No Other Truth. No Other Love.

Springing from niches,
the dead pile up
in the neighborhood
like mountains of old tomes--
brutal philosophies,
unpermitted poetry,
odd memoirs.
They guard the horizon.

There is a price to pay
for our faith and our doubt.

I hear them singing. Pulses
of light reveal a corpse in the mud--
a migrating bird--for a moment,
its every move a possibility of escape.
We live on the same earth.
White passages closing the circle,
sections burn themselves
into a steady, winking beat.

It is not too soon
for the melancholy season.

Pleasure powerful, twelve lean dead
towards a beautiful decay
and pity those who can't be miserable.
Saltwater experiments, deep all over,
buy golden anchors and uncommon calm.
Frayed ropes lead from effect
back to cause--better the suffering,
holy upon holy, mind upon mind.