October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Torrential–in the branches–time comes down, and Sibyl can’t stop the clock. Every word that Heather speaks she wants to hear before leaving the world. Nothingness enchants nothing. Show her the roots of your sound, Heather. Let your dense coronation ring–go to the sundial and redial it, find sundown’s second down. Enter with your heart’s chords the universal orchard universal in violet. Something is blackening over the rainbow, perhaps it is a rock fracture in the mountains. And so you will hate to listen to the blood’s sea-shadow. You run away to sea and I to tea.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Sibyl I do remember when your heart was concealed and your blood glittered through my constitution as each evening broke down. And I am listening for new music from your snow-white imagination, strength-giving and searing. Tell me anything but farewell, let us not indulge in violence, reach to me out of the dust that underscores the aria at my stylus. Oh, deadly water-shadows, there is a spider in the night sky when I only want to place a hot chocolate cup in the hand of Sibyl. Hold it steadily now, Sibyl; in deepest old age, with trembling.
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.
