Does no dishes, dribbles sauce
across the floor. Is more dragon
than spaniel, more flammable
than fluid. Is the loosening
in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit
marmalade in the kitchen of me.
Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus,
the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy.
All wet mattress to my analysis,
he’ s stayed the loudest and longest
of any houseguest, is calling now
as I write this, tiny B who brings the joy.
1
Because he, because she,
in so far as
she (in so far as he) exists
is on the way
to battle.
Not what is your name,
but what
the battle?
2
“Each one of us has come
here and changed” —
is the battle. Born
a loved one,
borne a loved one.
3
My father fought in this war, thus I can speak of it.
My mother fought in this, thus I can speak.
My friends, my lovers have fought, have worn
(like the tree) their several directions at once. And I,
When the moon’ s worn scutcheon
touches the flint-gray flood,
I will lave him in foxglove
and vetch until the blood
of his wretched heart heals.
Without a scar, he stood —
as the men make their way
into the quaking wood.
On a brain-gray day,
he lay on the hill-slanted solar
array with a southern exposure,
toes in the clover
mixed in with what are these
pentagrammatic sprays
of pinnate leaves.
No clover
here has four leaves:
to each one he says
I have seen you before
in the nuclear hazard
Whatever the cost I pay up at the minnow pools.
I don’ t know anything of the misery of these trapped fish,
or the failure of the marsh I’ m so hidden.
Up above is the island with its few houses facing
the ocean God walks with anyone there. I often
slosh through the low tide to a sister
unattached to causeways.
It’ s where deer mate then lead their young
by my house to fields, again up above me.
Pray for me. Like myself be lost.
An amulet under your chest, a green sign of the first
rose you ever saw, the first shore.
After it came in like a dark bird
Out of the snow, barely whistling
The notes father, mother, child,
It was hard to say what made us happiest.
Seeing the branches where it had learned
To stir the air? The air that opened
Without fear? Just the branches
And us in a room of wild things?
Like a shapeless flame, it flew
A dozen times around the room.
And, in a wink, a dozen more.
Into the wall, the window, the door.
It is pleasant, very pleasant, to sit at a wooden booth
surrounded by parrots, wheels, right-turning conch shells,
the victory banner and the endless knot,
the lotus, the treasure vase, the golden fishes —
is this not so? Is it not pleasant
to sip Tsingtao beer, or Zhujiang, or Yanjing,
and tap your fingers on the bamboo mats?
After we’ ve drunk enough, there will be Buddhist Delight,
Mongolian beef side dishes, a whole host of sauces,
even some pizza and chicken wings if children are present,
This isn’ t maths —
perhaps it is
a collapse
of certainties.
Perhaps it can’ t
configure planes,
yet it can cloud
our blue remains
so when we fall
as rain will do,
nothing fails
to carry through.
capable of feeling
while in contact with another?
I look at the red-tiled roofs outside,
at all the angles
facing the white-blue cloudless sky
like the creases in Bellini’ s angel’ s
silver-blue dress, Tintoretto’ s white one
that’ s practically transparent in his
Annunciazione at the San Rocco
— cloth complex as thought!
Then the bells start, flood the void.
scent of myrrh on the handles
when oil is in the lock
silken is his mouth
when he is hard upon me
young heart, green bed,
his fingers are in the stream
he eats of the bitter honey
the sweetness of cherry
sacrament of the blood
and of its winding
sacrament of arrival
and of its binding
