1

Lucky man who shuns the brazen
Counsel of spineless cynics
Takes delight in light, the law
That rules by day and night,
Breathing an endless meditation:
A tree that drinks a river,
Pushing out its fruit in season:
Unwithering green: a branching body
Of leaves that richly shelters.

Chaff may scoff as well as fly—
I'm wise to their worldly wisdom—
A web wove tight with gaping holes:
The schizoid spider's information
Wrapped about a hollow nothing:
A secret they shout to the deaf.

Deaf themselves, their congregation
Nods agreement, sleep, death.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

2

Nations conspire, people plot,
Lackeys and leaders take counsel;
Place fact against truth
To burst the cord that binds the will.

He who sees it all must laugh
For wrath meets wrath
And more than wrath, but fury:
A mount that speaks in fire.

I'll serve you a wedge of his marvellous ire:
"Today, my son," he said to me,
"Ask me for the nations on a platter
"Shattered to shards with a single song!"

Rulers be wise, be warned, be ruled.
Serve with fear who bore you near;
Not long your longing ends as mine,
Kissing worms below the foot that made you.

Your mother's womb was opened quick:
As quick the world-as-womb will close.
Quick: be open and enclose
The world that made the world to open.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

3

God knows the number of my foes
Who see in me a hollow reed
Set before the blade

But pure the form,
The breath my voice:
A shield sustained by song.

Answered sap is strong:
A balm of bliss and peace
Unshaken by the clack

Of chattering jaws;
Hills of bone and sliding teeth,
Broken in the blood and dust.

All of me and mine
Sustained by song—
The simple note that's answered long.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

4

My song in itself's an answer,
Relief when in distress,
Grace when in the right.

My fellows love to turn the lie to truth,
To honour vanity, bringing contumely.
They do not know who sets apart a voice to answer.

If only they could wage their wars
Within, quietly, offering wounds
In trust to healing hands.

They itch to behold their signs of wealth—
Rose dawns, full grains, rich wines
The storehouse of my heart can't hold for bursting!

Fully drunk and full I wake,
Fuller than the fullest sleep:
The safety of a well-won war!


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

5

Boasting wraiths deceit-destroyed,
By bloodthirst grown abhorrent,
Flap round the flaps of my tent
Where I lie, drenched and groaning.

In love I long and will to enter
The house of fear and longing,
Love of truth. Seductions wait:
Make my way straight and straighter.

Perfumed tongues make a clever grate,
Screen a secluded sewer, lush
With churning excrement: all fecund
Brilliant green degraded.

Choke them on their fetid stench!
Throttled by their self-bred snakes!
My song is refuge and defense:
Favour in peace, a shield in battle.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

6

In death there is no memory.
Who can sing from the grave?

How long will I languish
Here, at the chess-board

Playing games against myself—
Each hollow win a crushing loss?

Perhaps my foe will turn back
... in a moment...


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

7

Confetti for the janitor's broom
After the boom-box fades,
They shred me.

Who have I hurt?
Which friend offended?
What foe without reason?

Does anyone think to judge a man
Not by the practical spotlight
But by all his deeds together?

Who knows me well enough
To try my mind and heart:
A judge with the right to be indignant?

Then sweep me into the iron scale
The kiln that rends my grain to grains
And rips the rest to roaring flame.



Unconsidered deeds,
Like a pendulum rising,
Full crested like the moon

Are sharp, deadly
Poisoned whetted blades
Descend on the pregnant

Birthing mischief
(The cluttered mind unmapped
Cannot recall

All the traps it's baited).
I will sing of this
And wait.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

8

Glory by the infant sounded
Hidden in the nest from hawks
Circling 'neath the pregnant pearl,
The moon, and broad-cast stars,
Fashioned as if loving hands
Laid and layered common grit.

What is man but a grain of it?
Who would even think of him
Let alone care for his sons?

Yet on his feet he wears the world,
An honour only slightly less
A glory than the crown of stars,
His eyes, the moving wheel and pinion
That rules what swims and prances round
And gives a name to his dominion.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

9

Nations and men, cities and stone,
Vanquished, lie ruined, then vanish.

Uprooted columns shrink to sand,
The names on the cornerstones effaced.

They all made skilful well-placed pits,
And "progress" spread their clever nets

So dense their groping feet were caught
Stumbling, blind with rage and hate.

