A Caledonian megalith.
A tinted bather from Cape Ann.
The 1937 kith
and kin of a Kentuckian
beside their Model T sedan.
The Celts. Who set me this arith-
metic of icons? Who began
by pasting in Bob Dylan? Zith-
erpicking rhinestone charlatan.
He tries to be American.
II. iv
I am writing this poem
about the 1965 massacre
of Indonesians by Indonesians
which in an article ten years later
I could not publish
except in Nottingham England with
a friend Malcolm Caldwell who has since
himself been murdered
no one will say by whom but I will guess
I was arrested because of that internal memo,
and ended up in a cell, then I was told to sit
with the police and the local bigwigs.
In the hushed and fast darkening room they said
someone — someone — had reduced the safety margin
on the airport risk factor, and I got the blame.
The sky that day was a pale, clear blue, but
that was happening outside, and far away.
I am the Woman, ark of the law and its breaker,
Who chastened her steps and taught her knees to be meek,
Bridled and bitted her heart and humbled her cheek,
Parcelled her will, and cried "Take more!" to the taker,
Shunned what they told her to shun, sought what they bade her seek,
Locked up her mouth from scornful speaking: now it is open to speak.
I butterflied Australian rack of lamb
with shallots, garlic, parsley, butter, wine
(some in the pan, some for the palate).
Although the livestock loved in nursery rhyme
avoided clumps of mint, it served my family
nonetheless. I am no PETA zealot
(leather jacket, handbag, wallet, shoes)
but wonder if the deeds we do pursue
us in the afterlife. Does the fleecy
creature have a tenderable claim?
My lambent mind considers our short lease
on life, the oven hot. Am I to blame?
Not Delft or
delphinium, not Wedgewood
among the knickknacks, not wide-eyed chicory
evangelizing in the devil strip —
But way on down in the moonless
octave below midnight, honey,
way down where you can't tell cerulean
from teal.
The heavy, wet, guttural
small-plane engine
fights for air, and goes down in humid darkness
about where the airport should be.
I take a lot for granted,
not pleased to be living under the phlegm-
soaked, gaseous, foggy and irradiated
heavens whose angels wear collars in propjets
and live elsewhere in Clean Zones,
but figuring the air is full of sorrows.
The Israeli Navy,
sailing to the end of the world,
stocked with grain
and books black with God’ s verse,
turned back,
rather than sail on the Sabbath.
Six days, was the consensus,
was enough for anyone.
A heave of afternoon light pulls a tulip from the turf, a bower for locusts, a cup of shells. The farmhouse tilts, a bent shadow on wheels. In cedar rooms a family is molded, silent, wrapped in the wire of steel eyes and stopped voice, romantic ash. This is not my house, my ghost, my uninvited guest, my lost labor of love, my thicket or grease, my JPEG gessoed or rawhide suit. The yellow light throbs like an internal organ — soft body of an overture to insect sounds — sapling of a new world — whose future awaits me at the tilting window of my own domestic hut.
China is made of earth, of sun-dried mud.
In this part of China everything is made from the earth:
the houses, the walls around cities, and villages,
the tombs scattered over the countryside.
Even the people.
There are hills below that appear to be piles of mud
set out to dry in the sun, naked,
without a single tree or bush.
They crowd around the landscape
like the coils of bulging intestines
tossed on the ground outside butchers' shops,
slowly unraveling.
Sometimes we fly so low that we almost touch them.
