by Jack Foley

wind bangs tree limbs against my roof
lament of the burned houses:
as if the trees suddenly revolted
we have souls, like you
as if the trees were aware
they scatter into ashes
of what we have done to them
and foul your air
over the centuries
MALOS AIRES
but I know
we house
this is only my fancy:
your most intimate possessions
I have heard of the evacuations, the dying vineyards, the foul air,        the flames
they vanish with us
I know why my eyes are beginning to sting
into the dangerous wind

by Jack Foley

W.B.Y.
     for Robert Sward

Gone at 73,
Poet of Ireland
Poet of the Other World
Looking for its traces
In the Wind
Among the Reeds
None like him
For the passion
Of renunciation
“O what a sweetness strayed
To barren Thebaid”
“The foul rag and bone shop
Of the heart” —
Three books
Quote that line
And leave “foul” out —
None like him
For the continual
Recognition
That language
Always goes beyond itself —
Innisfree
Haunted by the words
Of a 3rd-century Neo Platonist —
The immense distance between
This world
And that other
From which
The “voices” came.
Love of the woman
Love of the woman as symbol
The tragedy
That spirit
Lodges itself
In the mire
Of flesh
And that a woman
Must grow old —
Not “unity”
But the fierce knowledge
That all we have
Is the power to know
What we cannot be or emulate.
The swans
Leap up in the pool
And descend again, and leap again.
I love him for the clarity of his monumental, daring,
unerring vision.

.

I have lived with him throughout my life
Lived with the symbols
The magic that leapt about his table
Lived not where he walked
But where he thought
In that sky to which Helena Blavatsky brought him
Demon Est Deus Inversus

.

In the dark you entered in 1939,
Did Plato and Plotinus welcome you?

Did your soul rise, a falcon in the air
Ignoring cries to bring it back to earth?

Did Cúchulainn honor you, show you the sword
That killed in battle frenzy the hound of Culain?

Did Emer soothe the wounds that ended you
And bind them deeply with a purple cloak?

Did honeybees ignore you in that dark
Where wild swans flew and fire sweetly burned?

Did all the gyres end, did darkness sing?

Did you become a consecrated bone?

.

Nothing is true, dear love, nothing is true.

by Agneta Falk

Liz
In the memory of Liz Cooper, 1931–2019

There was nothing we could do
when you charged
a train on one track
we ducked, we weaved
trying to avoid the inevitable collision
the total impact
we fell, we got up
dusted ourselves off
began again
with the lace cut out of the cloth
exposing the threadbare weave
of our very beings
as you could cut in with that glorious smile
which could melt glaciers
as hard as your beliefs

In the ups and downs
of being your friend
& vice versa, one knew for sure
that there was no point
looking back: Forward was the way

You said once, before Chris died,
“We all look at the same moon”
I felt you thinking of her
in Honduras, it was a moment
almost tender, of longing,
making me think of you
whenever I look up at the moon

Shortly after, when she was gone
I entered your little back-to-back
house, high above Hebden Bridge;
in there It was as if grief was a cake
you had to cut a slice out of
In Parma, years later, as the train
pulled out of the station
I caught a glimpse of you
at the end of the platform
in a bright red coat;
you weren’t waving,
just standing there, looking
and I burst into a flood of tears
thinking this was the last time
I would see you

And that was the feeling
I often had with you, being
at the end of a cliff, not quite
secure on my feet, waving
in the wind, gasping for breath
between laughing our heads off
or diving into some abyss

You at the steering wheel
magnificently elegant in
your later years, almost at
times coquettish
as if you’d suddenly discovered
that looking good was as sharp
as your tongue

The other night you came to me
In a dream, looking svelte and tanned
living on some exotic island, where it
was very warm.  Your house — Adobe-style,
with windows without panes of glass — ;
there you swam in turquoise water,
wore a dress with large, printed flowers;
there wasn’t a bad bone in you,
only the widest smile of content.

by Agneta Falk

Dear David
In memory of David Meltzer

I lost the poem I wrote you many years ago
the only copy I had of, DANCING SYLLABLES

the day after you died I read it at the New Year’s
Day Celebration, I must have put it on the

table and somehow it got crumpled up
with the rest of that shitty year.  Ever since

I can’t stop thinking about it, trying to
remember some of the lines, but all I end

up with is a long empty corridor with closed
doors, just like the feeling I have of you no

longer being here in person, just know that
behind those doors lie the gift you left

the memories of you dancing those syllables
those words, clinking them together

so smoothly, so roughly, melodiously in and out
of sync, just like that fat cossac you slimmed

down in your poems before you released them
so elegantly, wittily, a solo trumpeter in the night

and that mischievous smile of yours, making light
out of darkness, bending your ear to the silliest

things, turning them on their head, putting it in its
place offbeat, to the point, giggling out of every

corner of your brain, tossing the whole goddamned
idiocy of this and that conundrum of life’s little

foibles, turning them into gems.  The doors in that
corridor begin to open, there’s so much light

coming through, the tree of light, a bird on every branch
singing your songs and, through it all, your eyes

those eyes, as always, smiling.