My father and I lie down together.
He is dead.
We look up at the stars, the steady sound
Of the wind turning the night like a ceiling fan.
This is our home.
I remember the work in him
Like bitterness in persimmons before a frost.
And I imagine the way he had fear,
The ground turning dark in a rain.
Now he gets up.
And I dream he looks down in my eyes
And watches me die.
I am not asleep, but I see
a limb, the fingers of death, the ghost
of an anonymous painter
leaving the prints of death
on the wall; the bright feathers
of soft birds blowing
away in the forest;
the bones of fish and
the white backs of strange women;
your breathing
like the slow thunder
on the other side of some river
as you sleep beside me; old
dancing teachers weeping in their offices;
toads with bellies as quiet
as girls asleep in mansions, dreaming
of saddles and pulling the sheets
Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?
Debridement
is a member
of this society.
“Don’ t ask me anything about the
medal. I don’ t even know how I won
it.”
Debridement: The cutting away of dead
or contaminated tissue from a wound
to prevent infection.
Whatever city or country road
you two are on
there are nettles,
and the dark invisible
elements cling to your skin
though you do not cry
and you do not scratch
your arms at forty-five degree angles
as the landing point of a swan
in the Ohio, the Detroit River;
A Montparnasse August
with view of the Cimetière. A yard of bones.
We wake to it. Close curtains to it.
Wake to its lanes. Rows of coffin-stones in varying light.
Walking here. Late with shade low, low, long.
We’ re passing through, just passing through
neat aisles of gray mausoleums.
(From Paris. Send this postcard. This one.
Calm water lilies. Water lilies.
Nothing colorless.)
It’ s morning. Baudelaire’ s tomb.
Tree limbs casting shadow west.
The marriage ran under their skin, a rash, or maybe
all that red wine, luminescent cocktail hours
in which lost books were rediscovered, or just a rash,
a reaction sending out runners across her chest,
a vine, something close, ruby scarves coming back
into fashion, their son coming back
from school, from the yard, but now, dinnertime
and the family parted, split houses, her ex and his anger
spread down the long hallway of their house
and into the windows of her new apartment, their daughter’ s doubled
Here lies, whom hound did ne’ er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’ er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’ s hallo’,
Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who, nursed with tender care,
And to domesticate bounds confined,
Was still a wild jack-hare.
Toll for the brave
The brave! that are no more:
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore.
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel
And laid her on her side;
A land-breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset;
Down went the Royal George,
With all her crew complete.
Thus heav’ n-ward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor’ d.
So God has greatly purpos’ d; who would else
In his dishonour’ d works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong’ d without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter’ d world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see,
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
