welcome me home, Bird,
to where the worms eclipse
the bones of earlier,
your carmine-ugly hills that
curl hedgehog-closed before my
slow finger,

my Return
frozen in the callus
of a solitary cap.

Belonging
is the clasp
of a powd’rous knuckle.

in the Green,
thought surrounds me,
as wagons circling before dark,
and the dim voices of
a spectral chorus
cleanse the valleys of
the sidelong bodies,
singing,
“Welcome Home, Welcome Home.”

“…and, thus bereft of his love,
he turned & delved so deep as to emerge
in unknown airs, on another side…”
From “Elegy for Eurydike”
by Ornotakritos,
3rd Chresmologue to Pediculopubis the Puritic,
c. 475-469 BC.

Through an orphic dark,
a bird drives its
wedge of screams.

Does it grasp me,
as the old one says?

Or, does it,
from his second mouth,
move me,
rush & shift & slide,
on iron, glass, &
further factious growths?

On this ground,
barely made &
“once created,”
–am I flux,
—am I fixed,
by the cry we children
try overhard
to make our own?

From Hesse’s “Maria” (1898)
IV
Ich fragte Dich, warum Dein Auge gern
In meinem Auge ruht,
So wie ein reiner Himmelsstern
In einer dunklen Flut.

Du sahest lang mich an,
Wie man ein Kind mit blicken misst,
Und sagtest freundlich dann:
Ich bin gut zu Dir, weil Du so traurig bist.

Attempt into the Literal:
I asked you why your eye
Likes to rest in my eye
Like a pure star of heaven
In a dark tide/flood.

You looked at me for long,
As one sizes up a child.
And then said kindly,
I’m good to you, because you are so sad

Attempt into the Literary:
I asked you why your eye
Does like to rest in mine
As might a purest star
In darkest tides of sky.

You gazed at me a while,
As kindly mother may a child,
Then told me in the warmest tone:
I’m good, for in your head you are alone.

Attempt at Return to Self:
i did not dare to ask
why You like to rest with me,
Your eye in mine and mine in Yours,
like life in dark, like star in void,

since i could not bear to hear
Your kind and loving voice
tell me that You know and see
just how it is in me.