We will have to unseal the jar if we are to know what is not in there.

We will have to unseal the jar if we are to know

what is not in there. on the contrary some will object

"I continue enjoying getting lost on its side

where a well-drawn willow bends to sleep."

And for formerly they will be right,

with things of stone it is always indolent summer

their vital fluid is cleverly hidden and the lines

traced forward them allow the eye no other than to record

its concede time, so fires start up

and a boat drifts downstream slower

than the now passings faster than the river.

Remember those days, the revolution that gave them

to us, when hearts deflected to day and if

another's tongue was in your chaps then that

was what you used to speak. Now we have

the jar. Should its courtiers by dint of the river disturb you

focus upon the corked mouth that holding back

a hesitating night has waited here

as onward a final dais, a place to interval

apart from the others who contemplation they were

functionaries of the air, opening it to itself,

keeping it in a'box, living in succession its breast.

And notwithstanding that those who thought this were guilty

evening still belates itself above a hill

and the stone lip casts to the heavens.

Many have died between, trying to win

a view of by what means they lived, stopped waves

in the cabinet of first things, the fruited mountain.

They would have died anyway however it would not

say above their graves as it does

in fitful differences sent along the climate

comes to find public of the blue book of hours to walk

It wouldn't be that looking at time

has produc containers and the jaws opens

to be like them, they explain to be like us. Decant

the jar and the sunshine still shines, the permanent put drugs intos

remain in the air, waves move running

downriver past the reflections of trees.

Thus is dawn reduc to unobserved flutes

and night behind it in retired canvasses,

one gesturing is left against another

nor can they be lay away, but like a shore

in soft relief, about to be recalled,

old pleasures still confound the world

GEOFFREY G O'BRIEN'S first work The Guns and Flags plan will be published by The University of California Pres in February 2002

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