Book I - Composition

Balance is exile. Balanced composition

of existence.

Balance of power says the man who feeds

me with his newspaper spoon.

He calls it an arms race. Sapce race.

He says race against race. Who wins.

Stars and planets in motion. Centrifugal

balance. A mad plan for every smashed atom

burned sun and wandering planet.

Flawless composition. Flawless landscape

of mind. Power of creation.

Balance of landscape.

Balance of earth and sky.

Heavy sky over water rolling and changing.

Landscape is illusion. Vision is dreaming.

The landscape like a shadow corresponds to

an unknown real image. The path to knowledge

of the image is distance.

The landscape is a shadow. That is distance.

Lost alone in the landscape. Distance.

The final joke is the dream of the landscape.

The pain in their eyes smoulders.

Volatile expression. The pain of lovers.

Distance is the great comforter.

Traverse the landscape in search of the image.

Forest to sky. Snow to shore. Water to horizon.

Endless gray skies.

Footprints etched blue in the snow.

Curlews rush along the ground. Blue birds

flutter and call in the forest. A dry crinkled

leaf tumbles across white snow.

The substance of motion is energy. This is the

century of motion. Time of man motion.

Wheels turn. Cog to lever spinning. The scream

of engines. Hum of electricity. Madness via

satellite. Time of man.

The clock hands move. Time moves.

Relentless progression.

Do you insist we are absolute. We stand

on the dust of a thousand generations.

All ashes.

We are nothing but a dream of the movement

of time. Bear witness to the motion of shadows.

All ashes again.

A bird nest empty in the naked tree.

In the spring the tiny bird will return

looking for the lost nest. Undaunted by

the loss begins the building of another.

The sun breaks through the clouds on the

horizon. Red waves cross the sky. Time

marked in the passage of the sun.

Alpha Centuri. Closest sun to our sun.

Measured in speeding light.

Light is illumination.

Light of knowledge.

Why must we forget history. Choke on the

dust of the past. Cyclical mistakes.

Time. Predominant figure of the landscape.

I stepped down from the train. She stood on

the platform waiting. Time hung motionless.

A lengthening shadow of a tree in the forest.

Winter landscape of earth curved away

from light. Relentless wheel. Axis

unyielding. Distant sun.

Cheerless sun of no warmth. Illumination

with no warmth. Idea of mind with no heart.

Sun lost in the shadow of the clouds.

In the shadow of a thousand poets I am

able to see light.

Light! Final illumination!

Naked in the glare. Stripped past hiding.

Masks fallen aside.

The sun marking time in the sky.

Sun of truth. Sun omnipotent. Final image.

Light of knowledge. All is light.

Hail father sun!

Pale winter sun veiled by clouds.

The green of the leaf is the memory of the sun.

Memory is accumulated knowledge working.

Our libraries are full of tears.

Ancestral memory. Fear of darkness.

Our fathers tamed fire.

Fear of hunger. Of cold.

Our fathers tamed the earth.

Fear of light. Of nakedness. Of truth.

The light of knowledge must not be feared.

Fear of truth is the final darkness.

Our fathers tamed wild beasts and the world.

Fought from caves toward light.

We must be the children of light.

The fallen black maple remebers the earth.

The photograph of the landscape is fading. Already it is a memory or a shadow or a dream. The landscape has no substance beyond the moment of perception. It is real only in the mind and in the mind it fades.

See the black maple stand alone on the barren shore. Now fallen to the stark white snow. The iron gray wter and the leaden sky merge and are lost on the horizon. The footsteps like the memory of a man fade in the mask of falling snow. The bird nest in the tree is the lonely hope for the cycle of seasons. The sign of patient change.

Who knows where the shadow of the tree ends and the dream of the tree begins. It lengthens and is lost. And the sun? The light of truth. The light of redemption. It too can be lost. Obscured by clouds or the spinning earth.

In the end is the balance. It is a flawless composition. The photograph like memory fades. The moment consummate passes. Yet the cycle of rebirth and renewal is endless. The sun shall shine again. The fallen maple remembers the earth and becomes earth. From the soil of the fallen maple new life shall grow.

The moment of the composition is passed. I photograph a landscape of mind. The composition is the collected fragments of what you choose to see.

Remember the shadow.

The landscape is ashes.

All ashes again.

Came to this continent blind to all goals but power.

To abused power will com resistance.

