English Poems

A famous battle happened in this valley.
You never understood the nature poem.
Till now. Till this moment — if these statements
seem separate, unrelated, follow this

Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew
The ways you promise what you lack;
And that your bodies, like your souls,
Always slip from our grasping hands.

Space is such a lure... Swift to disappoint,
As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's
Architects still offer more than ours,
Who only build a scaffolding of dreams.

He dreamed, all the same; but on that day,
He gave a better use to beauty's shapes:
He understood that form means to die.

Lovers holding pits in their mouths
make vows and delight in each other
till the underwater infant
periscopes his parents
and is born

an uninvited guest knocks at my
door, determined to go deep
into the interior of things

the trees applaud

wait a minute, the full moon
and this plan are making me nervous
my hand fluttering
over the obscure implications of the letter
let me sit in the dark
a while longer, like
sitting on a friend's heart

The wave of that year
flooded the sands on the mirror
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and the meaning of leaving
the instant when all languages
are like shadows cast from the west

life's only a promise
don't grieve for it
before the garden was destroyed
we had too much time
debating the implications of a bird flying
as we knocked down midnight's door

a sower walks into the great hall
it's war out there, he says
and you awash in emptiness
you've sworn off your duty to sound the alarm
I've come in the name of fields
it's war out there

I walk out from that great hall
all four directions a boundless harvest scene
I start planning for war
rehearsing death
and the crops I burn
send up the wolf-smoke of warning fires

but something haunts me furiously:
he's sowing seed across marble floors

Thanks for the violence. Thanks for Walt’ s rude muscle
pushing through the grass, for tiny Gulliver crushed
between the giant’ s breasts. Thanks for Moby’ s triangular hump
and Ahab’ s castrated leg. Thanks for the harpoons.
Thanks for this PBS history of the automatic pistol.

They love me so muchthey have imagined me dead because they fear the loss of my genius above all elseHow literarylike Huck FinnEveryone will be weeping
The Desultory Slut
Do you have one of my books to sign?
Oh nocan you please sign here?
Isn’ t it greatThe old bastard finally kicked

Ta daaa!

Wait, I’ m not dead at all. Here I am. It was all a mistake
Do you realize what this means? This means we’ re free
He’ s dead, he’ s dead. Our enemy is finally dead