Some Implications
By Kurt Ulrich
1
Thirst does not believe in what
might cure and thus
destroy it. Thirst
concocts a dream of the ocean
dry as a bone, but
full as ever; and my bridges
never completely burn—thirst
prevents them from this,
gathers force with its elongated
figures of an evening
such as the talk with
El Greco inspired. Imagine
you had managed a meeting
with the utmost more
grace than you had expected:
the guests would never leave or they’d
seem to be hiding,
to have gone so quickly they would
seem either never to have gone,
never to have really arrived,
or to always have been, or
be yet to come.
2
Rafters of a type we’re less
than only a little
accustomed to, and devised
under the ice-blue
lights of an ordinarily
pale enthusiasm
for rote good humor, seem,
scaled, sturdier by
far than when, straining our
backs in order to
see them in relation to the
drapes and decorations
our usual homes entail, they
did little more than trace
the arc of the heavens; did
little more than the grass
might flow, that is; and
held no home away from
what is perhaps richer, graver,
more deliberate and thrilling
an environ, but which should
be sampled by and by, as befits
an entire neighborhood, and not
in such a manner as would
keep us from sleep, too immune
to a kingdom divided
from our fondest dream.
3
Today it’s that there’s not
really enough for us to merit
that splendid regard
of the luminous—were
there enough we’d be
probably much worse off than where
the whole thing stews today: under
something dark and crisp and
electric, cold, and heedless. I
have sanctioned these poems
exude charm, but nothing distracting,
nothing visual, expected or
cooperatively italicized. Clouds
are suggestive and familiar, and
find us at least most of the time
on our way to the building
in the rare clear city, tears
in our eyes as we continue to
expend our sway inappropriately,
toward the darling little flowers
who travel in schools, and toward
the women happily married, or so
they thought. Blush of clarity, tolerant
impossible private hue, our passions are
only and all for you, but then
you’re gone and the day turns
sunny, damn it, everything’s
easy to understand, everything
tags along after us, asking us
what to do, and paying us
a compliment full of deadlines
as good as a threat, while our children
turn pale as clouds, as you.
animary 