighty galaxies will fly apart
At speeds approaching infinity –
Or else implode in no time at all!

Cosmic pinwheels that roll and spin,
Tops and spirals that turn and turn,
The mighty furnaces of the Vast
All blow out, and All is Past…

Silence waits at the end of time.

From I Grew These Hueless Clouds in the Dreary South (translucent books, 2017) :
I Grew these Hueless Clouds in the Dreary South
I grew these hueless clouds in the dreary south –
Where all my giddiest learning was done,
Where even Liberty looks melancholy,
With her book of secrets and her frozen flame.

Unhappily, we miss all the wind –
Oriana, my doleful stormy flower, and I,
Wedded under the oratory round.
We have but one motto:
“Ever the month of Autumn.”

We sat by the Cumberland and heard
The eternal sound of the Tigris.
Possibly a crystalline wild swan was there –
Or else it was my wild imagination.

And so we left – but Tatius stayed on
In the land of darkness they had wrought;
At the southern extremity they built a wavering tower
Whose windows yielded Cubist views of the city.

So live, my dim Tatius, and learn:
The cracked chalice you bought from the carpetbagger
Begs its own forgiveness in chalky tones.
May thy low forehead urge weeping –
Reminded of your shadowy home, and you in it...

You learned to fence on English parapets
Stolen from the Drama Department,
While all about the ivy-grown towers quaked
And fell like dead weights.

Again the wind blows full – another earthy dare –
To scatter wide the Dixie denizens.
We see them run like mad ewes thrilling,
Or insects radiating from the nest.
So look, dear Tatius, this book is my deed
Before the Golden Eye, that a seed may flower
In the space of one mind, reading –
To such a one we pass picked locks.

May they forgive me yet that I did take
The broken road that ever bid me leave
To seek the heart of summer-chase
Where hueful clouds grow free.
From The Adventures of Franco Corelli (translucent books, 2017) :
Among the Philistines
This was speech at depth,
Upshot from a chapter entitled
The Vision in the Dark –

“He jumped up and barked
At the locked window
Above the blockaded door.

“The fool on the hill
Also arrived before noon,
And spoke to the Philistines,
Inanities spilling off his tongue...”

A day or two later I was recalled
By my office in Rome; suddenly,
My expense account was being revised:
My forensic escapades in Galatia were out!
From The Lighthouse Above the Graveyard by John Allen and Alan Gullette (Dark Green Sun Press, 2016) :
I Wake Beside Myself
I wake beside myself beside a yew
with a fasting face welcome among the holy
flesh starved away by fear and flight
in scabrous apparel worn by Paul

Brusquely brushing aside the piping fiend
the high priest of mercy plays the leaden friend
And nigh the east wind flirts with the glass curtain
then lets it go still again in taunting gesture

Watch-fires light the mossy gulf of morning
with the pompous lustre of braided moons
where towers loom and high cirrus show
cute curls on the fresh brow of sky

Ricercar to the waving spectacle of clouds
trembling with utmost poise like prayer
before the majestic marble of lean stars
resigned to the pagan necessity of their bloodless fall
in wan distances exhaustless and untrodden

Hence my gladness at the clearer dawns of summer
Hey! danced my joyful summons
cheeks of the gray cumulous still colored
haughty in the halesome rouge of spring
there whirl and hover on a moving wind whereunder
no words relish the bare rocks

On the hillside where ruins of Greek temples hide
beneath foliage profound and proud
on the basalt ballast of outcroppings wide
exposed like an unwanted child, I find my heart.

Sonnet: To J--- A----
The Heart throbs at the midpoint of things –
Transparent planes intersecting Now and Here
To interject a lambent circumspect,
Accruing dormant means resounding clear.

The unnamable nebulous source consigns
The Rime of the Ancient Reasoner, who finds
A shadow of a doubt that’s cast
Against the silver screen of the Vast.

Without compass, template or protracted line
We trace the pattern of the patternless –
No possible meaning to “meaningless”
When golden veins pulse with the mother load…

Transcending time and nursery rhyme
We drink the wine of the sublime!

From Intimations of Unreality (Hippocampus Press, 2012) :
Carven Faces
Carven faces in the mountains,
Gargoyle watchers o’er mankind;
These are relics of Their passing,
Measured traces left behind.

Dimly through the aether staring,
Masked by mist and mystery;
Faces – silent stone, but knowing –
Motionless eternally.

Chilled, the mist is stirred and flurried,
Animated oddly by
Some great power, dormant, hidden –
Deep within stone faces lies.

Now the mountains fully tremble,
Coldly shiver, stolid quake;
And the carven mountain faces
Smile malignly and awake.

Lizard Life
Lizards in love we slither along the lakeside
the skyline of tourists fades into the lost background
of past realities
all we know is the slick feel of oiled leather,
sliding through the grass, scampering on the ground,
sliding against each other, scampering

Autumn basks in cool evenings but lizards love daylight –
O to lie outstretched on a bare stone in the full sun!
we sit for hours on end without moving –
simply watching, watching and breathing –
breathing, feeling the warm sun, and simply watching

Once I touched you after watching you from afar
for a thousand years
the years move slowly as I await my next opportunity
to fill the time I write lizard poems and leave them lying around
I leave them lying under tall grasses, under wild ferns,
Under open skies I leave them lying on the bare stones

But lizard music carries you away,
wafting into the dark millennium
a thousand years of cold silence, dry lizard leather in old air
abandoned like a Mayan temple at the depths of a jungle
my lizard poems etched in a forgotten tongue, inscrutable figures,
indecipherable ravings of unkempt emotion –
ignoble, usurped, and fallen

Lost then in mazes of Mayan undergrowth,
seeking the lizard lady go I
running through the open desert on bare burning leather feet
I cross mountain ranges and float over oceans on a banana leaf
all to pursue the beauty, the leather touch,
the endless hours on that stone –
All to love the lizard lady in the lazy languor of this lizard life!

Copyright © 2020 Alan Gullette. All Rights Reserved.