Poemunity — your poem community

1. without baggage To travel without baggage, sleep in the train on a hard wooden bench, forget your native land, emerge from small stations when a gray sky rises and fishing boats head to sea. 2. in belgium It was drizzling in Belgium and the river wound between hills. I thought, I'm so imperfect. The trees sat in the meadows like priests in green cassocks. October was hiding in the weeds. No, ma'am, I said, this is the nontalking compartment. 3. a hawk circles above the highway It will be disappointed if it swoops down on sheet iron, on gas, on a tape of tawdry music, on our narrow hearts. 4. mont blanc It shines from afar, white and cautious, like a lantern for shadows. 5. segesta On the meadow a vast temple— a wild animal open to the sky. 6. summer Summer was gigantic, triumphant— and our little car looked lost on the road going to Verdun. 7. the station in bytom In the underground tunnel cigarette butts grow, not daisies. It stinks of loneliness. 8. retired people on a field trip They're learning to walk on land. 9. gulls Eternity doesn't travel, eternity waits. In a fishing port only the gulls are chatty. 10. the theater in taormina From the theater in Taormina you spot the snow on Etna's peak and the gleaming sea. Which is the better actor? 11. a black cat A black cat comes out to greet us as if to say, look at me and not some old Romanesque church. I'm alive. 12. a romanesque church At the bottom of the valley a Romanesque church at rest: there's wine in this cask. 13. light Light on the walls of old houses, June. Passerby, open your eyes. 14. at dawn The world's materiality at dawn— and the soul's frailty.

—at Dubai International Airport and ending with a line by César Vallejo Because I must walk through the eye-shaped shadows cast by these curved gold leaves thick atop each constructed palm tree, past displays of silk scarves, lit silhouettes of blue-bottled perfume—because I grip, as though for the first time, a paper bag of french fries from McDonald's, and lick, from each fingertip, the fat and salt as I stand alone to the side of this moving walkway gliding me past dark- eyed men who do not look away when I stare squarely back—because standing in line to the restroom I want only to pluck from her black sweater this one shimmering blond hair clinging fast— because I must rest the Coke, cold in my hand, beside this toilet seat warmed by her thighs, her thighs, and hers. Here, at the narrow mouth of this long, humid corridor leading to the plane, I take my place among this damp, dark horde of men and women who look like me— because I look like them— because I am ashamed of their bodies that reek so unabashedly of body— because I can—because I am an American,a star

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness. And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand. That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture. O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder. Wilno, 1936

It's all foreplay, really-this walk through the French Quarter exploring souvenir shops, each of them carefully deranged, as if dust were to settle only at perfect intervals. Yes to the vetiver fan that smells sweeter than sandalwood or cedar. No to the mammy doll dinner bells. No to the mammy dolls whose sewn smiles are as fixed as the lives of too many poor Black women here: motherhood at twelve, drugged, abandoned by fifteen, dead by twenty (suicide, murder) so easily in Desire. And yet, their voices sweeten the snaking air, providing the transvestites their proper Muses, all of whom have streets named for them in the Garden District. A soft heat settles on Terpsichore, just inside the gay bar where the owner's pink flamingos complement silly songs on the rescued Rockola. Who can dance to that Lorne Greene ballad, "Ringo"? Dixie beer is the beer of choice; marijuana the cheapest drug. Relaxation is key, since it's all a matter of waiting for the right body to stumble toward you. Lust perfumes parties in the projects, barstool chatter at the Hyatt, lazy kissing on the median strip stretching down Tchoupitoulas. If Professor Longhair were alive, he'd teach a lesson in seamless motion: the perfect slide of a man's hand down a woman's back; a lesson you learned long ago before you met me. We are making love as we did before in Austin and Manhattan. But in this room on this costly bed our lovemaking starts out the slowest grind, then, like this city's weather, goes from hot to hotter, from moist to rainstorm wet. You're tall, A., and where there should be tribal markings there are scars-football, basketball, mid-sixties grind parties where something always got out of hand. There's the perfect amen. You're your own gospel. And you bring good news to me-the way you enter me Like grace, the way you say my name, a psalm. No. That's not it. It's the engineer in you that gets me. Your search for the secret line that goes straight to the center of the earth. Deeper and deeper you go until there's no earth left in me. And we hum and moan a song as old as our selves gone back. There are too many souvenirs in your eyes. Gifts given too often, too hastily, never opened. Outside a city sprawls its heat, seeks out every pore, licks every moment of sweat as we shiver in this chilly room taking each other's measure. We say good-bye again and again. As if every kiss, every touch we make will shadow All our celebrations. And they do.

The country lies flat, expressionless as the face of a stranger. Not one hillock shelters a buried bone. The city: a scene thin as a theater backdrop, where no doors open, no streets extend beyond the view from the corner. Only the railroad embankment is high, shaggy with grass. Only the freight, knuckling a red sun under its wheels, drags familiar box-car shapes down long perspectives of childhood meals and all crossings at sunset. With a look deep as the continent, with the casual greeting of those who will meet again, it bestrides the viaduct. Its span is the span of trestles above mountain gorges, its roar the echo of streams still wearing away stone.

