a labyrinth,
as if at its center,
god would be there —
but at the center, only rose,
where rose came from,
where rose grows —
& us, inside of the lips & lips:
the likenesses, the eyes, & the hair,
we are born of,
fed by, & marry with,
only flesh itself, only its passage
— out of where? to where?
Then god the mother said to Jim, in a dream,
Never mind you, Jim,
come rest again on the country porch of my knees.
The wind that makes your hair grow faster
opens a child’ s mouth full of strawberry and sand.
Slow and sure
on the scales of the ocean
the child’ s head outweighs the sun.
This is Tarsus, one place like anyplace else.
And this is my circuit, the rodeo, fair.
The farmboys blow through here in pickups, wild
as horses in their oat sacks.
The women wear spurs.
In the trailers the cattle are pounding for air.
The animal of winter is dying,
its white body everywhere
in collapse and stabbed at
by straws of light, a leaving
to believe in as the air
slowly fills with darkness
and water drains from the tub
where my daughter, watching it
lower around her, feeling it
go, says about the only thing
she can as if it were a long-
kept breath going with her
blessing of dribble and fleck.
Down it swirls a living drill
vanishing toward a land
where tomorrow already
fixes its bright eye on a man
I
I hear you are whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns — O grass of graves...
If you do not say anything how can I say anything?
Let us tunnel
the air
(as a mole’ s green galleries)
toward the ultimate
cornfield
— the square of gold, & green, & of tassle
that rustles back at us —
let us burrow in
to a susurration, the dense starlings,
of the real —
the huge
sunflowers waving back at us,
as we move
— the great grassy world
that surrounds us,
singing.
1
In the Forest of Wearisome Sadness,
Where one day I found myself wandering alone,
I met my heart, who called to me, asking me where I was going.
The path was long and straight, row after row of conifers receding
To a horizon that because of the geometry
Seemed farther than it really was,
Like the door at the top of a staircase in Versailles.
But as if the forest’ s maker had been offended by elegance,
A pile of rocks disrupted the rows: the forest once
Had been a field. I remember that field.
I can’ t swim because I can’ t fit
into the water
I am
two million feet tall
but thank you for inviting me
I am standing in line
inside my giant shirt
If someone wanted to weaponize me
they would tell me to lie down on New York
and the city I destroyed
would hurt me back
I eat stars
It’ s a riot
I know
my big mouth
full of their light
Twenty-four thousand times in any year, lightning strikes
and kills. On the Heath, the timber shells, like bony Flemish spires,
point heavenwards in warning. The stags take note and bow their heads
at the sky’ s first challenge, or hurl a bellowing peal back in defiance.
We wash up side by side
to find each other
in the speakable world,
and, lulled into sense,
inhabit our landscape;
the curve
of that chair draped
with your shirt;
my glass of water
seeded overnight with air.
After this bed
there’ ll be another,
so we’ ll roll
and keep rolling
until one of us
will roll alone and try to roll
the other back — a trick
no one’ s yet pulled off —
and it’ ll be
as if I dreamed you, dear,
Only this boy moves
between the runes of trees
on his tricycle
when an eagle swoops,
releases two arrows
from its silver wings, and melts
away faster than lightning.
Then a loud whistle
and a bang like dry thunder.
In a blink the boy sees
his house roof sink.
Feels his ears ripped off.
The blast puffs up a fawn smoke
bigger than a mountain cloud.
The slow begonias rattle
their scarlet like confetti.
Metal slashes
the trees and ricochets.
Wires and pipes snap
