The Milk Hours. John James

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       April, Andromeda

      I am in this world, not self, not seed, not stamen-dusted

      pistil flicking in the wind—the eye sees past its limitations.

      Crushed petals in the dirt, I’m courting a horse with an apple,

      watching its white tail swish along the fence. Somewhere,

      the galaxy spins. I smile at the cloudless sky.

      —

      Continuum of frequencies, Ptolemy’s

      Almagest, the star charts called it Little Cloud—

      chained constellations in The Book

      of Fixed Stars. Nova for new, cut fish

      for never. A heart held back for the knife.

      —

       The opening of large

       tracts by the icecutters

       cutters commonly causes

       a pond to break

       up earlier; for the water

       agitated by the wind

       even in cold weather

       wears away

      the surrounding ice.

      —

      This morning I walked past

      rows of jeweled honeysuckle

      twining through the square

      links in an aluminum fence.

      They glistened in the sun,

      as they always do. You

      could say their vines shuddered.

      —

      Photographed by Isaac

      Roberts, 1887, again

      in 1899, the galaxy, the ruler

      of man, the pearling

      spiral takes its name from

      the area of sky in which it appears.

      Sussex, England, retrograde motion.

      The daughter chained to a rock.

      —

       We forget rapidly what should be forgotten. The universal

       sense of fables and anecdotes is marked by our tendency to forget

       name and date and geography. “How in the right are children

       to forget name and date and place.”

      —

      Pained loveliness—the sonnet

      sweet fetter’d. Morning, still, couched

      in narrative—carrots taken

      from my palm. Horse’s muzzle,

      its silken touch, teeth against the skin.

      The eye sees the mind sees

      crushed petals in the pestle.

      All parts are binding.

      —

      Constellations—huge

      man wearing a crown,

      upside down with respect

      to the eclipse. The smaller

      figure next to him sitting

      on a chair. A whale

      somewhere beneath it.

      —

      By ear industrious—attention

      met—misers of sound

      and syllable. See kale, see

      rows of collard stalks—think

      Cassiopeia. Think arrogant

      and vain. Greek models, sea

      monster Cetus, the errant study of.

      —

       I shall ere long paint to you—as one can without

      canvas—the true form of the whale—

      my parts are all binding—

      as he actually appears to the eye—

      I wonder, now, how Ovid СКАЧАТЬ