Poemunity — your poem community

It seemed as if we did not sleep One wink that night; I was sighing deep. The cruellest judge in the costliest court Could not condemn a night so short. We had the light out, but I know, Each time I turned, a radiant glow Suffused the room, and shining snow Alit from Heaven’s candle-fires Illuminated our desires. But the last time I held her, strong, Excited, closest, very long, Something started to go wrong. The edge of dawn’s despotic veil Showed at the eastern window-pale And there it was,—the morning light! Gwen was seized with a fearful fright, Became an apparition, cried, “Get up, go now with God, go hide! “Love is a salt, a gall, a rue, A vinegar-vintage.Dos y Ddw, Vaya con Dios, quickly, too!” “Ah, not yet, never yet, my love; The stars and moon still shine above.” “Then why do the raucous ravens talk With such a loud insistent squawk?” “Crows always cry like that, when fleas Nibble their ankles, nip their knees.” “And why do the dogs yip, yammer, yell?” “They think they’ve caught a fox’s smell.” “Poet, the wisdom of a fool Offers poor counsel as a rule. Open the door, open it wide As fast as you can, and leap outside. The dogs are fierce when they get untied.” “The woods are only a bound from here, And I can outjump a deer, my dear!” “But tell me, best beloved of men, Will you come again? Will you come again?” “Gwen, you know I’m your nightingale, And I’ll be with you, without fail, When the cloud is cloak, and the dark is sky, And when the night comes, so will I.”

Lathe of the ocean. Perpetual Motion machine of the waves. Everything still Being turned and shaped to a shape nobody Foresees: Ten years ago, was it, when we Walked that shore, too earnest and sheepish To hold hands? The wind cutting through our clothes Cleansed and burned, the chill off the Atlantic An ache we courted in our dumbstruck talk: Callow, expectant, what wouldn’t love give? Cavalcanti’s ray from Mars, Dante’s wheel that moves The planets and the stars, how nervous We were, awkward and shivering: “Like this, Do you like it like this?” Up all night, Then waking to the smell of flannel and sweat, We lay grateful, winded, goosefleshed in the chill, Our own atmosphere rich and breathable: We drank round the clock, embracing extremes, Too hurried and heartsore to think of time… Out fishing after midnight, we watched schools of squid Slide and shimmer, tentacles tight-wrapped Around our gig’s hooks: Yanked from the water, They spouted jets of ink, then pulsed and quivered And faded to dead-white, their eyes, resigned and sober, Opening wider and wider…Ten years more, And will either of us remember That ink sticky on our hands, the moon-glare Rippling as we knelt underneath the pier And scrubbed and scrubbed our hands in the dark water?

for Andrew Joron the desire to show is destruction in lessons forgot before learned no shrunken heads hang by wires no mourning songs of half-remembered shutters open the width of an eyelash it is enough for vision to run its finger along, for access to steal from forbidden shores the still-cold beams of night and pack them in ice but a child couldn’t live here nonetheless in the morning is come a bell that summons a fortune that reads she will soon cross the water and the intended instructions which may not florish after all she leaves a painting outside her room and in the morning it’s gone and not one word is spoke between them but her father carries it to his grave the desire to show is destruction and we are not hung with skins we must follow internal echoes commit ourselves to memory

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Scintillas of the anatomical on the vines, buds opening— make me a figure for the woken. On the vines, buds opening— blue, little throats. For the woken, this different tin sky. Blue, little throats speak to me in the right voice. This different tin sky, the playground thawing. Speak to me in the right voice, only clean, sweeter. The playground thawing into its primary colors. Only clean, sweeter, briary as honeysuckle, into their primary colors the words come:bitter, astral. Briar—as honeysuckle, as attic webs, constellated into their primary colors. White, or whiter. The words come:bitter, astral. Make me a figure, blue little throats, scintillas of the anatomical.

I know my leaving in the breakfast table mess. Bowl spills into bowl: milk and bran, bread crust crumbled. You push me back into bed. More “honey” and “baby.” Breath you tell my ear circles inside me, curls a damp wind and runs the circuit of my limbs. I interrogate the air, smell Murphy’s Oil Soap, dog kibble. No rose. No patchouli swelter. And your mouth— sesame, olive. The nudge of your tongue behind my top teeth. To entirely finish is water entering water. Which is the cup I take away? More turning me. Less your arms reaching around my back. You ask my ear where I have been and my body answers, all over kingdom come.

—at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka Let me break free of these lace-frail lilac fingers disrobing the black sky from the windows of this room, I sit helpless, waiting, silent—sister, because you drew from me the coil of red twine: loneliness— spooled inside— once, I wanted to say one true thing, as in, I want more in this

for Baroness G. de Hueck Across the cages of the keyless aviaries, The lines and wires, the gallows of the broken kites, Crucify, against the fearful light, The ragged dresses of the little children. Soon, in the sterile jungles of the waterpipes and ladders, The bleeding sun, a bird of prey, will terrify the poor, These will forget the unbelievable moon. But in the cells of whiter buildings, Where the glass dawn is brighter than the knives of surgeons, Paler than alcohol or ether, shinier than money, The white men’s wives, like Pilate’s, Cry in the peril of their frozen dreams: “Daylight has driven iron spikes, Into the flesh of Jesus’ hands and feet: Four flowers of blood have nailed Him to the walls of Harlem.” Along the white halls of the clinics and the hospitals Pilate evaporates with a cry: They have cut down two hundred Judases, Hanged by the neck in the opera houses and the museum. Across the cages of the keyless aviaries, The lines and wires, the gallows of the broken kites, Crucify, against the fearful light, The ragged dresses of the little children.

The snow voids the distance of the road and the first breath comes from the early morning ghosts. The sparrows with their hard eyes glisten in the difficult light. They preen their feathers and chirp. It’s as though they were one voice talking to God. Mornings are a sustained hymn without the precision of faith. You’ve turned the bag filled with molding bread inside out and watch the old crusts fall to the ice. What’s left but to watch the daylight halved by the glistening ground? What’s left but an empty bag and the dust of bread ravaged by songsters? There are ruins we witness within the moment of the world’s first awakening and the birds love you within that moment. They want to eat the air and the stars they’ve hungered for, little razors. Little urgent bells, the birds steal from each other’s mouths which makes you hurt. Don’t ask for more bread. The world is in haste to waken. Don’t ask for a name you can surrender, for there are more ghosts to placate. Don’t hurt for the sparrows, for they love you like a road.

South Vietnam, April 29, 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind, the ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese refugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon. Milkflower petals on the street like pieces of a girl’s dress. May your days be merry and bright... He fills a teacup with champagne, brings it to her lips. Open, he says. She opens. Outside, a soldier spits out his cigarette as footsteps fill the square like stones fallen from the sky.May all