Today you find yourself guilty
as the rim you split
an egg against
You press charges
You spell out your name
like the letters are medals
for good conduct in a bad war
The night moves in with you
into your room
until even your sleep
is not your own
Through the window
the grass tells you
to give up
and you are trying
but on the other hand
things keep you:
the moon, the cars, cars
You undress yourself
more deeply down
like this is the way
to get to the future
The stems of the sun bent over the eye
The sleeping man
The whole of the earth
And this head heavy with fear
In the night
This complete hole
Vast
And even so streaming with water
The noise
The peals of little bells mingled with the
Clinking of glasses
And bursts of laughter
The head moves
On the carpet the body shifts
In the warm air of the ceiling the footlights of dreams are illuminated.
The white walls have curved. The burdened chest breathes confused words. In the mirror, the wind from the south spins,
carrying leaves and feathers. The window is blocked. The heart is
almost extinguished among the already cold ashes of the moon — the hands are without shelter — as all the trees lying down. In the wind from the desert the needles bend and my hour is past.
I know that rarity precedes extinction,
Like that of the purple orchid in my garden,
Whose sudden disappearance rattled me.
Jane, in her way, is also beautiful.
And therefore near extinction, I suppose.
She is certainly rare and fragile of bone.
She insists she is dying, day by dubious day,
And spends her evenings looking at photographs
Of her mother, who never believed in love.
Rare Jane, I worship you. But I can’ t deny
You access to the endless
With its river of cold stars.
(there’ ll be days like this.)
— The Shirelles
These folks ’ bout to respect me into the grave.
At eighty Mama said, (mama said)
“People think you change when you’ re old
but you still got a girl inside.”
On the eighth day he coined the word “alone”
and saw that it was as good as everything else.
A yellow school bus rattled down the lane,
a wind blew in a drainpipe, strong, mellifluous.
I brought two empty crates to the parking lot,
watched neighbors with briefcases and car keys.
At noon a mailman passed by where I sat
invisible, like a tree among trees.
And into the heavens, as on a bright day after rain,
there came the shapes of four creatures,
and they each had the likeness of a man,
and each man had four wings outstretched
and each wing had four eyes emblazoned, wide open,
given to weeping at the worlds they contained:
We have been cruising, half a block
at a time, my wife, my two children,
all morning, and I have been pointing out
unhurriedly and with some feeling
places of consequence, sacred places,
backyards, lush fields, garages, alleyways.
“There,” I say, “by this big cottonwood,
That’ s where I dropped the fly ball, 1959.”
The mind goes caw, caw, caw, caw,
dark and fast. The orphan heart
cries out, “Save me. Purchase me
as the sun makes the fruit ripe.
I am one with them and cannot feed
on winter dawns.” The black birds
are wrangling in the fields
and have no kindness, all sinew
and stick bones. Both male and female.
It wasn't the earth that swallowed them. Was it the air?
Numerous as the sand, they did not become
sand, but came to naught instead. They've been forgotten
in droves. Often, and hand in hand,
like minutes. More than us,
but without memorials. Not registered,
not cipherable from dust, but vanished —
their names, spoons, and footsoles.
They don't make us sorry. Nobody
can remember them: Were they born,
did they flee, have they died? They were
