TE19 Iberian Adventure

Poems

and chose to stay and build a settlement in my chest – now I’m walking Zion everywhere I go a surprise. Suddenly – this is how good drops in my lap,

how things arrive; yet suddenness is close, a ripe peach-kernel close, it eclipses the things it gifts me – even they, whom I still love and mourn, will join the oblivion

of things. Isn’t it you, love, terrible furnace, beguiling, disguised, one love-mask after another – don’t hide your face away. The pigeons niched by the bell of Mary’s spire

don’t offend her sanctity. My head stuck out the sash overlooking courtyard rooftops – they say St. Cuthbert came here to face God in long seclusions – here, where bowmen

called out from the ruins: gods of the Norse, O Thor and Odin keep us! – I called out: Ehad, Ehad, Ehhhad, as for a dog – but incanted the Hebrew, ONE, to dispel love’s bedazzling.

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