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The bleachers are packed full. Everyone’s watching. What if I fall? What if my time is too slow? One more rider, then me. "Next rider up!" I click my tongue, push my boots hard in the stirrups, heels down. My hands are sweaty, but I hold the reins right. Ready, girl. Ride! I bust through the gate, spin round the first barrel, shoot to the second and circle around tight, leaning so hard, my stirrup kicks dirt. Streak to the last barrel— spin, fly, race down the middle. Home!

for John Limon The game of baseball is not a metaphor and I know it’s not really life. The chalky green diamond, the lovely dusty brown lanes I see from airplanes multiplying around the cities are only neat playing fields. Their structure is not the frame of history carved out of forest, that is not what I see on my ascent. And down in the stadium, the veteran catcher guiding the young pitcher through the innings, the line of concentration between them, that delicate filament is not like the way you are helping me, only it reminds me when I strain for analogies, the way a rookie strains for perfection, and the veteran, in his wisdom, seems to promise it, it glows from his upheld glove, and the man in front of me in the grandstand, drinking banana daiquiris from a thermos, continuing through a whole dinner to the aromatic cigar even as our team is shut out, nearly hitless, he is not like the farmer that Auden speaks of in Breughel’s Icarus, or the four inevitable woman-hating drunkards, yelling, hugging each other and moving up and down continuously for more beer and the young wife trying to understand what a full count could be to please her husband happy in his old dreams, or the little boy in the Yankees cap already nodding off to sleep against his father, program and popcorn memories sliding into the future, and the old woman from Lincoln, Maine, screaming at the Yankee slugger with wounded knees to break his leg this is not a microcosm, not even a slice of life and the terrible slumps, when the greatest hitter mysteriously goes hitless for weeks, or the pitcher’s stuff is all junk who threw like a magician all last month, or the days when our guys look like Sennett cops, slipping, bumping each other, then suddenly, the play that wasn’t humanly possible, the Kid we know isn’t ready for the big leagues, leaps into the air to catch a ball that should have gone downtown, and coming off the field is hugged and bottom-slapped by the sudden sorcerers, the winning team the question of what makes a man slump when his form, his eye, his power aren’t to blame, this isn’t like the bad luck that hounds us, and his frustration in the games not like our deep rage for disappointing ourselves the ball park is an artifact, manicured, safe, “scene in an Easter egg”, and the order of the ball game, the firm structure with the mystery of accidents always contained, not the wild field we wander in, where I’m trying to recite the rules, to repeat the statistics of the game, and the wind keeps carrying my words away

All summer the patio drifted in and out of light the color of margarine; days were blue, not always sky blue. At night the word Algeria circulated among the grown-ups. A patient of my father had whooping cough, the words drifted into summer blue. The evenings spun into stadium lights. Kennedy’s hair blew across the screen. Castro was just a sofa. I saw James Meredith’s face through a spread of leaves on the evening news. The fridge sweat with orangeade, the trees whooped some nights in rain— a kid down the street kept coughing into his mitt. Static sounds from Comiskey and Fenway came though the vinyl, the plastic, the pillow— So when it left Stallard’s hand, when Roger Maris’s arms whipped the bat and the bullet-arc carried into the chasm the disaffections at 344 ft. near the bullpen fence under the green girder holding up the voices rising into the façade and over the river where a Baptist choir on Lenox Ave. was sending up a variation of Sweet Chariot into the traffic on the FDR that was jammed at the Triboro where a derrick was broken and the cables of its arms picked up the star-blast of voices coming over the Stadium façade spilling down the black next-game sign into the vector of a tilted Coke bottle on a billboard at the edge of the river where a cloud of pigeons rose over Roosevelt Island. It was evening by the time the cars unjammed and the green of the outfield unfroze and the white arc had faded into skyline before fall came full of boys throwing themselves onto the turf with inexplicable desire for the thing promised. The going. Then gone.

The cave looked much like any other from a little distance but as we approached, came almost to its mouth, we saw its walls within that slanted up into a dome were beating like a wild black lung— it was plastered and hung with the pulsing bodies of bats, the organ music of the body’s deep interior, alive, the sacred cave with its ten thousand gleaming eyes near the clustered rocks where the sea beat with the leather wings of its own dark waves. Below the bat-hung, throbbing walls, an altar stood, glittering with guano, a stucco sculpture like a Gaudi church, berserk Baroque, stone translated into flux—murk and mud and the floral extravagance of wet sand dripped from a giant hand, giving back blessing, excrement—return for the first fruits offered to the gods. We stayed outside, superior with fear, like tourists peering through a door, whose hanging beads rattle in the air from one who disappeared into the dim interior; we thought of the caves of Marabar, of a writer who entered and never quite emerged— the caves’ echoing black emptiness a tunnel in the English soul where he is wandering still. So the bat cave on the Bali coast, not far from Denpasar, holds us off, and beckons ... Standing there now, at the mouth of the cave—this time we enter, feel inside the flutter of those many hearts, the radiant heat of pumping veins, the stretch of wing on bone like a benediction, and the familiar faces of this many-headed god, benevolent as night is to the weary—the way at dark the cave releases them all, how they must lift like the foam on a wave breaking, how many they are as they enter the starlit air, and scatter in wild wide arcs in search of fruit, the sweet bites of mosquito ... while the great domes of our own kind slide open, the eye that watches, tracks the skies, and the huge doors roll slowly back on the hangars, the planes push out their noses of steel, their wings a bright alloy of aluminum and death, they roar down the runways, tear into the night, their heavy bodies fueled from sucking at the hidden veins of earth; they leave a trail of fire behind them as they scar the air, filling the dreams of children, sleeping—anywhere, Chicago, Baghdad—with blood, as the bombs drop, as the world splits open, as the mothers reach for their own in the night of the falling sky, madness in method, nature gone into reverse ... here, nearly unperturbed, the bats from the sacred cave fill the night with their calls, high-pitched, tuned to the solid world as eyes to the spectrum of light, gnats to the glow of a lamp—the bats circle, the clouds wheel, the earth turns pulling the dome of stars among the spinning trees, blurring the sweet globes of fruit, shaped exactly to desire—dizzy, we swing back to the cave on our stiff dark wings, the sweet juice of papaya drying on our jaws, home to the cave, to attach ourselves back to the pulsing dome, until, hanging there, sated and sleepy, we can see what was once our world upside down as it is and wonder whose altars those are, white, encrusted with shit.

