November Strangenesses

November stokes unbidden strangenesses – evokes
a hundred years ago – as if there floated some
collective cloud in human consciousness that burgeons
to precipitate into the meditative mind at certain bare
November times – permeate a kind of absent receptivity;
a trance – a psychic blankness – surely finds, invites this:

black silhouetted trees in Norway – feverishly bright
white-yellow sky behind – beginning to descend
to autumn dusk: the gentle glowing musk and shock
at four o’clock of sorrow – out on Kristiania’s streets
perambulates a cold, be-furred, tight-corseted young
woman, hair piled high beneath a fashionable feathered hat,
but yearning for her feathered bed: coughing into her blue
handkerchief, which glints with several drops of red.

New York is Nordic now and full of something like
the resonant high painful precedent of this young
woman’s dread – but: quiet! – see the blackbirds fly
above as if her blood had more to do with love than death.
We’ve reached the time of year that silvers breath.



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