Creo que si... I believe
it will rain
tomorrow... I believe
the son of a bitch
is going into the river...
I believe All men are
created equal — By your
leave a leafy
shelter over the exposed
person — I’ m a
believer creature
of habit but without
out there a void of
pattern older
older the broken
pieces no longer
I dreamt last night
the fright was over, that
the dust came, and then water,
and women and men, together
again, and all was quiet
in the dim moon’ s light.
A paean of such patience —
laughing, laughing at me,
and the days extend over
the earth’ s great cover,
grass, trees, and flower-
ing season, for no clear reason.
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, — John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ’ s sake, look
out where yr going.
inside my head
Inside my head a common room,
a common place, a common tune,
a common wealth, a common doom
inside my head. I close my eyes.
The horses run. Vast are the skies,
and blue my passing thoughts’ surprise
inside my head. What is this space
here found to be, what is this place
if only me? Inside my head, whose face?
the tools
The galloping collection of boards
are the house which I afforded
one evening to walk into
just as the night came down.
Dark inside, the candle
lit of its own free will, the attic
groaned then, the stairs
led me up into the air.
From outside, it must have seemed
a wonder that it was
the inside he as me saw
in the dark there.
When I know what people think of me
I am plunged into my loneliness. The grey
hat bought earlier sickens.
I have no purpose no longer distinguishable.
A feeling like being choked
enters my throat.
My embarrassment at his nakedness,
at the pool’ s edge,
and my wife, with his,
standing, watching —
this was a freedom
not given me who am
more naked,
less contained
by my own white flesh
and the ability
to take quietly
what comes to me.
The sense of myself
separate, grew
a white mirror
in the quiet water
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent —
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
For love — I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes.
Love is dead in us
if we forget
the virtues of an amulet
and quick surprise.
I spent a night turning in bed,
my love was a feather, a flat
sleeping thing. She was
very white
and quiet, and above us on
the roof, there was another woman I
also loved, had
addressed myself to in
a fit she
returned. That
encompasses it. But now I was
lonely, I yelled,
but what is that? Ugh,
she said, beside me, she put
her hand on
my back, for which act
I think to say this
wrongly.
