Nicht-Gesicht/Not Face by Rainer Maria Rilke

From the German, translated by Priscilla Washburn Shaw:

Face, my face: whose are you; for what things are you face? How can you be face for such insides, whose something is beginning continually rolled together with dissolving? Has the forest a face? Does not the mountain basalt stand facelessly there? Does the sea not raise itself without face, up from the ocean-floor; is not the sky reflected within, without forehead, without mouth, without chin?

Do not animals come to us sometimes as if they were pleading: take my face. Their face is too heavy for them and because of it they hold their tiny little soul too far into life. And we, animals of the soul, confused by everything in us, not yet ready for nothing; we grazing souls: do we not implore the Allotter by night to grant us the not-face which belongs with our darkness-

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Cracked Cup, Somewhat Shakespherical

for Michael Malek
'where'ere he be, his love for 'the Bard' '

Could I but hold within in spite of crack
the strength of flavors, send vapors up
for sweet orders at once telling of earth, of loam, of comet;

In my form, though cracked, could I but
mold this world unfurling before me its
viscous flag, whirl it round, a jelling wind in love with sorrow;

Could I but borrow this shape though
marred and gather all morrows to me,
their bitter drafts drink down to make
merry marrow sink stars to knees,

Heaven's burning flashing mystery full;

could I but crack the Vault above, vanish, soiled,

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

In Excelsis Deo - Variations Of A Surrealist Carol For Madrigal Choir To Be Sung While Bathing

1

Hair of soap and head of tears
rinse mine eyes of Christmas stars
O bells, the bells sear me

Wash my hair of splendid fears
water me hot and redly rare
O trumps, the trumpets blear me

Scars heal me up to here
scald me pinkly if you dare
O gay, the gay sleds slay me

Is that flesh floating on the surface me
who swims or sinks fraternally?

I know a strange me
with soap for eyes
and suds for see

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Black Mouse Makes The World

Black mouse makes
the world

without frames

reaching through
shows empty hands
to each and the sky

confusing sky for
hands clinched in
tight yellow too much

feeling nothing green
is about to happen
or teach

clouds

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Leave Taking, After Matsuo Basho, Circa 1978

'There is a blessed fidelity in things.
Graceless things grow lovely with good uses.' - John Tarrant

Expecting more rain.
Not yet light though 6 a.m.-
night still over the barn.

From the porch, high wind.
The moon, a corner of it,
rides comfortably in clouds.

Clouds moving over mountains,
their night work -
some rain in the buckets.

Bestowing order,

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Archeology - What The Stele Says 'Upon Taking A Much Younger Lover

That this old ground yields to plow stuns.

What begins to be, earth swell, breaks
root-room open to blood means.

Old skeins tear upon what is new terrain,
hunger worn, long appended. There is
no blame for pain is the blessing.

All hurt now stings twilight quaked into being.
Your breath falls upon me now, taut, sinew,
bruising hand, purple inside flares warrior nerves
to unknotting surprise.

I am uncovered, thin, bared upon thinner sheets the man-
ripped to many images, torn into, landscaped to former curves.
No longer do I grieve enclosure, touching only myself,
delivered from layers.

Magpie dances.

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Contours For Gazing

He's the look of one who cuts his own hair.

The scar between his ears, broad,
stretches contours for gazing.

Something happened.

One cannot think ill of him who now
eschews any man with blade or shears,
his face is proof enough not to trust.

Still, he walks upon the world, a gash in air
which does not care for looks of any sort.
Frightened children do not cry out though
their play is stopped. Bullies cross the street,
heads low in leather, trying to be invisible.
Dogs suddenly silence remembering to
quickly go where their tucked tails point

- away.

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Pasturale Lullabies - Fragments Of Nocturnal Song From A Child's Abandoned Grave

Lullaby One

Remembered gait of young ponies toward
the spring's sweet water

Remembered laughter of the frail daughter there
beside the fields sweet grasses

The daughter, as the water, passes into silence

Lullaby Two

Distant crows sound the morning field beyond pasture

Dew murmurs names upon passing grasses

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Our Mutual Confession Invisibly Drawn - Pentecostal Church Ruins

Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal,
what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.

A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men and
as present as God, my own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in un-storied astonishment.

Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones are

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Grief Earned - An Ode Beginning & Ending With Lines From Shelley

Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
I have been taken up into grief, the strange
relief of clouds. Soon departed, I shall be
once again returned to disquieted prayer,
the proud monk to his rites rejoined such
are covers for disjointedness.

Adroit is the spoiled self touching only
late that of Other, of Beauty, Adonais
'dead then' when Mr. Shelley, once young,
now always, has clung 'moderne, 'as much
as, as soon as he can deny, spurn, return
a Vision 'toward the vital air.'

He has the advantage of an Eastern detachment.

I, meanwhile, to walls stick, to
sheets, this cup, full, cannot release.

I step, my foot remains to boards

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!