Uncategorized

The world is wasted on you. Show us one clear time
beyond childhood (or the bottle) you spent your whole
self — hoarding no blood-bank back-up, some future aim
to fuel — or let yourself look foolish in reckless style
on barstool, backstreet or dancefloor, without a dim
image of your hamming hobbling you the whole while.
Voyeur to your own couplings, you never did come
with them, did you, even when you did? You said Hell
is details, when Hell was just the cave, the concave-
mirrored skull you dwelt inside, your left hand

Some say it’ s in the reptilian dance
of the purple-tongued sand goanna,
for there the magnificent translation
of tenacity into bone and grace occurs.

And some declare it to be an expansive
desert — solid rust-orange rock
like dusk captured on earth in stone —
simply for the perfect contrast it provides
to the blue-grey ridge of rain
in the distant hills.

Did they enjoy this, those honorary ancestors
Of ours, whom we may not speak of as Indians now,
But, rather, as Native Americans? Did they, that is,
Have the opportunity to take in such views?
For there were no roads then, slicing through
The hills, opening vistas like this. Astonishing!
Unless, perhaps, they were upon the Delaware,
A kind of road itself. But, otherwise, would not
The land itself have been an inconvenience,
The changing leaves an oracle of cruelties
To come and not, as for the tourists on a bus,

If your mother’ s like mine wanting you honeyed and blithe
you’ ll get cooked by getting evicted

since the mothers can teach with a dustpan the tons of modes of tossing.

And the fathers will lift your eyes too-early-too-open:
the fathers can creep up on anything when it’ s still too wet

to cloister with their weeping and strand you like a seed

With her one horrid eye persistently unfastened, a vigilant bird
watched my grandfather during the Great Depression
use each evening of one whole year to wander his corn fields
knowing this world is just one pig after another

in one pen after another. Therefore, the bird heard him suppose,
shouldn’ t he with his best gun, machete, Buick, or rope
terminate his acquaintance with the tiresome setup
of breakfast-lunch-dinner-dawn-dusk-fall-winter-spring-summer-

Believe it or not,
the old woman said,
and I tried to picture it:
a girl,
the polished white ribs of a roast
tied to her boots with twine,
the twine coated with candle wax
so she could glide
uninterrupted
across the ice —
my mother,
skating on bones.

The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
Hearken the tale they told:
How in some far-off place and year,
Before the world grew old,

I was a dreaming forest tree,
You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
Because the north wind stirred;

I’ ve never seen the land
of milk and honey, but at

the Iowa State Fair I glimpsed
a cow fashioned of butter.

It lived behind a window
in an icy room, beneath klieg lights.

I filed past as one files
past a casket at a wake.

It was that sad: a butter cow
without a butter calf. Nearby I spied

a butter motorcycle, motorcycle-
sized, a mechanical afterthought

I thought the cow might have liked to ride.
You don’ t drive a motorcycle; you ride it.

I like you, Mrs. Fry! I like your name!
It speaks the very warmth you feel in pressing
In daily act round Charity’ s great flame —
I like the crisp Browne way you have of dressing,
Good Mrs. Fry! I like the placid claim
You make to Christianity, — professing
Love, and good works — of course you buy of Barton,
Beside the young fry’ s bookseller, Friend Darton!

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave — under the deep deep sea,
Or in the wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush’ d — no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls