for Anselm Hollo
Go out into brightened 
space out there the fainter 
yellowish place it 
makes for eye to enter out 
to greyed penumbra all the 
way to thoughtful searching 
sight of all beyond that 
solid red both brick and seeming 
metal roof or higher black 
beyond the genial slope I 
look at daily house top on 
my own way up to heaven. 
  * 
Same roof, lights gone 
down back of it, behind 
the crying end of day, I 
need something to do, its 
been again those other 
things, whats out there, 
sodden edge of seas 
bay, citys graveyard, park 
deserted, flattened aspect, 
leaves gone colored fall 
to sidewalk, street, the end 
of all these days but 
still this regal light. 
  * 
Trees stripped, rather shed 
of leaves, the black solid trunks up 
to fibrous mesh of smaller 
branches, it is weathers window, 
weathers particular echo, here 
as if this place had been once, 
now vacant, a door that had had 
hinges swung in airs peculiar 
emptiness, greyed, slumped elsewhere, 
asphalt blank of sidewalks, line of 
linearly absolute black metal fence. 
  * 
Old sky freshened with cloud bulk 
slides over frame of window the 
shadings of softened greys a light 
of air up out of this dense high 
structured enclosure of buildings 
top or pushed up flat of bricked roof 
frame I love I love the safety of 
small world this door frame back 
of me the panes of simple glass yet 
airy up sweep of birch trees sit in 
flat below all designation declaration 
here as clouds move so simply away. 
  * 
Windows now lit close out the 
upper dark the nights a face 
three eyes far fainter than 
the day all faced with light 
inside the room makes eye re- 
flective see the common world 
as one again no outside coming 
in no more than walls and post- 
card pictures place faces across 
that cautious dark the tree no 
longer seen more than black edge 
close branches somehow still between. 
  * 
He was at the edge of this 
reflective echo the words blown 
back in air a bubble of suddenly 
apparent person who walked to 
sit down by the familiar brook and 
thought about his fading life 
all fading life in tremulous airy 
perspect saw it hover in the surface 
of that moving darkness at the edge 
of suns passing waters sudden depth 
his own hands knotted surface the 
sounding in himself of some other. 
  * 
One forty five afternoon red 
car parked left hand side 
of street no distinguishing 
feature still wet day a bicycle 
across the way a green door- 
way with arched upper window 
a backyard edge of back wall 
to enclosed alley low down small 
windows and two other cars green 
and blue parked too and miles 
and more miles still to go. 
  * 
This early still sunless morning when a chairs 
creak translates to cats cry a blackness still 
out the window might be apparent night when the 
house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of 
immense empty silence and I feel the children 
still breathing still shifting their dreams an 
enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one 
centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the 
leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen un- 
known placed out there in night I can feel all 
about me still sitting in this small spare pool of 
light watching the letters the words try to speak. 
  * 
Classic emptiness it 
sits out there edge of 
hierarchic roof top it 
marks with acid fine edge 
of apparent difference it 
is there here here that 
sky so up and out and where 
it wants to be no birds no 
other thing can for a 
moment distract it be 
beyond its simple space.