Poor now, hoping, poorer still,
Wolfing their last meal, their bait.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

10

Why does one day, so full of trouble
Press so hard against the next
Just to leave it undisturbed,
Even more disturbingly troubled?

Why does hawk and spider hover
Above blind chick, the naive fly;
The lion in clandestine cover
Wait to draw in catch after catch?

There are men part hawk, part chick,
Who play both roles of spider, fly;
Say: "No one watches what I do,
"No one counts my fallen.

"I'm a man who knows what he wants
"And I know how to get it!
"There's no one here: none to fear."
(He never contemplates the worm.)

Sing then, sing! I said to myself,
Tones that brace in nest and womb;
That make the fatherless fathers of men
And more than men, but fathers again.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

11

To men who stand they bend the bow,
They fit the arrow to the string

So to the mountaintop I've flown
Through shafts like rain in spring.

There my sun-warmed face will sing
And shield me from the gore below.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

12

"We talk," they say, "and the world revolves;
"And if we spin it the opposite way..."—Why—
There's your revolution!

Seven times seven I stood in fire;
Three more sevens completes the year:
Twenty one days I spent in contemplation.

I need not sing for vengeance here:
Their severed lips and twisted tongues
Exalt themselves in a maze of mirrors!


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

13

Through leaden days unwarmed
I question myself unanswered.
My weary voice, unechoed, dies
In wells too deep to plumb.

My dream of staggering bounty
(Wild, improbable, true)
Is based upon the simple pearl,
The closed and counted days

Of a naked crouching child alone
Who struck and split repeatedly
The dusty speckled oval rock
Intent to see the pattern brighten.

In drizzle came a hedge today,
Painted in autumn colour;
Yesterday the yew's red pearl
By spears of green were covered.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

14

"From the infinite to the infinitesimal
"I stand," they say, "Master
"Of Earth and Sky, all that stands between:
"Master of the what and why."

This straying herd of greedy goats
Pillage fields of endless green,
Chomp white shoots to seed itself,
Leaving a dung-filled dust-bowl.

Without an ear for song,
Without an eye for beauty,
A mind without an image:
A belly and a bunghole.

But seed and song will deliver themselves
Of themselves and sing green slopes,
Brooks of fish that jump upstream
In the blood of every singer.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

15

Experience alone his mother,
Who in rain though sheltered,
Beholds a sun-drenched vista.

His certain song's unaltered
By plots and twisted chatter,
Of those who huddle in baths:

Soggy newsprint paper dolls
Changing with changeless headlines.
His tune isn't made to fit but measure:

Silent about what he doesn't know,
Singing aloud what he understands
He recognizes his brother's walk—

Signal fire from distant mountain. Says:
"Pay me when you can", meaning
Not to break the natural pride.

Silent his contempt for the nihilist,
Ringing his praise for the constant,
He gives his neighbour his petty reproach

And takes the full-blown victory
Of being unmoved, his eye directed
Before his feet by heart commanded

And until then, no inch, nor muscle
Twitches
Till he strides.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

16

My dwelling has a simple charm—
Exotic delights are rented grief.
I'd rather drink sand than cut my tongue
On fashionable designer-cups,
On bloody made-up mannequins.

The size of my lot doesn't matter—
I've said it before; I'll say it again:
Within the world of the shuttered pearl
Is a grain of sand that grows,
Every layer embracing the whole.

Every line has fallen in it's place—
I have been left perfection;
The heart that beats within the heart
Counsels, instructs as it opens
Before me a constant way.

The right is my right and all my rights—
A wall that keeps me unmoved and moving;
For this and of this I sing rejoicing:
My lot is perfect peace;
Neither can I fall nor stumble.

Singing a mountain switchback,
The staffs of my songsheet
Are piton and rope: song
Of the blind who sees inwardly,
Tottering on the roof of bliss.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

A Modern Psalm

Throw the white blanket
And sing a lullaby.
What wailed young green
Battled all summer.
Autumn is another thing:
A gift to the poor. No king
Could eat orchards, field
After field by himself. Hence
Preserves for the rest,
Rest for the field,
A field for each man
In which to stand
And say: "I have lived
"through a season":

Wealth beyond kings,
Save one who weighs
What he holds in his palm
And bends to caress
A world or a brow,
A child or a psalm.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

17

Come at night, sit on my bed
Watch my chest ride the waves,
My corrugated brow now taut,
The mouth half-open,
Its corners playing host and guest.

