What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore, —
Nothing more to master or man.
But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same, —
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.
Around the bend of a phrase
you return, it’ s dawn in a book, it’ s
a garden, one can
see everything, the dew, a moth
on a leaf and it’ s you
who rises suddenly amid the pages
and the book grows more lovely
because it’ s you
and you’ ve not grown old, you walk
slowly to the door.
The big ship sails on the ally ally oh,
The alley ally oh,
The alley ally oh.
The big ship sails on the ally ally oh,
On the last day of September.
The captain said, 'It will never, never do,
Never, never do,
Never, never do.'
The captain said, 'It will never, never do,'
On the last day of September.
The big ship sank to the bottom of the sea,
The bottom of the sea,
The bottom of the sea.
The big ship sank to the bottom of the sea,
On the last day of September.
are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them
as they swoop and gather —
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.
A boy who knew enough to save for something
like the whim that took me downtown on the bus
one lost Saturday morning of my mother’ s birthday,
I sat in the back where the gasoline smell
made me dizzy and I closed my eyes but didn’ t
think of her, only of myself, basking in the light
and love that would fall down on me when I
Dark as the clouds of even,
Ranked in the western heaven,
Waiting the breath that lifts
All the dread mass, and drifts
Tempest and falling brand
Over a ruined land; —
So still and orderly,
Arm to arm, knee to knee,
Waiting the great event,
Stands the Black Regiment.
Today I heard a rich and hungry boy verbatim quote
all last night’ s infomercials — an anorectic son
who bought with Daddy’ s Amex black card
the Bowflex machine and Abdomenizer,
plus a steak knife that doth slice
the inner skin of his starving arms.
Poor broken child of Eve myself,
to me, the flightless fly,
the listing, blistered, scalded.
I am the rod to their lightning.
Mine is the earhole their stories pierce.
At my altar the blouse is torn open
and the buttons sailed across
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
The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galápagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them
There is no fear
in taking the first step
or the second
or the third
having a position
between several Popes
In fact the top
can be reached
without disaster
precocious
The code
consists in noticing
the particular shade
of the staircase
