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For a month now, wandering over the Sierras, A poem had been gathering in my mind, Details of significance and rhythm, The way poems do, but still lacking a focus. Last night I remembered the date and it all Began to grow together and take on purpose. We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith And I told Marie all about Boston, how it looked That last terrible week, how hundreds stood weeping Impotent in the streets that last midnight. I told her how those hours changed the lives of thousands, How America was forever a different place Afterwards for many. In the morning We swam in the cold transparent lake, the blue Damsel flies on all the reeds like millions Of narrow metallic flowers, and I thought Of you behind the grille in Dedham, Vanzetti, Saying, “Who would ever have thought we would make this history?” Crossing the brilliant mile-square meadow Illuminated with asters and cyclamen, The pollen of the lodgepole pines drifting With the shifting wind over it and the blue And sulphur butterflies drifting with the wind, I saw you in the sour prison light, saying, “Goodbye comrade.” In the basin under the crest Where the pines end and the Sierra primrose begins, A party of lawyers was shooting at a whiskey bottle. The bottle stayed on its rock, nobody could hit it. Looking back over the peaks and canyons from the last lake, The pattern of human beings seemed simpler Than the diagonals of water and stone. Climbing the chute, up the melting snow and broken rock, I remembered what you said about Sacco, How it slipped your mind and you demanded it be read into the record. Traversing below the ragged arête, One cheek pressed against the rock The wind slapping the other, I saw you both marching in an army You with the red and black flag, Sacco with the rattlesnake banner. I kicked steps up the last snow bank and came To the indescribably blue and fragrant Polemonium and the dead sky and the sterile Crystalline granite and final monolith of the summit. These are the things that will last a long time, Vanzetti, I am glad that once on your day I have stood among them. Some day mountains will be named after you and Sacco. They will be here and your name with them, “When these days are but a dim remembering of the time When man was wolf to man.” I think men will be remembering you a long time Standing on the mountains Many men, a long time, comrade.

I don’t have any sentiments would somebodything thirst my quench how about about my mediocrity of character? I dance with the dead divinely in my dreams I’m stricken deaf when I mention it my babies cry they want everything quick! here. un- mentioned as character should be like the purpurine it needs must be carved in, please Have you heard of the roguess elephant with the brilliant diamond eyes? She is the puppet of the dictionary where is her beautiful orange juice? puppy foot! When your father dies he doesn’t let you swoon into aventurine or spray of lily (pearls) of the valley you do not bifurcate you may supplicate play yourself to your camp heroine self—play it Lady play It but delete no matter thank you for breakfast today we will visit with the ear syringe be the current density honey flower ice egg I love you as a fan loves air. oops it’s I vice-versa I told you about that character She is a bezel awaiting the plop of a ruby she must grow chronically and I can’t end and I can’t lie here He held him in his own heart then may I in my eye now me

a rooftop has an enemy an owl a cone of confusion scansion of acoustics or before sound a crematorium visually unresolved (before)           remains leaves that only look like the birds between them physiology limits visual memory ash or     bodies in glass

among the graves marked guest of houses         of wanderers scattered in light this afternoon is the same time every afternoon to pass through again myself tomorrow will seem the same as yesterday’s perfect hour to pass to name but everyone’s houses shuddering under flags remain between gestures all things in form in faces

Any, every, thing that was exposed goes underground and is washed into the Tiber. This is what some people do with faces, burying. You see them, the heavy ones, chests like rivers, their heads bowed down with great antlers of thought invisible. After many seasons, the fronts of their bodies terribly developed to carry them. Venus of the Drains, the woman with the scum at the corners of her mouth who talked for a long time, scarred by burning, perilous thin, then told us we had made her day. It is seen, what should not be seen. It is I sees it. Shameful, to feel so heavily the shame of others — to hear and echo that note always waiting in the voice to be sung. Do I make it happen to her by having face and chest that wash with red?

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.

“Would you mind If I headed up early?” Says the husband To his young wife. “Follow when you like.” Later that evening The beautiful face And exquisite limbs Will rise from the table Of the Southern inn Having been spied By the antihero Across the room Reading an indifferent book. Oh, quick — Let a storm kill the light! But you might as well say it To a wall. We can’t change A single Silver setting, or Even by one day Reduce The bright full moon. The clock in literature Holds that moon. “I know I can’t say A single thing to stop you,” Says the old man at table To the suddenly risen girl. “But sleep on it, will you?” Not now — Not ever. The clock in literature Holds the ancient rune. “I wonder if I might Have a word with you,” Says the antihero To the lissome Dark-eyed angel.

"Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair." So sung a little Clod of Clay Trodden with the cattle's feet, But a Pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: "Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

What stays in Doesn’t come out Nipples hard with milk When things are of another time They are of that time Not timeless They are no longer here Nipples hard with liquid or falsities White and soft I can’t get it out No matter how hard I yank Or pull and suck Face watching with my own Nipple in my mouth Like the room she’s in I went and I seduced But no matter what I couldn’t get her to leave Aqua and in the morning, coffee The bathroom gold and green No matter what I said She stayed there She had her own fantasies to wait for Milk that never comes out It grows inside Does it fold back in time I want to say it becomes different The man who grafted another face What poems I wrote for him No I want to say That when you came at me With the syringe That I loved you In gold and green You came at me Revision upon revision Of your love It wasn’t like you To give up I knocked and knocked And you went back Into your doorway What days The nipples rising With future things to come What happened to those thoughts To those people I loved that woman In the building Sunset road The place With the dead babies But no matter what I did How hard I yanked She would never leave I knocked and knocked No matter what I did Or said I just couldn’t Get her out of there

The last light of a July evening drained into the streets below: My love and I had hard things to say and hear, and we sat over wine, faltering, picking our words carefully. The afternoon before I had lain across my bed and my cat leapt up to lie alongside me, purring and slowly growing dozy. By this ritual I could clear some clutter from my baroque brain. And into that brief vacancy the image of a horse cantered, coming straight to me, and I knew it brought hard talk and hurt and fear. How did we do? A medium job, which is well above average. But because she had opened her heart to me as far as she did, I saw her fierce privacy, like a gnarled, luxuriant tree all hung with disappointments, and I knew that to love her I must love the tree and the nothing it cares for me.