Heaven was like the speed of light,
unreachable,
constant.

But the shadow, just as speedy, rushes violently into Icarus,
and the sun soars, hot like molten wax.

Your blood was the labyrinth.
It escapes from you
and never you from it.

Together with you the Minotaur dies —
your big, 
bullheaded heart.
 

Riddle

The copyist heaves his eyes
from the bars of the sheet music.
A heartbeak keeps knocking
against the chalked walls of its cell.
The sun outside the window
pecks its way out of its shell.
 

Silica, vertigo

In an hour-glass the spirit of the sand
(which is the memory of a mountain range
after erosion for a million years)
finds itself trapped, like an insect,
in a cup, a glass-corset; its wasp-like waist
is where the dervish vortex 
centers, turns, and then is turned back,
and turned on its back: a jitterbug
that measures time —
like a prisoner or like the scarab 
that rolls the sun out of the sea
and makes the grains of beach sand
(which is the memory of a mountain range
filed down by a bird’s beak)
sparkle like microseconds.
Made thirsty by the desert-like heat
the glass-blower takes a short break
to have a drink of water —
well aware that also this glass
he’s raising in his hand
is a viscous beverage of sand.