They told me there’ d be pain
so when I felt it,
sitting at my beat-up farm desk
that looks out glass doors
onto the browning garden — plain sparrows
bathing in the cube-shaped fountain
so violently they drain it,
the white-throats with their
wobbly two-note song
on the long way south still,
and our dogs
out like lights and almost
falling off their chairs
freed of the real-time for awhile
as time began for me
to swell, slow down, carry me out
of all this almost
to a where
After the cling of roots and then the “pock”
when they gave way
the recoil up the hand
was a small shock
of emptiness beginning to expand.
Milk frothing from the stems. Leaves inky green
and spiked.
Like blissed-out childhood play
turned mean
they snarled in tangled curls on our driveway.
Impossible to wield
The acreage of the fabric that unfolded,
Slung from his shoulders like a crumpled field:
The distance from one Christmas to the next
When he was only seven
Was aching there; a foreign city flexed
Among the ripples; a face, the star-shocked heaven
About his flailing arms were shrugged and moulded.
I was playing in the street
no one paid attention to me
as I made forms out of sand
mumbling Rimbaud under my breath
once an elderly gentleman overheard it
— little boy you are a poet
just now we are organizing
a grass-roots literary movement
he stroked my dirty head
gave me a large lollypop
and even bought clothes
in the protective coloring of youth
I didn’ t have such a splendid suit
since first communion
short trousers and a wide
sailor’ s collar
Is unwritten, though it has lived in violence.
First the factory stood, quiet as an asylum.
Then the annihilating mallee with its red fists of blossoms
and the mountain ash creeping over it like a stain.
I have no proof, but I tell you
there were leadlight windows here once, barred.
They cast a little striped light on the women.
Now in scrub and yellow broom I stand on a history
braided and unbraided by stiff Irish wrists.
The rope and span and carded wool are unpicked
as are their faces and names.
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.
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,
