A New Poem by Andrew Haley

Lohengrin

Through the Nine Currencies
and seven flowers,
the modi operandi
and Mother of Supremes,
the cat-call of perogatives,
the third suture and seventh sibling,
the ward lost,
the tortoise,
the wind carrying the lofty aroma of garbage,
a fine flute
out of memory
trenched
there
in memory
heard from over the field
and alley in that
home
long time finds
still
lingering
in a sea of vast sorrows
and vaster joys

you played that flute to nobody
in the audience of none
rhubarb and hollow stalks of wheat
--an intrusion--
we must not mind
you played that flute for no
body
in the audience of none
rhubarb and hollow
stalks of wheat
you played that flute for nobody

darkness was in those times
a hallow sacrifice
to one's nimble
infantine
fear
a placation of dooms postponed
to an ultimate hour
and bears and
ivy and grass cold and wet and black
around your feet
musics shed themselves to sing
tenors and the night and
the blue wet green
if a blade of dark grass had sound

now enlivening

but to go back

light as if music were light
where the spring
breaking
bubbles the grass in the pool

a tenderness
overlooked
by those seeking hatred

the threat
is the vortex
of longing

the past must be
forgiven

we are one time in the making
as sound
fleshed in the full thrush
of its willing
descends in marked vibration
to the tapered point
of its lingering
final sound

out in the minds of my brothers and sisters
the five kinds of City shine
on five hills in seven Minds
we are never so kind

in my dreams
I am on a boat to nowhere
this last place
of the quiet mind

in brown water the green shines
stern'a'starboard the boat floating sideways
collides against rocks and tamarisk

in my dreams we are spinning
backwards in the current
these obvious wastes
blemishes
on a sound meant to be finer
--I Love the World--
is my poem
to mammon
and Stein
and the lord unmentionable Supreme
whose poem
says
what all our poems
try to say
Love & World
in finest sounds

Andrew Haley's Poem to Get Started appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Western Humanities Review. It was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Utah Writer's Contest by Billy Collins. New poetry is forthcoming in Quarterly West. He is the author of three novels, most recently Transference, and lives in Buenos Aires.