Sweet alyssum sweet asylum
the resolution of love’s equations
in the approximation of distances
let the heart not reprove
nor the eye fall foul of truth
in all its radiant beauty
music is there to invoke
to guide our steps to the stars
not to distract but to raise us up
to the heights that lie within us
our lives driven ever soulwards
fulfilled in the soft-petalled bliss
of love stripped of pain and error
wisdom pledged in piety and patience
John Lyons
Rare flower soaked
in the summer rain
the wind will outlive you
your petals will wither
and fall and your dust
will be a distant memory
though you hale
from a proud corridor
of stars your beauty
will not survive the season
of salmon rising
dragonflies will buzz
above your head
indifferent to your charms
and through the black night
you will feel abashed
in the shadow of the rose
there is no wisdom in old age
merely senescence
a paltry figure in a tattered coat
as the poet would have it
bones that fail and eyes
out of focus
a limp from day to day
of her he recalls
how he penetrated the light
how she listened enrapt
to his song of innocence
and how their hearts were lost
in a tangle of limbs
rare flower in spring
do not raise false hopes
do not long for love everlasting
delight in the bed in which you lie
and know that time will take its revenge
come what may
John Lyons
A taste for words
for the energies of poetry
for artless time
and timeless art
What shall we do
with this world
but sing its praises
and denounce
the human corruption
of beauty and truth
the dry bones interred
or the ashes placed
in the urns
but the poetry
with a life of its own
who has a taste for roses
for the rise and fall
of the sonata
for the light and darkness
on a Caravaggio canvas
And let’s be objective
facts are not symbols
no meaning
where none intended
Dante asks :
Was there ever a love
not tinged
with eternal beauty
and nothing loose
about his line
A taste for the craft
for workmanship
for the construction
of rhythms that harness
the full power
of verbal energies
Let me tell you a tale
of Shem and Shaun
and sweet Anna Livia
and the river
that never runs dry
. . .and of love
There are moments when it seems
that every second counts
that every breath is precious
and that nothing should ever
be taken for granted
but those moments never last
we lose concentration
and our minds relax
Wise stars can be foolish
and he who understands
knows that nothing
is ever finished
nothing is ever complete
that the struggle
between heart and mind
between body and soul
is in a rather loose way
eternal and pointless
There is virtue
and there is desire
the lilies in the field
and the sparrows
that have been tallied
well before our birth
To talk of the stars
and the wide heavens
is no abstraction :
uncountable
though they are
they are very much more
than neighbours
and light and energy
are our common
denominators
There is no beauty without light
no rose without photosynthesis
and goodness lies in the transformation
of light into beauty — and it is
our most natural process
And so we walk in the light
and stumble and fall in the darkness
and poetry is nothing more nothing less
than the enlightenment
of words
John Lyons
Can poetry heal a body
broken on the wheel of time
can words redeem
what the senses have lost ?
All my life I have been
in two minds or more
the number is an irrelevance
my imagination crowded out
by the glow of winter stars
What I have thirsted for
I have yet to find
but I have been driven
to know the nature of things
of love principally
and beauty and truth
perhaps all part and parcel
of the fabric and burden
of the world
Poetry the voice
of acquired intuitions
fed by the fret and fury
and tender frailties
of human commerce
Do not say
that reason is maimed
that the tongue raves
or that the mind stumbles
into darkness
nor that there is no wit
in love :
it is the body
that makes sense of the mind
that makes sense of the body
and from that marriage
all dreams are born
and lived out in substance
so that the frost that clings
to every blade of grass
clings as much to the mind
that shivers with the cold
so that when love too turns away
and a light is extinguished
the gentle warmth of a cheek
is lost forever
John Lyons
My eyes trapped in time
but not my heart
which can rove to and fro
back and forth
catch my second breath
and as the evening
closes in so the mind is released
from its shackles
and lives for a moment
untrammelled
How many days
add up to a life
and what is there to tell
in the telling ?
I have sat
by so many windows
entered and left
by so many doors
shed so much in the process
been ruled by a restlessness
a desire to accumulate
petty wisdoms
knowing all the while
that we are but reflections
of momentary flames
overrun in the end by time
To be
better than not to be
Louis wrote — one fine day
woven into the next
and to retain a certain texture
a blend of novelty
and the recurrence of pleasures
that mitigate the pain
This evening a red sunset
bitterly cold but a promise
of better days ahead
make what you can of it
that’s all you have : we are actual
and nothing else
John Lyons
A noise in the clouds (revised)
We are not born of a nothing
but from substantial energies
At night we chase the stars
in our fleeting dreams
but these scattered constellations
are far from being figments
of banal fantasy — we too are
fragments from the Big Bang
there is only one origin after all
and nothing is lost
in this closed universe
neither wisdom nor nonsense
On this cold wintry morning
I see the play of soft light
on the panels of the wooden fence
at the end of the garden
I see leaves gently ruffled
by a winnowing wind
and I know that all things
bear the same imprint
the rocks and stones and trees
the daffodils in the meadows
that rise up from the banks of the lake
every aspect perfectly mirrored
just as each star illuminates its neighbour
we in our so separate souls
share this common bond
all being extraterrestrials
and this earth a mere landing craft
upon which our atoms
have gathered into clusters
that are an ardent expression
of the energies within :
we are the light in our eyes
the living word on our own lips
we are the sense of it all
and for that reason
love is nothing less than
the revolution of one body
around another
John Lyons
Smoke from a heap of leaves burning
as darkness fell and life smouldered on
That night a sharp frost and the following day
awoke to a white lawn crisp under fox foot :
if the king is a thing so too a man and a woman
and a child and all bodies made under the sun
and so our lives are lived among such things
and yet all things as we know will pass
fame and glory and pride and wealth and position
and what remains is what we can secure
against the cold and bitter depredations of dust
the warmth stored in our hearts and in our minds
though those too will pass just as the smoke
rose unseen and faded into the sky and the fire died
John Lyons
when finally
we go to sleep to sleep
we will know
that we have grown old
we will shudder
as the snow
melts from branches
and bury ourselves
beneath warm blankets
to bide our time
when finally
we go to sleep to sleep
we will know
that some dreams
can be spent
once and for all
and may never return
we will remember then
the days and nights
when nakedness
signified a constellation
of delights
and a consummation
of every caprice
when finally
we go to sleep to sleep
we will regret nothing
not a sparrow not a starling
not a rose nor the icy scent
of lavender
on fresh laundered sheets
having had the thrill
of our fill
our fill
of the thrill
when finally
we go to sleep to sleep
we will be content
that we gave love our all
that we covered every base
that not a single rosebud
was left unculled
not a single bale
remained unmade
and not a single kiss
went astray
John Lyons
Rainy day
In the silence
yellow warblers
and wild canaries
Bushes in bloom
honeysuckle
dogwood
Japanese quince
A lawn full of dandelions
Two rows of lettuce
sown today
I get song sparrows
wrens
cardinals
northern yellow-throats
From the kitchen
casement window
I see fireflies at night
The shade of the Sugar Maple
is a blessing
one of many
John Lyons
The above poem draws data from two letters written by Lorine Niedecker to Louis Zukofsky.
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