Bending, I bow my head
and lay my hands upon
her hair, combing, and think
how women do this for
each other. My daughter’ s hair
curls against the comb,
wet and fragrant — orange
parings. Her face, downcast,
is quiet for one so young.
I take her place. Beneath
my mother’ s hands I feel
the braids drawn up tight
as piano wires and singing,
vinegar-rinsed. Sitting
before the oven I hear
the orange coils tick
the early hour before school.
Come up from the fields father, here’ s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here’ s a letter from thy dear son.
Lo, ’ tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’ s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’ d vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Not even the males and the men of the males
make use of their pinched tongues
to sing, not even the females
and the women of the females, corollas stemmed to spray on end
sing their ruddy stones
The males and the men of the males
feel the sea
the ranch and the wheat, rice ears
polyglottal weddings
unseasonable lips
one body to the next
Coming to Sumer and the tamarisks on the river
I Ezra with unsettling love
rifled the mud and wattle huts
for recent mournings
with gold leaves
and lapis lazuli beads
in the neat braids loosening from the skull
Looking through the wattles to the sun
I said
It has rained some here in this place
unless snow falls heavily in the hills
to do this
The floor was smooth with silt
and river weeds hanging gray
on the bent reeds spoke saying
And who shall separate the dust
What later we shall be:
Whose keen discerning eye will scan
And solve the mystery?
The high, the low, the rich, the poor,
The black, the white, the red,
And all the chromatique between,
Of whom shall it be said:
Here lies the dust of Africa;
Here are the sons of Rome;
Here lies the one unlabelled,
The world at large his home!
Can one then separate the dust?
Will mankind lie apart,
When life has settled back again
The same as from the start?
Sent in after new ground was taken,
my father ducked from ditch to shell-hole,
unwinding the telephone cable behind him,
a pfc. cast as Mercury, connecting
the gods with the lesser gods.
Funny to think of him trailing
the complex filament of speech,
that man, neither shy nor sullen,
who answered only “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,”
and never volunteered a private thought.
That we await a blessed hope, & that we will be struck
With great fear, like a baby taken into the night, that every boot,
Every improvised explosive, Talon & Hornet, Molotov
& rubber-coated bullet, every unexploded cluster bomblet,
Every Kevlar & suicide vest & unpiloted drone raining fire
On wedding parties will be burned as fuel in the dark season.
That we will learn the awful hunger of God, the nerve-fraying
Cry of God, the curdy vomit of God, the soiled swaddle of God,
The General’s men sit at the door. Her eyes
Are fat with belladonna. She’s naked
Except for the small painted turtles
That are drinking a flammable cloud
Of rum and milk from her navel.
The ships out in the harbor
Are loosely allied
Like casks floating in bilge.
The occasional light on a ship
Winks. In the empty room of the manuscript
Someone is grooming you
For the long entrance into the dark city.
You had a woodchuck and an opium ball.
The one ate through the furniture,
the other sat in its cage depressing me.
Now the woodchuck sheds its skin.
I have a cow behind the Dollar Bin.
You shouldn’ t drink diarrhea
unless you bring enough for everybody.
Turn it into a teaching moment.
Asian-American Students for Christ
have the room until 2:30.
I’ ve been here before, dreaming myself
backwards, among grappling hooks of light.
True to the seasons, I’ ve lived every word
spoken. Did I walk into someone’ s nightmare?
Hunger quivers on a fleshly string
at the crossroad. So deep is the lore,
there’ s only tomorrow today where darkness
splinters & wounds the bird of paradise.
On paths that plunge into primordial
green, Echo’ s laughter finds us together.
In the sweatshops of desire men think
if they don’ t die the moon won’ t rise.
