are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them
as they swoop and gather —
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.
After the last bulletins the windows darken
And the whole city founders readily and deep,
Sliding on all its pillows
To the thronged Atlantis of personal sleep,
And the wind rises. The wind rises and bowls
The day’ s litter of news in the alleys. Trash
Tears itself on the railings,
Soars and falls with a soft crash,
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
i
Gilgamesh spoke and said to the old man then:
"When I looked at you I thought that you were not
a man, one made like me; I had resolved
to challenge you as one might challenge a demon,
a stranger-adversary. But now I see
that you are Utnapishtim, made like me,
a man, the one I sought, the one from whom
I might find out how death can be avoided.
Tell me then, father, how it came about
that you were admitted to the company
Snarls, bread trucks, yeast
breathing inside huddled bags,
and sleepers completing lives
behind their gray windows.
A whistle on the phonewires,
feathers, twitches, whistling
down to the hot loaves.
Reeds everywhere, pulse,
flesh, flutes, and wakened sighs.
An answer. Radio news
In a famous painting of a founding father
and the back end of a horse
it’ s the horse butt that’ s properly lit
groomed out smooth an immortal peach
Who can say what it means about revolution
that the horse’ s tail emerges as though it had no bones in it
no chunky mechanics of the living
And the horse is not well muscled
but has been living in the rich grass
swollen like a birthday balloon
I take the bird on the woodpile,
separate it from its function, feather
by feather. I blow up its scale.
I make a whole life out of it:
everywhere I am, its sense of loitering
lights on my shoulder.
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’ d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’ d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’ d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle, openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes,
The brook is this mix of roar & hiss as if God
has managed to scalpel a section of tempest & clothespin it in
the woods Over There Always draped in the trees
while we eat white summer peaches from celadon bowls
while the sun bleaches & blue jay squawks score the maple, oak
birch and apple-treed sky with their oblique Scriabin musics.
Fifteen years since I have seen a real Fall
her deciduous burlesque, her glistering things sifting
on the old cider mill. A holy show.
