Light at each point was beating then to flight,
The sapling bark flushed upward, and the welling
Tips of the wood touched, touched at the bound,
And boughs were slight and burdened beyond telling
Toward that caress of the boughs a summer’ s night,
Illimitable in fragrance and in sound.
Ash and strewments, the first moth-wings, pale
Ardour of brief evenings, on the fecund wind;
Or all a wing, less than wind,
Breath of low herbs upfloats, petal or wing,
Haunting the musk precincts of burial.
For the season of newer riches moves triumphing,
Of the evanescence of deaths. These potpourris
Earth-tinctured, jet insect-bead, cinder of bloom —
What’ s there to say? We didn’ t care for him much,
and you can’ t exactly commiserate
with someone you don’ t just not love
but almost (admit it) hate.
So the news just hung over us
like the dud summer weather we’ d had —
rain since June, the lawn sodden,
garden a bog, all slugs, late blight so bad
our sickened Beefsteak vines, our Sweet One Hundreds,
San Marzanos, the lot,
yellowed half black before the fruit had set,
which, when it did, began to bloat and rot
before it ripened — but like I say
Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.
Sumer is i-cumin in —
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!
It is a place whither I’ ve often gone
For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool,
A beautiful recess in neighboring woods.
Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall,
Arch it o’ erhead and column it around,
Framing a covert, natural and wild,
Domelike and dim; though nowhere so enclosed
But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot
Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here
A transient and unfrequent visitor;
Yet if the day be calm, not often then,
Whilst the high pines in one another’ s arms
It was the summer of 1976 when I saw the moon fall down.
It broke like a hen’ s egg on the sidewalk.
The garden roiled with weeds, hummed with gnats who settled clouds on my
oblivious siblings.
A great hunger insatiate to find / A dulcet ill, an evil sweetness blind.
A gush of yolk and then darker.
Somewhere a streetlamp disclosed the insides of a Chevy Impala — vinyl seats, the rear- view,
headrests and you, your hand through your hair.
An indistinguishable burning, failing bliss.
Again with spring
she wore light colours
and with gentle steps
again with spring
again in summer
she was smiling.
Among fresh blossoms
breast naked to the veins
beyond the dry night
beyond the white old men
debating quietly
whether it would be better
to give up the keys
or to pull the rope
and hang from the noose
to leave empty bodies
there where souls couldn’ t endure
there where the mind couldn’ t catch up
and knees buckled.
...
It was the summer I fucked up the summer fucked up me
fucked up a fuck-up in the summer & I spent time laying under stars
too much time I wasted the stars you lied to me under the stars
& the summer was endless the summer endless it was an endless summer
...
...
Once when I was harmless
and didn’ t know any better,
a mirror to the front of me
and an ocean behind,
I lay wedged in the middle of daylight,
paper-doll thin, dreaming,
then I vanished. I gave the day a fingerprint,
then forgot.
I sat naked on a towel
on a hot June Monday.
The sun etched the inside of my eyelids,
while a boy dozed at my side.
The smell of all oceans was around us —
steamy salt, shell, and sweat,
but I reached for the distant one.
A tide rose while I slept,
We’ d often
been included in
the weather, whose
changes (as in the
still, portending
darknesses of after
noon) were hardly
evident, if even
manifest at all.
The August rain
over Mixcoac
& the deadening
of all aspect
at a distance:
yet our sudden
wet bodies, firm
swelling divested
finally of shirts
& trousers, left
beside turbid
footprints on
the tiled floor;
this tongue, these
lips the lightning