Relentless rejection.

Came looking for temporary power measured in

stolen gold and bloodied pets.

The resistance to that false search was complete.

The land and the gods of this land have withheld

their giving. The true yield of this continent was

lost. Forever lost under the shadow of the cities.

Resistance to false power is the complete unyielding

silence of the land and the real people of the land.

The pale mythographers point to the towers of the

shining cities failing to see the creepers and vines

breaking the concrete. Failing to see the ancient

people living in the rubble.

The landscape is silent and unyielding.

Failing to hear the silence of the land over the din

of the cities is the complete and irrevocable failure

of North America.

Resistance to false power is learning to listen

to the silent song of the landscape.

Resistance to false power is power.

False resistance to true power is death.

Hegel said thesis and anti-thesis equals synthesis.

Resistance to poer equals balance.

May 1970 Allison Frause lay dead on the grass at

Kent State. She died believing flower were better

than bullets. With Allison died the impetus of

resistance to abused power.

Burroughs says "The only way I like to see cops

get flowers is in a flower pot from a high window."

The war of exile.

Power. Resistance. Balance.

The machine is relentless. The generation of hope

ended in Ohio in blood.

Power and resistance seeking balance.

The generation that nearly won a revolution watched

Watergate smirked I told you so and like Pilate

washed their hands.

The balance of power swings unchecked and relentless.

Bear witness to the imperfect composition.

The revolution in the streets was lost. The

wheels of power still turn.

John Lennon said "War is over if you want it"

meaning that revolution is of the spirit and

some people won.

Distance. Spiritual transcendence.

The political/industrial/war machine turns and

spins and churns out the bright shining death.

In the blurred edges of the composition the

revolution was won.

Distance is life in edge city.

The buffalo create their own quiet thunder.

The plumed serpent waits in the shadow.

Five centuries the landscape wears a brooding

silent mask. Recoiling in unspoken horror from

the silent resistance of the land shining cities

were built. Urban landscape.

Strain of horror etched in every face. Fear of

the land. Fear of human earth.

Mask of concrete and glass. Mask of false beauty.

What kind of man reads playboy?

Are you a cosmos girl.

Cold comfort in masks.

Walk down any city street. The stranger approaches.

Two faces contort and look aside. Two humans pass.

Fear of brooding landscape becomes fear of

human self. Fear of life behind the mask.

Life wearing the mask is half a life.

Cold comfort.

Music in the shadows at the edge of the city.

The silent song.

Witness the rhythm of shadows.

Hooves and drums.

Hearts and dreams.

Shaman chanting magic songs.

Somebody asked Lester Young what jazz is he

said if you have to ask you'll never know.

Listen to the song of the landscape.

Harmony above the din of the city.

Cycle of seasons and growing things.

Songs of dreams and shadows.

Listen to the song of the landscape.

Buffalo Song*

he said unreal the buffalo is standing

these are his sayings

unreal the buffalo is standing

unreal he stands in the open space

unreal he is standing

* from the Pawnee Indians

translated by Frances Densmore

Time of man motion. Shrunken earth. Global

mind beyond flags and borders.

Spread out in waves from Olduvai Gorge. Skin

colours. Body shapes. Established territories.

Perpetual motion.

Lived in villages. Jericho. Ur. Babylon.

Wars of conquest and power.

Race hating race.

Egyptian reed boats. Libyan galleys.

Shrunken earth. Babel of tongues.

War after war under new flags.

Time of man now motion. Shrunken earth.

One global mind. Tear down the bloody flags.

The ancient dark gods wait. Living in shadows.

The pantheon of gods and old dreams is alive.

Time like a river flows everywhere always.

The ancient dark gods are alive. Waiting.

Awaiting the new dreams of ancient power.

On the plain between the Tigri and Euphrates

work had begun on a tower to reach the home of

the gods. Never finished. Lost in a riot of a

thousand tongues.

A thousand wars fought. A million sacrifices

stain the stones. Invocation of the wrath or

pity of the gods.

The ancient dark gods are alive. Waiting.

Awaiting new dreams of ancient power.

Time like a river flows everywhere always.

Each year the banks of the Nile flood and the

soil is rejuvenated. Ancient river. New earth.

Thus do the dreams of the old power live on.

Time like an ancient river bearing dreams of

new earth. Endlessly flowing.

MURDOCHBURNETT:

A LIFE MAKING POEMS