Working men have gone to bed
But they'll wake and continue
In a muddle of mud or dust.
I fly above the narrow puddle
Past crowded houses

Where trophies are displayed
On empty mantleplaces
Above cheerless fires,
Slipping in conversation
From one association to the next,
Unwilling to hold a single thought
In a real embrace.

The song in which I live, singing
To an ear bent to its own song
Lives and listens 'til it ends.

Until it ends it's fortress, field,
Wall and arching tree above it;
Fruit of womb and apple tree:
The embracing eye's delight
Hid between the mother's breasts
Who waits to show her husband
That for which he battles
Bone to bone in the world.

Deaf ears it seems must own loud mouths
And long dirks, and watchful eyes
Eager to tear, to laugh at misfortune.
My song and its echo hovers above them
And pities their pitiful fortunes:

May they be glad with their toys;
And may they leave some for their boys!
Me? after a peaceful night I'll wake

In the arms that hold the song—
A crystal glass
Hoisting the meniscus.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

18

I love the hammer-stone poised above
The broken rock on which I stand: the cleaving stone
That releases a brightness; the breath that catches:
The rock on which I stand sustained.

Strength in the crystal, the black and white speckle,
Strength in the concrete where I crouch and strain,
Strength in the back, to cleave the stone,
Strength in the stone, by which to cleave.

Broken as I was in superfluous pieces,
The broken though brightened voice that sings
Found the critical ear whose tuning
Fork shook Earth til it reeled and split,

Spit white flame and ash from the depths,
Billowing smoke above, below,
Black so black it touched the brain-pan,
Touched as a light on the skin of the iris.

Flame, intense, roared in the gist of it,
Thunder claps that splintered lightning
To blood red coals and fiery stone
Arrows cut the cords that bound me.

And I saw to the worn-down channels of the sea,
The foundation-stones of the world as I flew,
Wrapped in the song, the stone: that ear
That hears and delights in song:

Loyal to the loyal, blameless to the blameless,
Pure to the pure, perverse to the crooked:
The light of my lamp, the steel in my sword,
The shield on my arm, the song in my mouth:

The rock, the bedrock itself of my self,
The rock that spreads beyond my stride;
The rock in my arm to bend iron bows,
The rock in my feet that turned them to wings

To soar the scope of all space to set me
High on the broad-rimmed ledge, eclipsing
The dust and scum beneath me, the mire
And filth in the drains who hate me

The brains that bait me, who think in committee,
Calling for help with a sanitized prayer, to a god
When useful, a devil when not. Failing that,
A tyrant, eunuch, mob.

I ground them fine like coffee beans
And poured the scalding water; drip
By precious drip they dissolved.
(I have a plastic Rubbermaid for mud.)

Once I sat beneath them and cringed;
They turned me away and the world
Kept turning. Now the rock is revolved,
My resolve, and now they come,

Tin cups for tinkles.
The rock lives; its many layers
Protecting the single seed that grows
Outward: an onion: a hand that delivered

A crop of seed set deep in the loam,
A crop of stars, thrown in the void
Grown so close and tightly together
(The reed-thin stalks swaying together)

My seeds of dust! broken into bloom!
Tight as the speckled rock, broken:
The breath, the voice, caught, released
Again and again in the heart of the stone.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998

19

White puffs and blue above
and below me
a tight-worsted forest
of wool, the colour
is asphalt, reflecting
green tinge. Night
and the lights
below me. A filigree
of song: squeaks
of the wheels as they
touch down. In bed
comes rest. Within rest
comes the sun, the son,
the young lover to his bride
with calves of iron joy.

What is perfectly sure
revives as it simplifies.
In this wise what is right and pure
rejoices and clarifies
all that it commands.

What is clean and true
is what cuts what's wanted
from that which is possible;
a man's days are numbered,
his body, mortal: fear
closes the circle,
fits the ring,
enduring and profound,
leads to the honeycomb,
the song that's spun
in threads of gold.

I might warn myself
not to make presumptions here.
I should be aware
that the stair I climb goes up
and down. I cling, I fear, too much
And tear the flowing gown, expect
too much that it warns me.


© Dan Goorevitch, 1998