The unit of wine is the cup. Of Love, the unit is the kiss. That’ s here.
In Hell, the units are the gallon and the fuck. In Paradise, the drop and the glance.
Ants are my hero. They debate and obey. They can sit at a table for
Eight hours, drawing. They spot out the under-theorized...
Have some. For they are as abundant here as the flecks of mica in the Iowa night sky.
What are twenty-sided dishes of fancy almonds? What use jewels?
with Dana Ward
Someone said you were dead
it’ s not that I didn’ t care
You were not bacterial
You were not frozen water in winter
You were not a hairbrush broken by hair
You were a treasure of gold in the world-toilet
For you appraised the world of grains
And flung the earth to the earth
The good wine is mixed with the bad wine,
come to the wine jar’ s lips and let’ s unmix it
Poor people only have one soul
but you and I have two
let’ s go on vacation to Mexico or Rome
Everybody returns home
Secret they are, sealed, annealed, and brainless
And solitary as Dickens said, but
They have something to say: that there is more
Than one way to yield. The first — and the hardest.
The most nearly hindered — is when you pull
Them off the rocks, a stinking, sawing sedge
Sucking them back under the black mud, full
Stand to one side. No, over here with me:
out of the light but out of darkness too,
where everything that is not odd or old
is gold and subjugates the shadows. There,
now you will be no trouble and behold none —
anything but trouble, at first glance,
last chance to see what I say is worth a look.
instead of entrance
Goodbye means Avoir
Sved’ s dream said from nowhere
of aliquant angles
some spindle of the sun
empirically facted
deafening skin
open and afterwards
a cough is a couch
idled into
without rain
an island
easily a third worse
Indigo with a flame-red tongue
Night was and they swayed into it:
a pair of scissors, of sails
turning only into themselves
more other than become.
It is often five o’ clock.
Her husband has contracted not
to speak of her and she has forgotten
where to go. Where does everyone go?
The heart dies without space for love, without a moral horizon:
think of it then as a bird trapped in a box.
My heart goes out with love to those beyond the fence;
only toward them can one really advance, that is, make progress.
Without them I feel I’ m half a person.
Romeo was born a Montague, and Juliet came from the Capulet line,
and I’ m a disciple of Shakespeare, not Ben Gurion —
therefore I’ ll be delighted if my daughter marries the grandson of Haidar Abdel Shafi.
I’ ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’ d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.
We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate
who required tribute of hot July flowers —
for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering
remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones
not yet braced for conquering.
The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows,
and little girls continue graceful and wondering.
Flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young
heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth,
their strength not tested, their praise unsung.
