by Don Byrd

The First Message
In Memoriam: Paul Byrd

These three years I watch my hands become his
hours pass in the stream of thinking
my hands are still.

My hands are still becoming his hands
it’s spring again, the third
since his hands were stilled.

His hands were never still
and when he called the conversation was hampered
because neither of us could say Death.

He would give me all the information I wanted
as long as I could ask and
he could answer without saying Death.

And I said, Do you get hungry ?
and he said, Yes, very hungry.

And I said, Who are the other people ?
and he said, I get hungry.

And I said, What do you do day by day ?
and he said, I watch the waves break on the cliffs.

And I said, What is your greatest joy ?
and he said, To watch the waves break on the cliffs.

And I said, I am asking the wrong questions,
and he said, All of the questions are wrong.

And I said, I am asking the wrong questions,
and he said, Are you hungry ?

And I said, I am asking the wrong questions,
and he said, What do you do day by day  ?

And I said, I get hungry,
and he said, I am asking the wrong questions.

by Don Byrd

I took the large book from the shelf.
It was heavy, large, and smelly,
smelling of the dirty hands of an old man, who
sat too much and walked too little,
for years had walked too little.
I needed a lectern.

The core of my studies for fifty years,
I had wrestled the book, and the book had won,
or we had fought to a draw, or the wild,
unsettled world beyond the library defeated us.

I did not need to take the book from the shelf,
As I had done so many mornings after my coffee.
I knew the book and its smell, the book
and its songs, the book of my bones.

I put the brown book on the black desk,
Folded my arms across my chest,
And thought in the vicinity of the book,
Until the bell rang, until the birds sang
In the small oak tree, in the lawn with croquet,
The lawn sloping down toward the lake
And the boathouse.  I resumed my studies,
Before the dark unopened book.  I did not
Know if I or someone else had written the book.
There were coffee stains.  The bells rang.
Time started up.  The world beyond the library
Rattled with weather and commerce.
I did not rattle and this morning, I did not sing.

I did not rattle when I walked in the garden
With the wise woman dressed in flowers
And we sang the unheard music until after dark.

I spoke briefly of the large book
To the company that had gathered.  I spoke of the numbers
That ended and the numbers that did not end.  I spoke
Of the turbulence that rose in the numbers
In the book
On the desk
In the dark,
And in the morning.
The bells rang
And the mourning doves mourned
And waves of turbulent numbers
Arose among the clanging of the bells
And the mourning of the doves.
It was autumn and winter,
Winter and spring.  It was cold,
a cold hateful spring, a hard summer, and
Death comes slowly to the large animal
That is the administrative center of the large book,
With a taped spine
That I have studied for fifty years, wondering
Always what I learned and what I could sing,
Thereafter, to make not the numbers,
But the frisky formalism of the numbers, known.

Did the numbers populate the suburban towns,
North and east of the city, did they take the organs
Of the large animal of the book with them,
Did the suburban trains and automobiles sing
The death song of the city and the large animal ?
Did the numbers forecast the coming of the smell
That covered the land with false hope and policy ?
Did the governors fall in the wells, unmourned
And unremembered ?  Did the administrators sleep
-250And did the power plant roar through the short days
And long nights as the nights become longer ?
Did the music the buskers played drive
the commuters mad and did the music
Transport some of the commuters to addresses
In the large book, where the sun rose and the day
Lasted so long the beginnings were not remembered ?
No one remembered the first light of day,
And no one remembered the first bird songs.
The first things were forgotten and the second things.
The processing of the third things
Overran the memory cache, and the numbers spilled out,
Running down the slope and into the lake.

I sat before the large book on the dark, heavy desk.
Days passed.  Eons grew inside the drops that were time,
More than I counted, more than choruses of counters
Could have counted.  I spoke with Pythagoras
And Heraclitus in the dark and heartbroken night
About the numbers true and untrue, about the
Heartbreaking future from which I came and to which
I would return. I sat before the large brown book
That I knew as well as myself. Some times, I think
I wrote the book, and sometimes I think it was another,
Not written by another, but whispered in my ear.
It may be that the book was not written at all.
I had lived the book, not what the book was about,
Or everyone had lived the book and had arrived
At this dark pass, smoke smudged, and sad-eyed.
Did you come from a world that made sense ?  Did
You come from the world where the large animals lived ?
Were there books and sorrows in that world ?  Did people
Think they thought and think ?  Was the water in the wells
Cool and sweet ?  Was there time ?  Did the bird songs blossom
Like daffodils in spring ?  I sit before the large brown book,
Taped on the spine like an old man.

by Alfred Corn

My gimlet attentiveness detects the numbered
key and pitch latent in steel, dialed up
and gauged on a sprung scale.
Call them bolts of digital melody
unrolling under these practiced,
sand-papered fingertips.

How I learned my scrupulous trade ?
By calling each safe a day in the mind,
the player placing a long-shot
bet as he sounded the knocker
affixed to a door on secrets, treasure.
Mine, mine, when the tune and click-tick turned
out right, by clockwise clockwork — but only when
the music box decides, of its own accord,
to swing open and let light flood the contents.

by Yuyutsu Sharma

Plump drops
of an early morning rain

speckle
the dusty treetops

mottle
the cemented squares

of our simmering
courtyard

and in a second
turn into a demon

to start drumming
the kitchen roof upstairs

making any exchange
about the plague

caused by
this miniscule being

ravaging our lives
impossible,

a being so small
that doesn’t have

a shape
a face or a form

a head or a heart,
or perhaps a soul.
From a longer poem in progress, “The
Days of Great Gloom”