The Ghost

first the sundered family was

whirling spokes around a shore

where loathing crawls 

and I ignore your calls,

refuse your name:

cruel change from a cruel decade…

you call it a luxury: 

what I wager of

my time now that I

am learning to abandon

promises, yesterday we drove

past a field with barns bearing squares

and circles of colors

I could not decode

and this was our true life together:

your discontent registering forever

upon the maternal sea

that is still a rim of the world to drag a finger upon

when I cannot bear to hold

again your restless,

vital breath –

for will I forsake the one

who drove out and then back,

taught me to renounce

and then return?

now I think I have made contact 

and whatever electric poles 

that stride this field are burning, 

burn with a voice: 

and the sign that links us

is the sign I must create

Symposium: “And in turn the musical art…”

Whenever in a parade of cries and answers                                        καὶ

there is a new quiet, torchless, free                                                       ἔστιν

then I take off in turn the veil of the searcher                                     αὖ

whose curse is heard as music, I step                                                 μουσικὴ

into and around a ceaseless circle,                                                           περὶ

our mosaic voices pledging not to harmony                                   ἁρμονίαν

but to change, and yet we speak as if in a final scene:                      καὶ

it is a rhythm of silver waves skimming a black sea,                    ῥυθμὸν

of silver which washes over our loved things,                               ἐρωτικῶν

while outside the circle, knowledge has lit the torches…          ἐπιστήμη

“And in turn the musical art is a knowledge of love-things around harmony and rhythm…”

-Eryximachus, from Plato’s “Symposium”