Never anymore in a wash of sweetness and awe
does the summer when I was seventeen come back
to mind against my will, like a bird crossing
my vision. Summer of moist nights full of girls
and boys ripened, holy drunkenness and violation
of the comic boundaries, defiances that never
Some say it’ s in the reptilian dance
of the purple-tongued sand goanna,
for there the magnificent translation
of tenacity into bone and grace occurs.
And some declare it to be an expansive
desert — solid rust-orange rock
like dusk captured on earth in stone —
simply for the perfect contrast it provides
to the blue-grey ridge of rain
in the distant hills.
Did they enjoy this, those honorary ancestors
Of ours, whom we may not speak of as Indians now,
But, rather, as Native Americans? Did they, that is,
Have the opportunity to take in such views?
For there were no roads then, slicing through
The hills, opening vistas like this. Astonishing!
Unless, perhaps, they were upon the Delaware,
A kind of road itself. But, otherwise, would not
The land itself have been an inconvenience,
The changing leaves an oracle of cruelties
To come and not, as for the tourists on a bus,
With her one horrid eye persistently unfastened, a vigilant bird
watched my grandfather during the Great Depression
use each evening of one whole year to wander his corn fields
knowing this world is just one pig after another
in one pen after another. Therefore, the bird heard him suppose,
shouldn’ t he with his best gun, machete, Buick, or rope
terminate his acquaintance with the tiresome setup
of breakfast-lunch-dinner-dawn-dusk-fall-winter-spring-summer-
What god was it that would open
earth’ s picture book and see the two
of us on a road, snowfields glittering
on every side and poplars bent like
the fingers of an old man clutching
what he loved about the sun?
Which one was it that would peer
into our thatched, white-washed
farmhouse, and see the fur, flies,
and shit-stained walls? Which one
laughed at the barbed wire fences,
the wall topped with broken glass?
That whine is the sound
of waste, rot, the frantic,
grinding inability to attend
to anything but sere thwarting
of yourself, a dry corrosion
which some say they know,
but you and I —
(my jaw clenched as you
turn a page,
you with a heart like drywall,
I who would
lace my arms with razors,
then press them
slowly to your lips,
the metal taste
mixing with flesh,
and through gritted teeth
I making the sound
of you, you, you
do not know, meaning
only me, me)
The sneck's aye sweirt and ayont
a doverin cratur wi a lit o the lowe
they ken ilka gadge on the bowe
bi the soond o thir foot-fa
glisk the skyrie lamp
hingin on the smittie ceilin
a spreckelt green plaunt is deein
a wandert bairn greets
aneath thon laich an gowstie lift
at lang an last the onfa.
Rain so dark I
can’ t get through —
train going by
in a hurry. The voice
said walk or die, I
walked, — the train
and the voice all
blurry. I walked with
my bones and my heart
of chalk, not even
a splintered notion:
days of thought, nights
of worry, — lonesome
train in a hurry.
The housework, the factory work, the work
that takes from the body
and does not put back.
The white-collar work and the dirt
of its profits, the terrible politeness
of the office worker, the work that robs
the viscera to pay the cool
surfaces of the brain. All the work
that makes love difficult, brings on
sleep, drops the body off
at the liquor cabinet. All the work
that reaches the intestines and sprawls.
And the compulsive work after the work
is done, those unfillable spaces
Some days I am happy to be no one
The shifting grasses
In the May winds are miraculous enough
As they ripple through the meadow of lupine
The field as iridescent as a Renaissance heaven
& do you see that boy with his arms raised
Like one of Raphael’ s angels held within
This hush & this pause & the sky’ s lapis expanse?
That boy is my son & I am his only father
Even when I am no one
