Out upon it, I have lov’ d
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.
Time shall moult away his wings,
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.
But the spite on’ t is, no praise
Is due at all to me;
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.
Two shall be born the whole world wide apart,
And speak in different tongues, and pay their debts
In different kinds of coin; and give no heed
Each to the other’ s being. And know not
That each might suit the other to a T,
If they were but correctly introduced.
And these, unconsciously, shall bend their steps,
Escaping Spaniards and defying war,
Unerringly toward the same trysting-place,
Albeit they know it not. Until at last
They enter the same door, and suddenly
They meet. And ere they’ ve seen each other’ s face
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Evans? Yes, many a time
I came down his bare flight
Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen
With its wood fire, where crickets sang
Accompaniment to the black kettle’ s
Whine, and so into the cold
Dark to smother in the thick tide
Of night that drifted about the walls
Of his stark farm on the hill ridge.
Men who have hardly uncurled
from their posture in the
womb. Naked. Heads bowed, not
in prayer, but in contemplation
of the earth they came from,
that suckled them on the brown
milk that builds bone not brain.
Who called them forth to walk
in the green light, their thoughts
on darkness? Their women,
who are not Madonnas, have babes
at the breast with the wise,
time-ridden faces of the Christ
child in a painting by a Florentine
Primeval
I want you to know how it was,
whether the Cross grinds into dust
under men’ s wheels or shines brightly
as a monument to a new era.
I am, as you know, Walter Llywarch,
Born in Wales of approved parents,
Well goitred, round in the bum,
Sure prey of the slow virus
Bred in quarries of grey rain.
Born in autumn at the right time
For hearing stories from the cracked lips
Of old folk dreaming of summer,
I piled them on to the bare hearth
Of my own fancy to make a blaze
To warm myself, but achieved only
The smoke’ s acid that brings the smart
Of false tears into the eyes.
The deer racing across a field
of the same clay and tallow
color they are — if they are:
or are they tricks of the light? —
must feel themselves being poured
and pouring through life. We’ re not built
but become: trembling columns
of apprehension that ripple
and pass those ripples to and fro
with the world that shakes around us —
it too is something poured
and ceaselessly pouring itself.
February shakes the fields
and trembles in each yellow willow.
Mama said
it only existed in storybooks
with its soft surface
of bluebells
but there it was
spinning so close to the earth
that it bent
every weather vane in Omaha
it was prom night
and I thought I’ d pluck a few
trumpets
to bring your Grandma
so I pulled our red ladder out
of the garage
and climbed to the roof
I stood up
and imagined I was balancing
the moon on my head
the narrow windows of Union
Station
gleamed like ice chips