Unlike Francis Bacon, we no longer believe in the little patterns we make of the chaos of history. —Overheard remark As he looked up from his glass, its quickly melting ice, into the bisected glowing demonic eyes of the goat, he sensed that something fundamental had shifted, or was done. As if, after a life of enchantment, he had awakened, like Bottom, wearing the ears of an ass, and the only light was a lanthorn, an ersatz moon. It was not that the calendar hadn’t numbered the days with an orbital accuracy, its calculations exact, but like a man who wants to hang a hammock in his yard, to let its bright net cradle him, but only has one tree, so he — wild and aware of it — knew he had lost the order he required, and with it, rest — his thoughts only a sagging bundle of loose ends, and the heart, a naked animal in search of a pelt, that once fell for every Large Meaning it could wrap itself in, as organs are packed in ice for transit from one ending to the next, an afterlife of parts — and the whole? Exorbitant claim — not less than all, and oddly spelled; its ear rhyme is its opposite, the great hole in the heart of things. The goat, he noticed, had a rank smell, feral. Unnerved, he looks away, watches the last of his ice as it melts, the way some godlike eye might see the mighty glaciers in a slow dissolve back into sea. He notes how incommensurate the simile, a last attempt to dignify his shaking gaze, and reaches for the bill; he’s damned if the goat will pay.

a face stares back. across the hostile centuries. add a twist — delicious. and never feel a thing. commercial — added stretch to every gesture. how it is made. I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise. I’d be all give. Let me put it like this== in the nocturnal, recessed bed== of nettles. resembles the bird it will fly into. Right now I’m trying to open wide. she turns to a tree. she would be neither-nor. smoky field. that is space. the bride. the exdream — the world gone into god again? the night. the white between the ink. the white navel — I notice — in the O. their harsh done crust. then some inbetween? to a nuptial lace. to ever dwell again. to mask the screen in dumb expanse. touch in linen walls. Turn — her — loose — What — does not console? who could bear to save her. yes, god her saurian voice into the ground.

Has it turned out we’ve wasted our time? We’ve wasted our time. Our magnificent bodies on the dissecting table. Our day after tomorrow. Our what to do now. The stink of us so undignified. The end game of bloom. We will lose the sun struck and disassembled lightly down and crawling like a worm. This earth it is a banquet and laid on its table we. A puncture in the wound room, crude and obvious. The raving lunatics they are upon us, but we are raving too.

is an opening, is all we can see of  the long strands that make the pathways for rays, bisecting annular rings, the most vulnerable door of  what makes the holiest of things.

Since the stern art of poetry calls for words, I, morose, deaf, and balding ambassador of a more or less insignificant nation that’s stuck in this super power, wishing to spare my old brain, hand myself my own topcoat and head for the main street: to purchase the evening paper. Wind disperses the foliage. The dimness of old bulbs in these sorry quarters, whose motto’s “The mirror will please,” gives a sense of abundance supported by puddles. Even thieves here steal apples by scratching the amalgam first. Yet the feeling one gets, from one’s own sweet reflection—this feeling I’ve lost. That’s what really puzzles. Everything in these parts is geared for winter: long dreams, prison walls, overcoats, bridal dresses of whiteness that seems snowlike. Drinks. Kinds of soap matching dirt in dark corners. Sparrow vests, second hand of the watch round your wrist, puritanical mores, underwear. And, tucked in the violinists’ palms, old redwood hand warmers. This whole realm is just static. Imagining the output of lead and cast iron, and shaking your stupefied head, you recall bayonets, Cossack whips of old power. Yet the eagles land like good lodestones on the scraps. Even wicker chairs here are built mostly with bolts and with nuts, one is bound to discover. Only fish in the sea seem to know freedom’s price. Still, their muteness compels us to sit and devise cashier booths of our own. And space rises like some bill of fare. Time’s invented by death. In its search for the objects, it deals with raw vegetables first That’s why cocks are so keen on the bells chiming deafly somewhere. To exist in the Era of Deeds and to stay elevated, alert ain’t so easy, alas. Having raised a long skirt, you will find not new wonders but what you expected. And it’s not that they play Lobachevsky’s ideas by ear, but the widened horizons should narrow somewhere, and here— here’s the end of perspective. Either old Europe’s map has been swiped by the gents in plain clothes, or the famous five-sixths of remaining landmass has just lost its poor infamous colleague, or a fairy casts spells over shabby me, who knows—but I cannot escape from this place; I pour wine for myself (service here’s a disgrace), sip, and rub my old tabby. Thus the brain earned a slug, as a spot where an error occurred earns a good pointing finger. Or should I hit waterways, sort of like Christ? Anyway, in these laudable quarters, eyes dumbfounded by ice and by booze will reproach you alike for whatever you choose: traceless rails, traceless waters. Now let’s see what they say in the papers about lawsuits. “The condemned has been dealt with.” Having read this, a denizen puts on his metal-rimmed glasses that help to relate it to a man lying flat, his face down, by the wall; though he isn’t asleep. Since dreams spurn a skull that has been perforated. The keen-sightedness of our era takes root in the times which were short, in their blindness, of drawing clear lines twixt those fallen from cradles and fallen from saddles. Though there are plenty of saucers, there is no one to turn tables with to subject you, poor Rurik, to a sensible quiz; that’s what really saddens. The keen-sightedness of our days is the sort that befits the dead end whose concrete begs for spittle and not for a witty comment. Wake up a dinosaur, not a prince, to recite you the moral! Birds have feathers for penning last words, though it’s better to ask. All the innocent head has in store for itself is an ax plus the evergreen laurel. [December] 1969 Leningrad