With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning
White hail pelting the frozen bog,
I’ m stuck in the first line of January,
following my host’ s dog
on his walk through the stone century,
around the quarry, slices of marble and mud,
past a herd of miners exhaling smoke,
past a barn smelling of merde,
and back to where I’ m stuck and broke.
The fucking dog barks at the night,
mad at the stars all his life and then again.
I rethink kicking him out,
but being cool, I let him in.
I want you with me, and yet you are the end
of my privacy. Do you see how these rooms
have become public? How we glance to see if —
who? Who did you imagine?
Surely we’ re not here alone, you and I.
I’ ve been wandering
where the cold tracks of language
collapse into cinders, unburnable trash.
Beyond that, all I can see is the remote cold
of meteors before their avalanches of farewell.
Will you read my little pome,
O you girls returnèd home
From a summertime of sport
At the Jolliest Resort,
From a Heated Term of joys
Far from urban dust and noise?
You I speak to in this rhyme,
You have had a Glorious Time
Swimming, golfing, bridging, dancing,
Riding, tennising, romancing,
On the springboard, on the raft —
You’ ve been often photographed.
To the richest Treasury
That e'er fill'd ambitious eye;
To the faire bright Magazin
Hath impoverisht Love's Queen;
To th' Exchequer of all honour
(All take pensions but from her);
To the taper of the thore
Which the god himself but bore;
To the Sea of Chaste Delight;
Let me cast the Drop I write.
And as at Loretto's shrine
Caesar shovels in his mine,
Th' Empres spreads her carkanets,
The lords submit their coronets,
Knights their chased arms hang by,
Maids diamond-ruby fancies tye;
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, whereof stars, grown old
In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
crossed
in despair
many deserts
full of hope
carrying
their empty
fists of sorrow
everywhere
mouthing
a bitter night
of shovels
and nails
“you’ re nothing
you’ re shit
your home’ s
nowhere” —
mountains
will speak
for you
rain
will flesh
your bones
green again
among ashes
after a long fire
started in
a fantasy island
some time ago
turning
Natives
into aliens
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’ s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’ st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’ s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
How will it taste — the beer the gravedigger
will drink after bestowing your dirt coat?
What will he say — you keeled the outrigger
too south, & when the breakers rolled, no boats
heard your Mayday? & will he ask his friends
at the bar — if someone calls a Mayday
& there is no one at the other end
of any radio, did Kevin A.
González really exist? O second
person, what would you do without you? Where
would Kevin A. González hide? Our bond
is over. The red of the rockets’ glare
I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’ re near, a wind that blows from
