Rambling / Meditation

(Which version?)

Meditation

So we see more partings
than returns. So we are old. So the wrinkles do not make
a workman but a crippling,
a reed; a weed on the lawn. The cattails bend, unbend,
at this lean hour. It means nothing
save the wind swings the world—is strong today. I shuffle
by marsh-mires: here no reed
stand strong to take hold of and lift me, dirty but just-
dry, against the wind, that which beats me. Clouds cross
like ships, fire ammo the sound
of thunder and shape of lightning. My clothes swell
in the wind and in the rain
that shape it into breathings, shapes without shape.
I haven't told of a dream
in which a Greek boy hunched beneath the shelter of trees
(from thunder, from lighting),
but he dripped and shivered like me. The leaves like grapes
pulled up by the stem, in the wind,
by daybreak, as from somewhere a force had come,
the leaves rustled and bowed
like that, as the cattails bend, unbend, at this lean hour.



Meditation


So we see more partings
than returns. So we are old. So the wrinkles do not make
a workman but a crippling,
a reed; a weed on the lawn. So the cattails bend, unbend,
at this lean hour: it means nothing
but the wind is strong today. I shuffle by marsh-
mires: here no reed stand strong
to take hold of and lift me, dirty but just-dry, against
the wind. Clouds cross
like ships, fire ammo the sound of thunder and shape
of lightning, my clothes
whose swelling in the wind and in the rain
is a shapelessness beaten,
hammered into shape. So I haven't told of the dream
where the greek boy hunched
beneath the shelter of trees (from thunder; from lighting),
and all the time the leaves rustled
and bowed; and all the time the cattails bend,
unbend, at this lean hour.