You put your right mitten in,
You take your right mitten out,
You put your right mitten in,
And you shake it all about!
You wriggle and you wobble and you turn yourself around,
That's what this song's about!
You put your left mitten in,
You take your left mitten out,
You put your left mitten in,
And you shake it all about!
You wriggle and you wobble and you turn yourself around,
That's what this song's about!
You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun's, who singeth
The soft Vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth -
O love me truly!
You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,
As you were Saint Cupid's nun,
And kept his weeks of Ember.
O love me truly!
You say you love - but then your lips
Coral tinted teach no blisses.
More than coral in the sea -
They never pout for kisses -
O love me truly!
You that I loved all my life long,
you are not the one.
You that I followed, my line or path or way,
that I followed singing, and you
earth and air of the world the way went through,
and you who stood around it so it could be
the way, you forests and cities,
you deer and opossums struck by the lonely hunter
and left decaying, you paralyzed obese ones
who sat on a falling porch in a deep green holler
and observed me, your bald dog barking,
as I stumbled past in a hurry along my line,
you are not the one. But you
That you, Father, are “in my mind,”
some will argue, who cherish the present
but flee the past. They haven’ t my need
to ask, What was I? Asking instead,
What am I?, they see themselves bejeweled
and wingèd. Because they would fly and have value,
their answers are pretty but false:
Listen, you
who transformed your anguish
into healthy awareness,
put your voice
where your memory is.
You who swallowed
the afternoon dust,
defend everything you understand
with words.
You, if no one else,
will condemn with your tongue
the erosion each disappointment brings.
of the furious
Who take Today and jerk it out of joint
have made new underpinnings and a Head.
Blacktime is time for chimeful
poemhood
but they decree a
jagged chiming now.
If there are flowers flowers
must come out to the road. Rowdy! —
knowing where wheels and people are,
knowing where whips and screams are,
knowing where deaths are, where the kind kills are.
Your idea of embracing horror
was overwhelmed by the horror:
It’ s too cold to smoke outside, but if you come over,
I’ ll keep my hands to myself, or won’ t I.
I would like to tell you about the wall eaten up
by the climbing plant — it was so beautiful.
Various things have been happening to me,
all of them sexual. The man on the bus
took off his pants so I could see him better.
Another man said, “Ignore him darlin’.
Just sit on my lap.” But I’ m not one of those
who’ s hungriest in the morning,
unlike the man at the bakery
who eats egg after egg after egg.
Is it a weightless pistol —
your hand.
The tail of smoke
like a limitless conversation
risks blooming and death.
The head of a desert.
A blank crawls parallel to lines of combed hair.
A barometer pursued its dream
without even blinking.
A released piglet
pricked up its rose petal ears
and vanished like a star.
Everyone
waits for everyone
on an unknown
but familiar
infinite chessboard.
Translated from the Japanese
He —
You saw the way her body looked at me
all address
calling me down
she was so
well-turned,
curve and volume
her body presented itself —
Clay —
I could mold it
She —
