English Poems

Among other things,
thanks for explaining
how the generous death
of old trees
forms
the red powdered floor
of the forest.

Behind the wedding couple, a mirror harbourstheir reception.
Outside, from the verandah, the harbour mirrors
the exception
of city from sky, hills snug with houses
and a glass of water standing on the railing,
half empty or half full. In the failing
afternoon light
brightening buildings counterpoint the darkness,
glinting upside-
down inside the glass, and the newly-weds,
seen from outside
joining hand to hand for the wedding reel,

glide under its meniscus, head over heels.

The Visconti put you on their flag: a snake
devouring a child, or are you throwing up a man
feet first? Some snakes hunt frogs, some freedom of will.
There’s good in you: a man can count years on your skin.
Generously, you mother and father a stolen boy,
to the chosen you offer your cake of figs.
A goiter on my neck, you lick my ear with lies,

When you said that you wanted to be useful
as the days of the week, I said, “God bless you.”
Then you said you would not trade our Mondays,
useful for two thousand years,
for the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
I said, “Endless are the wonders
to which I can only say ‘ah, ’ that our ‘Ah’
who art in heaven can easily become the
‘ah, ah’ that comforts a baby. ” Then you said,
“Go make a living on metaphors for ‘ah,’”
that I, a lunatic, secretly want to be
the Lighthouse of Alexandria,

1.

Snow clouds shadow the bay, on the ice the odd fallen gull.
I try to keep my friend from dying by remembering
his childhood of praise to God, who needs us all. Würzburg:
the grownups are inside saying prayers for the dead,
the children are sent out to play — their laughter
more sacred than prayer. After dark his father
blesses and kisses him Güttenacht. He wakes
to go to school with children who stayed behind
and were murdered before promotion.

Today in Rome, heading down
Michelangelo’s Spanish Steps,
under an unchanging moon,
I held on to the balustrade,
grateful for his giving me a hand.
All for love, I stumbled over the past
as if it were my own feet. Here, in my twenties,
I was lost in love and poetry. Along the Tiber,
I made up Cubist Shakespearean games.
(In writing, even in those days,

Seeing my friend’s son in his broad-brimmed hat
and suspenders, I think of the Quakers
who lectured us on nonviolent social action
every week when I was a child. In the classrooms
we listened to those who would not take up arms,
who objected, who had accepted alternative
service in distant work camps and showed
slides of hospitals they helped to build.
On Wednesdays, in Meeting for Worship,
when someone rose to speak,
all the energy in the room
flew inside her mouth, empowering her to tell

I’ve expanded like the swollen door in summer
to fit my own dimension. Your loneliness

is a letter I read and put away, a daily reminder
in the cry of the magpie that I am

still capable of inflicting pain
at this distance.

Like a painting, our talk is dense with description,
half-truths, landscapes, phrases layered

with a patina over time. When she came into my life
I didn’t hesitate.

Fingers:
Cramped, you are hardly anything but fidgets.
We, active, differentiate the digits:
Whilst you are merely little toe and big
(Or, in the nursery, some futile pig)
Through vital use as pincers there has come
Distinction of the finger and the thumb;
Lacking a knuckle you have sadly missed
Our meaningful translation to a fist;
And only by the curling of that joint

Heureux ceux qui ont la clim
Pendant la grande canicule.
Heureux those whose culs are cool.
Heureuse her and heureux him.

C’est la canicule qui hurle,
Ready to tear you limb from limb.
Heureux ceux qui ont la clim,
Cri-criant: ‘O turlútuturle! ’

La situation est grim,
The mise-en-scène a trifle burle.
À chaleur disons donc: ‘Ta gueule! ’
And keep ourselves amused and slim.