The challenge: to start
not with theory but with tangible performance
You and others, approaching
We shall be asked for a way out
to be fed
to keep warm and dry
Starting with experience, magic
genuine science
More than once we have been lost
in a trackless wilderness
dwarfed and shadowed by mighty buildings
subway trains wild as elephants
One goes blindly back to one’ s desk
These moments come, their dark
shadow
We wonder at our shifting capacities, keep
adding and striking skills
from the bottoms of our résumés
under constant revision
like the inscriptions on tombs
shared for generations
unnervingly up
to date
Made nervous by our shift in capabilities, we write:
Your mother’ s in the kitchen and out
and in again. It’ s all about them.
They’ ve taken over like the dark cloud
hanging low over the back yard,
a fat aunt coming in for a hug.
Enough’ s enough. The door opens:
new guests flow in as the old
back you up like mangroves.
Why get dressed up to stay in?
Pretend to befriend other children
because they have been dumped next to you?
Resistance, then fire, then to your room
without toys. Later, it’ ll be the boys
to whom your friends will cater,
We are descending again in parallel —
I cannot say together — as in another dream
you rushed through the first door
without me. It was late. Your name
was an elevator door resisting its rail,
its screech my only attempt to reach you.
Was it the hurt that filled the elevator
I entered with gurneys and gowned girls,
incubated hearts pumping for a home?
Floors flicker as they fall.
The girls’ chatter flaps shrill at light,
tangles in my hair and away
Getting the child to bed is awful work,
Committing that rage to sleep that will not sleep.
The lie rots in my throat saying, “O. K.
There is balm in Gilead. Go to bed.
Honey of generation has betrayed us both.”
And truly it is no wild surmise of darkness
Nor Pisgah purview of Canaan drowned in blood
But only my child saying its say in bed.
Strapped to the bed of circumcision lies
My son. This mutilation ties
You to the fathers. They will never let
You forget, or your flesh be enfranchised ever,
Though you pray all your life long.
They set you early on the rack, infect you with a fever
Of remembering. In the marriage bed,
When you are naked, there the sign is red.
There is neither meeting nor mating but the past
Cries that you've been waited for and wed already —
I will not bless this mark upon your body.
For you the hurricane is rising fast;
A great light is the man who knows the woman he loves
A great light is the woman who knows the man she loves
And carries the light into room after room arousing
The sleepers and looking hard into the face of each
And then sends them asleep again with a kiss
Or a whole night of love
and goes on and on until
The man and woman who carry the great lights of the
Knowledge of the one lover enter the room
toward which
Their light is sent and fit the one and the other torch
In a high candelabrum and there is such light
defunct
list of
common
names
proxy
for the
bearer
nor’ wester
buffets gear
reach
into our
canisters
“Cassirer”
drawn and
sewn into
my lapels
assembly of
illegal men
peril will
not know
two
Roman
slaves rain
the rage
passes
through our
teeth into
interior
pneumatic
doors
my evening
of moniker
stamped
upon boxes
of envelopes
water
relives
reservoir
boat
bottom
draft
displaced
°
lineal
thought
backward
body
no one
knows
the brains
I am now
tree
an oar
origin
joints ruptured
soak in
deep ink
°
wallpaper
remnant
flower
float
chandelier
brief case
hundred words
logged
erode
my
Arabic
congestion
of resin
person
