The Gates, 2010

I.

There were wrought-iron gates by the riverside-
salvaged bits of a grandeur left untouched,
save for the bloody, hardened frost of untold years of creeping rust-
holding fast to shifting dirt, fascinating urban folk
and adding fuel to village lore, the mystic cause of children lost:
"Bodies pried from off the shores! victims of its demon claws
which wayward men invoked": this is the stuff of fairy tales,
which aging men stuff into tomes like photos into old shoeboxes.

So when young eyes were shied away in houses,
and hunchbacked trees bent about these gates-
in the days of dying that define the autumn;
the opaque days of winters lost to the beating down
of uncouth weather-

shuttered sunlight rolling down past leaves
blasted flakes of those gates' splintering red metal
to soothe over churning riverbed sediment,
crumbling into metallic stones smoothed over
from the glancing graces of thousands upon thousands of watery hands;
and cracking crayfish on the bellies of otters did these old relics sink
into blue Egyptian silt with the bones of their old possessors---
stirred in and bellowing with the riverside tides
of the earth's foreign sentiments,
where tumble and glide the endless confessors
of the silent and placid seas.

(and thus so it went,
that in the every minute which from it followed came a minute more, one...

two...

...and three hundred years would slowly pass
as the great ambitions of great-souled men
with all the wears of work and wine
would acquiesce to their too many days
let by them fly as purely wasted;
with altogether too many dreams,
expectations and aspirations
let slowly simmer to smoldering regret.)



II.

Blind old fingers of blind road builders groped in banks
of iron lakes and rivers- clutching moldy copper pails for stones to lay
for cobbled city paths and chunks of ore for molded hand-rails,
joking quietly to themselves of local legends they once heard tell
of magic portals, gates to hell, that once there stood as tokens of the
"Abstruse magicks of sorcerers past,
whose dabblings with demons fell to Peter's ticking time;"
while mild droning from the city's gentle breezes,
sweeping out beyond wheat fields as far as forest trees
(and filling these old builders' minds with something not quite silence),
carried all in one a thousand and some voices,
stories told from the very mouths of men of trade, and faith, and crime.

The pebbled roads and mortar made (in rivers set in stone
that stretched their splitting fingers past old liquor stores and houses
and curling steel painted black that guided rippled fingertips
to there and back on worn staircases circling down to sea)
the feet for all these busy lives- pears in sacks for midwife baskets,
crates piled by the docking spaces full of ships with tea and glue
all waiting for the moon;
while seagulls dump their noises in the box full of the sky,
golden heat retreats from radiant roofs:
The colors shift like wooden candles snuffing out their lives.

(And as stoics come and slowly go
and gnostic chanters give their glow
to children left on doorsteps, comets marching on and on
with dusty scraps caught in the flow light paths for fortune seekers;

Quiet eyes sigh across washed and dusty
stone floor tiles, redefining ancient truths
to fit new prejudices [to which they now
are circumspect],
and yell cross marbled and ivied courtyards:
"I can not wait but to indicate this to you!-"
Offering finger-pointed eurekas to the heavens
of troubled intellects.)


III.

A rebirth of man-made monoliths bearing down on their creators
framed a new paradise of recycled cardboard and corrugated steel,
And peeping voices pouring sound into cacophonic overtones
that buzz and hum into the earth and through the walls and windows of
historic old brick palaces (left standing as a quaint antique and left
to rot in nostalgic molds and mosses) gave birth to aural organisms
that crept between the city blocks and crawled to nest in urban brains-
brains that jumped in sad amusement at the creature's sudden absence
in the peace of placid countrysides.)

The quiet slap of leather soles on grimy sidewalk cracks,
and nervous hands on windowsills with anxious eyes bewildering,
(who, for all their intermittent gulps,
Will not consider what they've got at stake:
In the words of the old philosopher,
"One swallow does not a summer make")
are measured by the pulsing beat of cars and taxis sifting through
the narrow lanes of thoroughfares,
and asphalt-layered streets.


And in the time intuited
between eyes that cross with eyes,
and puzzled bits of shape and shade
and sound and scent and softness
that somewhere speak of reason when
all made and packed in words,
understanding names itself
the instant of becoming-
where senses cease to struggle with
the notion of the oceans,
and of stars and sticks and birds.



IV.

There were wrought-iron grates by the roadside,
where old and grimy rainwater drops into sewer pipes,
persecuted by bits of trash and the gripes of window-wipers
from rubber tires and metal shells that roll like beetles
down worn-down Indian trails, spiked with orange traffic cones,
covered over, over and over with tar and flecks of stone;
someday left behind to grow dangling vines like prehistoric temples,
forgotten like two young lovers aging, who crumble into bones;

Written into tiny bits of lightning caught within the grips
of fiber-optic flax (long and stringy tendons laying
the skeleton of a birthing world without the limits
of night or day, drawing close together lips
to foster conversations) are the offhand thoughts of modern heroes
conjured up from crying Ids to connect with fellow
dreamers: worlds on top of worlds escape the pagan fears
that once drew lines around the Earth (those age-old myths
of non-believers and enthroned and vague redeemers);
searching for the 'übermensch' in dark and sinister lexicons of silicon.

(The bright rooms of blind potential
which strike out the outlines of trespassed doors;
and the hungry hands of the average man,
with all his glands and hairs and pores
that can seek no form of progress but
the conquering of foreign shores:
these things are one with my desires,
lying fetal on the floor;
There's tea on the table waiting yet,
the feeling's fickle, to be wanting more.)



V.

With the passage of time there was only iron, left behind,
scattered fragmented Ozymandias memories-
left barren like wrought-iron gates that point to a time
long lost, standing still: grey-scaled skeletons dead to a stillborn, littered sky,
once decked with the flesh and defiant spirit of 'mankind's everlasting quest';
they lay like ancient angels under all their ash and grime in rest-
and maybe all for the best.

Wondrous legends grew up around
the gods of old with metal birds, palaces that touched the sky,
and magic boxes of light and sound;
while green shoots sprouted up past lonely long-dead finger bones
by a river, with wrought-iron gates at its side,
the salvaged bits of a grandeur left untouched,
save for the bloody, hardened frost of untold years of creeping rust-
holding fast to shifting dirt, fascinating urban folk
And adding fuel to village lore, the mystic cause of children lost:
"Bodies pried from off the shores! victims of its demon claws
which wayward men invoked": this is the stuff of fairy tales,
which aging men stuff into tomes like photos into old shoeboxes.