ROVER WHERE YOU GO

I CANNOT FOLLOW

 

                           on guard

In the beginning was the word
Rover saw a dog
and I couldn't read the second word
on the reading card:
Rover was a god
a dog was barking
blinded by a torch

like one unblinded by a touch
I am lifted up
time and time again into
My mother's arms, blinded

as an eye in sheer
light off a waving
medium for reflection

                                 under will
                                 the well of law

I saw Rover sat on a well
when a woman came to draw
the aura of the Living Goddess
sanctified in common usage

Image Rover
Son of Bitch
a dog like the son of his father --

the aura left the pool in dumb
disbelief

              on heat

the valley spirit taken in
adultery with Rover
drew the water
sign they knew each other
in the sand
and guided in

Unhurt
The green shadow
Olive, love, and loving

                                   on sax

waves of peace
reverberate in rushes
of the reed. Sea Rover
is assimilated with the angel
Absolute
who walks with him

blinded by the sun, I couldn't see
whatever over on the other side of Him.
Say like a river where you go
I cannot flow, but may we even yet
arrive together, mother friend and lover
or with any other
witness as a stranger for a name

I am dying to be overwhelmed in love
and something stranger
something guide

                         on walls

I didn't know I was one among
the outwardly cooling things

a wind took my words as one
continual stream

I am largely governed by
the imprints of this world

the perceptual wells have ears
it sounds like water in them

and I'm another one haunted
by the rhyme of cockle bread

                                             on gods and ends

a wind plucks my clothes I remember
the love overtook us on a windy night
Rover was a dog
rushing into the calmest garden

If I wasn't guilty why
was I arrested? Sensual Life
is trapped and the body
after questioning
is thrown in a helpless heap

Under pressure I sign
myself Rover
Awfully easy that
Signature to sign

                           on the name

Sacrifice Rover? Hold the whole thing
in jeopardy while someone
searches s phonebook
in a box for a number to ring

Thirsty helpless in the arms
of animal friends I
in sleep am taken down.
The line is now quite dead.
But was it Rover though
was hidden in
The Night as Lion?

Question Rover
the one with the mane

                                  to have an ear
                                  in the hereafter

in the dark before dawn someone moved
on a rocky hillside in a cold wet rain
and half hidden moon

I couldn't wish to find her love
for me alive again but I pretend
to see shaped in the dark before dawn

And she came and we both
felt shattered and just want to sleep

I saw no-one Rover
but ourselves in the dawn

                                        on my orientation

Return to routine after breakdown that went with
lack of sleep and the extraordinary pale blueness
of a thinly-stretched dawn to work with
the figure the mind makes of things in tiredness

A figure of love in the space of whom
there was such grace that cars
seemed to dance to the outstretched thumb

A figure of the stranger
Come out of the east
during that still hour
in the space of whom

a light seemed to be on
the simple doing of things
like preparing some food for a meal
for though the food is real the sharing
of it makes it seem as if love
is unearthly and that nothing
in eternity is broken

a return
it was as though
Rover I call again
I don't think anyone will come

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