Living

I always thought reality
was something you became
when you grew up.

In the square stands Fata Morgana
looking tired, shouting
Morning paper — morning paper.

Change, move, dead clock, that this fresh day
May break with dazzling light to these sick eyes.
Burn, glare, old sun, so long unseen,
That time may find its sound again, and cleanse
Whatever it is that a wound remembers
After the healing ends.

Originally appeared in the October 1947 issue of Poetry magazine.

Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets
The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches,
And all that is dear to the personal conscious reaches
Around us again like filings around iron magnets,
And war stands aside for an hour and looks at our faces
Of total absorption that seem to have lost their places.

The bugle sounds the measured call to prayers,
The band starts bravely with a clarion hymn,
From every side, singly, in groups, in pairs,
Each to his kind of service comes to worship Him.

It stops the town we come through. Workers raise
Their oily arms in good salute and grin.
Kids scream as at a circus. Business men
Glance hopefully and go their measured way.
And women standing at their dumbstruck door
More slowly wave and seem to warn us back,
As if a tear blinding the course of war
Might once dissolve our iron in their sweet wish.

The unit of wine is the cup. Of Love, the unit is the kiss. That’ s here.
In Hell, the units are the gallon and the fuck. In Paradise, the drop and the glance.

Ants are my hero. They debate and obey. They can sit at a table for
Eight hours, drawing. They spot out the under-theorized...

Have some. For they are as abundant here as the flecks of mica in the Iowa night sky.
What are twenty-sided dishes of fancy almonds? What use jewels?

with Dana Ward

Night was and they swayed into it:
a pair of scissors, of sails
turning only into themselves
more other than become.

It is often five o’ clock.
Her husband has contracted not
to speak of her and she has forgotten
where to go. Where does everyone go?

I’ ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’ d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.

We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate
who required tribute of hot July flowers —
for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering
remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones
not yet braced for conquering.

The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows,
and little girls continue graceful and wondering.
Flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young
heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth,
their strength not tested, their praise unsung.