Four Fragments

Fire or the portrait

of a fire; absence
or the inward art
of absence; urge
and urge unanswered.

II

I sat in open air when,

at a little distance,
a man, embossed
on a gray sky,
appeared to me,
his head encircled
with a dazzling
light.
III

There is a moon.
There is no moon.
Soft metal runs
in the mold, coin
of the visible. I reach,
bronze to the elbow
to pluck that disk of light.
IV

Not the turn of the wheel

but the wheel turning.
Not the wave against the shore
but a number of waves
against a number of shores.
Not the light but the light,
the pulse of the light
against the landscape.