June 5, 1892
Dear Daughter,
Can you be fifty-three this
month? I still look for you to peek around
my door as if you’ d discovered a toy
you thought gone for good, ready at my smile
to run up and press your fist into my
broken palm. But your own girls have outgrown
such games, and I cannot pilfer back time
I spent pursuing Freedom. Fair to you,
to your brothers, your mother? Hardly.
Sing lullaby, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest,
And lullaby can I sing too
As womanly as can the best.
With lullaby they still the child,
And if I be not much beguiled,
Full many wanton babes have I
Which must be stilled with lullaby.
In green water I saw your eye and in it I saw that Arabian palace
filled with birds and broken glass.
I copy an address into my right hand
and fill myself with memories of psalms.
A green fish emerges from seaweed as seaweed from a wave
that rises like the wailing wall.
Sound of the rain so I know
there’ s constraint
sound of the train
so I know commerce
has not come to a standstill
now they raise the barrier
now they set it back in place
What coats the bottom
of the surface of the sound
when the swifts come in
when the clerks come home
who will bathe the children
who will bake the bread
when the luff is tight
when the mainsheet
starts the boat underway
whatever you do don’ t
let the tongue slip
from its moorings
I think it is interesting
though not exactly amusing
how we go from day to day
with no money. How do we
do it, friends ask, suspecting
we really have some stash
stacked away somewhere.
But we certainly do not
and we also do not know
how we do it either.
You sure are lucky,
some of our friends say. I am
none too sure of that though,
as I wait for the winning
lottery numbers to be announced
on CKLW. Thursday in Detroit
is the day of dreams. We have
been dreaming of a place
He fancies his chances are good with her,
unaware that in the years since the war
she has come to prefer women whose cunts
taste like mustard. To pin one’ s hopes on
a bark-colored moth, its wings crinkled
like crepe paper, a moth affixed high
on the kitchen wall, frozen for days where
it will likely die in noble clinging mode
just under the cobwebby heating vent,
is to confirm your need for more friends
and a greater daily quota of sunlight.
To raise C.’ s hopes that T. can stop
Though the amaryllis sags and spills
so do those my wishes serve, all along the town.
And yes, the new moon, kinked there in night's patch,
tugs me so — but I can't reach to right the slant.
And though our cat pads past without a tail, some
with slinking tails peer one-eyed at the dawn, some
with eyes are clawless, some with sparking claws
contain no voice with which to sing
of foxes gassing in the lane.
Round-shouldered pals
The King asks, “Tell me, what is the highest meaning of the holiest truths?”
The Seer answers, “Emptiness, without holiness.”
The King is a restless seeker.
The Seer is a ruler and thief.
I am seriously watching how trees are always missing some leaves.
They sweep the air looking for them. Nothing distracts them. Nothing.
Where leaves are missing between the branches, beautiful sun porches,
which disappear when the tree reaches them.
“Who are you?” the King asks.
“It is not like that,” the Seer says.
Spared by a car or airplane crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.
For I’ ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I’ ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world’ s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
I. Of Choice
Despair is big with friends I love,
Hydrogen and burning jews.
I give them all the grief I have
But I tell them, friends, I choose, I choose,
Don’ t make me say against my glands
Or how the world has treated me.
Though gay and modest give offense
And people grieve pretentiously,
More than I hoped to do, I do
And more than I deserve I get;
What little I attend, I know
And it argues order more than not.
