Today the clouds unlearn

Sean Bentley

the rain as whiskers forget the homely face A certain kind of cloud grows more and more like itself Never has it heard its name pronounced and it has no idea * Under its rock beard the earth muscles dumbly, wearing time away, remorseless innocent The years erode Fossils are in the air we devour a translucent history christen the second hand We are fierce as rock and twice as implacable * The fire translates us into a safe but unregarded patch of interference It cannot see us living in the crevices between its own licks and flutters If its soul were only taciturn if its eyes only held still enough to see * Between us flies water in the bodies of the living and the body of the dream It is we who must take hold like a family lineage and write the structure in our black book of true things Water needs none of the trouble It has always known its place in the long chapters * The body of the dream not only grows but takes things into its own illimitable hands It encompasses and lies within the blade or stem because it is there it can be deciphered But this is the power that for the dream the dream is easy Everything does only what it can do but the dream does everything