October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Sibyl right now has this plan. It requires her to watch the clocktower. She is expecting Heather to arrive. What was that scratching sound at the door this morning? She will sell off her jewelry to stay in New York for another week. At Carnegie Hall, she saw keyboards bathed in floodlight. What an imagination you have, Sibyl! I must see you again. Your heritage is no more solid than the chimes that strike in the clocktower, and these poems are my own chords struck off at odd angles. Could we not hold hands once more under blue winter chimes?
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Sibyl and Heather (shall I write this?) are speaking the same language these days. They live in each other’s homes and, to be concise, never get out of the same bed. They dance enchantingly there, stopping at nothing, slam-dancing under the sheets. Some days the natural universe is completely mysterious. Autumn is ripping a lot of vegetation out of my city just as I speak. I will hold with the density of her thoughts and the mirth belonging to my utterly full pool of spring water which she is. Sibyl, whom I shall see again before this century’s out.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
My enchanting home, my home in metal needs no name but needs order, rhythm and form set against chaos, and detonation of Black Seas of chordless music. I throw my glassful of pink champagne at you, your heart no stronger than a violet in mountain shadow. How many small roots lie under the world’s firm soil. I have earned the right to determine the secret message in the glaze of mist, and I shall write it down in my native language in all stages of its natural life. I can read the mountain’s chemistry by day, and night’s sheer flaring.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
There is a democracy to the glittering color of the strings in motion, a lore of light, a sun in a night sky. Out at sea, someone brainstorms the birth of a new string quartet. They can almost blurt it at the waves. The prism in my dream is gone. I remember the fifty primary words I need in December, including ballet, champagne and embroidery, and I know I have as many things to say about the bright side of the moon as about the dark side. Setting sun seen through a frosted windowpane. Stand back and we’re a constellation.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
The tears in your Cherokee snow-heart bend my life (which is a badly dented teakettle) toward spring water, and my eyes and memories in blood-structure sear face and heart. I have heard autumn’s glass rivers glaze and break free again and again, and I drink to them. Black aircraft enter a singing death. The music in the painter returns: is sent forth and returns. So glitter we from Haydn to Dryden and from Dryden to Haydn. Of unsound design is the cola made of fresh violet, and only halting celebration in our years. Exemplar! Exemplar! Whose clutch drifted.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
There is density in my need to express. I wonder how long this will be true, how long it will be before the words might cool down. I wonder if I will see them cool down. I wonder if my eyes will see a panorama before me every day. I would sit with those who have given up everything for their word-jewelry, their word-sunlight. I should write more about the sounds of empire, but we fear empire if we want a human world. We don’t want the chords to break off. A drenching afternoon rain improves the weather.
