They said to me no, don’ t take any, no, don’ t touch, that is burning
hot. No, don’ t try to touch, to hold, that weighs too much, that
hurts.
They said to me: Read, write. And I tried, I took up a word, but it
struggled, it clucked like a frightened hen, wounded, in a cage of
black straw, spotted with old traces of blood.
Translated from the French
A clamor, in the distance. A crowd running under the rain beating
down, between the canvases the sea wind set clattering.
A man passes crying something. What is he saying? What he
knows! What he has seen! I make out his words. Ah, I almost
understand!
I took refuge in a museum. Outside the great wind mixed with
water reigns alone from now on, shaking the glass panes.
In each painting, I think, it’ s as if God were giving up on finishing
the world.
Translated from the French
How long and thin
she seems today
a field of mustard
smiling up at the sun
it draws her eyebrows
together in a little pain
I don’ t think I ever
saw calligraphy of geese
like this overseas
oaks and pines
pretending to be asleep
not quite dark yet
as it is at home
poor people, midnight
The whole country
in a courtly dance
its tiny mouth open
I pour another cup of wine
and falling, rising
the children remove their toys
around the small apartment
to their bunk beds
not quite dark yet
early spring with snow
on the wind
the woman across the street
bent like a sickle
collecting bottles and cans
knocks, goes on
I wonder where she lives
and the stars shining
on her greasy clothes
I dated mostly police.
I hated coastal solace.
In navy posts I flourished.
I inflate the cost of polish.
I restrained my nest-egg worries.
On planes I tested patience.
I prayed for lusty follies.
I betrayed my foster family.
In ways I lost my malice.
I craved a cloistered palace.
I dared say the feast was ghoulish.
I became a tourist: boorish.
Unswayed by mystic knowledge,
I raised a frosty chalice.
I was upstaged and roasted: English.
I obeyed a ghost who’ s tall-ish.
“Shalom,” called the pink-shirted man in the Oceanic
Terminal of Heathrow, and I snapped,
“I do not want to talk to you.” Manic
with fear, I extended one pointy-tipped shoe, tapped
the message home. My cases bulged with the wrong
clothes, every outfit trimmed with clipped
I
When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelled
of old rinds and wet cigarette butts
I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulder
and aimed but did not fire it at the man
who had just taken my virginity like a snack,
with my collusion, but still —
All hail the crumbling stone monument
to the Battle of Bad Axe, the wooden helve
long rotted and burned, the short walk to the river,
where we can bathe in its brown,
where a steamboat ghost huffs out
a stream of bullets. We are invulnerable
to their spectral lead, descendants
of fur traders (beaver, ermine,
skunk). Our lungs are clean and pink. Let’ s visit
the saw shop, the greenhouse with bluff views,
the pines and stacks of firewood,
the Blackhawk general store, named for
We were young and it was an accomplishment
to have a body. No one said this. No one
said much beyond “throw me that sky” or
“can the lake sleep over?” The lake could not.
The lake was sent home and I ate too many
beets, went around with beet-blood tongue
worrying about my draft card-burning brother
going to war. Other brothers became holes
at first base at war, then a few holes
Harleying back from war in their always
it seemed green jackets with pockets galore
and flaps for I wondered bullets, I wondered
Nobody I know is a god. A mother and son
fall into the river's million hands, the river's
smash and grab. They go under, climb the ropeless
water up, wave, open their mouths and scream
wet silences as they slide back under.
A man jumps in to save them, leaves the edge
as a needle into the river's muddy sinews, a woman
