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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

After the second conference, I would be cast in the role of a young dancer with a prestigious New York City ballet company. I would be cast in the role of the mother, a former dancer now amateur artist, whose career ended at 28 when she became pregnant. I would be cast in the role of the exotic beauty who is more in touch with her sensuality. I would be cast in the role of the director, a cruel and demanding genius who would sleep with the ingenue. I would be cast in the role of someone selected to compete for the part alongside several other dancers.

Krakatau split with a blinding noise
and raised from gutted, steaming rock
a pulverized black sky, over water walls
that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra.
Fifteen days before, in its cage in Amsterdam,
the last known member of Equus quagga,
the southernmost subspecies of zebra, died.
Most of the wild ones, not wild enough,
grazing near the Cape of Good Hope,
had been shot and skinned and roasted by white hunters.

The dog came back,
grinning and smelling of carrion,
and her husband behind it, stride and gestures
too large for the house. His field voice, cracking,
declared a wider kingdom,
and the name of a fallen city,
not theirs this time.
From outside the roar and shrill
of celebration poured in.
He drew near in a rank cloud, breathing hard,
to show her the gash in his thumb.
So she washed in five waters and went to their bed,
but he slept without moving,
still in his cloak and dust.

They have left behind the established cave
with its well-worn floor. Scholarship impels them
in hundreds, but generally one by one,
to find an unknown passage or scrape out their own.
Proto-Semitic linguistic theory,
Hittite stratigraphic anomalies,
microclimatic economics. "What do you see?"
invisible followers ask in their ears,
and they whisper "Wonderful things" as they quarry
a grain of rock at a time, or examine
a fleck of ore, or measure
the acidity of a trickle of water.
See! Behold! Look! Lo!

No animals were harmed in the making of this joyful noise:
A thick, twisted stem from the garden
is the wedding couple's ceremonial ram's horn.
Its substance will not survive one thousand years,
nor will the garden, which is today their temple,
nor will their names, nor their union now announced
with ritual blasts upon the zucchini shofar.
Shall we measure blessings by their duration?
Through the narrow organic channel fuzzily come
the prescribed sustained notes, short notes, rests.

I need everything else
Anything else
Desperately
But I have nothing
Shall have nothing
but this
Immediate, inescapable
and invaluable
No one can afford
THIS
Being made here and now

(Seattle, Washington
17 May, 1955)

MARIGOLDS

Having returned at last and being carefully seated
On the floor — somebody else's floor, as usual —
Far away across that ocean which looked
Through Newport windows years ago — somebody else's livingroom —
Another messed-up weedy garden
Tall floppy improbably red flowers
All the leaves turned over in the rain
Ridged furry scrotum veins

Let us forget that it is spring and celebrate the riderless will of five victims.
Old companions are sitting silent in the home. Five of their number have suddenly gone too far; as if waifs,
As if orphans were to swim without license. Their ride was not lucky. It took them very far out of bounds.
Mrs. Watson said she saw them all go at three-forty-five. Their bell had rung too loud and too late.
It was a season when water is too cold for anyone, and is especially icy for an old person.