Reading in bed, full of sentiment for the mild evening and the children asleep in adjacent rooms, hearing them cry out now and then the brief reports of sufficient imagination, and listening at the same time compassionately to the scrabble of claws, the fast treble in the chimney— then it was out, not a trapped bird beating at the seams of the ceiling, but a bat lifting toward us, falling away. Dominion over every living thing, large brain, a choice of weapons—

The batture’s water and sand disappear when water swells the river, heat’s portion of a northern winter. Under willows cropped up since our last cow is dead and carried to the batture to be taken by the water clean into another season, we sit on green granite piled deep enough to keep the batture dry one more week. We don’t say so but we wait for the swollen body to appear before us, we want the torn leg to distract us, the loose arm to show us where. We’ve always known which way the water runs, the differences among earth, air, water and whatever the horizon offers that is not actually there. We want to be the ones to identify the missing person. We count the reward we’d earn. There is a family in southern Minnesota keeping a closet of dry-cleaned suits, a mahogany high-boy of ironed shirts, folded undershorts and sweaters. In the ashtray that says Welcome to Nevada are the coins he left without thinking, the only clue which tells his family what they didn’t want to know, he might have known what he was doing. We want to be the ones whose call is first in a series of related events which will end we hope in the family’s satisfaction with the coroner’s identification, and though it is old-fashioned and no longer done in this country, we’d like to think the pennies from his pocket will be mailed to the morgue, polished to their copper finish, pressed to float forever on his eyelids and make us take a second look as the light hits them and they beautifully glitter. We think how glad we were when we first saw him he floated face down in the water which a few moments earlier had been snow his children sledded and slipped on. Light beats gravity, lifts these young trees from the water. This is where we watch time, mark the spot across the water which is the red flag we hope calls us come across and save us. This is twenty-eight states.

The mountain skies were clear except for the umlaut of a cloud over the village. The little girl wore yellow gloves. She looked in the peephole and saw a stack of unused marionettes. Yet, she wondered.

Be music, night, That her sleep may go Where angels have their pale tall choirs Be a hand, sea, That her dreams may watch Thy guidesman touching the green flesh of the world Be a voice, sky, That her beauties may be counted And the stars will tilt their quiet faces Into the mirror of her loveliness Be a road, earth, That her walking may take thee Where the towns of heaven lift their breathing spires O be a world and a throne, God, That her living may find its weather And the souls of ancient bells in a child's book Shall lead her into Thy wondrous house

for George Schneeman New York’s lovely weather hurts my forehead in praise of thee the? white dead whose eyes know: what are they of the tiny cloud my brain: The City’s tough red buttons: O Mars, red, angry planet, candy bar, with sky on top, “why, it’s young Leander hurrying to his death” what? what time is it in New York            in these here alps City of lovely tender hate and beauty making beautiful old rhymes? I ran away from you when you needed something strong then I leand against the toilet bowl (ack) Malcolm X I love my brain it all mine now is saved not knowing that & that (happily) being that: “wee kill our selves to propagate our kinde” John Donne yes, that’s true the hair on yr nuts & my big blood-filled cock are a part in that too PART 2 Mister Robert Dylan doesn’t feel well today That’s bad This picture doesn’t show that It’s not bad, too it’s very ritzy in fact here I stand I can’t stand to be thing I don’t use                            atop the empire state building & so sauntered out that door That reminds me of the time I wrote that long piece about a gangster name of “Jr.” O Harry James! had eyes to wander but lacked tongue to praise so later peed under his art paused only to lay a sneeze on Jack Dempsey asleep with his favorite Horse That reminds me of I buzz on & off Miró pop in & out a Castro convertible minute by minute                                           GENEROSITY! Yes now that the seasons totter in their walk I do a lot of wondering about Life      in praise of ladies dead of & Time plaza(s), Bryant Park by the Public                     eye of brow Library, Smith Bros. black boxes, Times Square Pirogi Houses with long skinny rivers thru them they lead the weary away off! hey! I’m no sailor off a ship at sea   I’M HERE & “The living is easy” It’s “HIGH TIME” & I’m in shapes of shadow, they certainly can warm, can’t they? Have you ever seen one?                                                NO! of those long skinny Rivers So well hung, in New York City NO!          in fact I’m the Wonderer & as yr train goes by                               forgive me, René!              ‘just oncet’ I woke up in Heaven He woke, and wondered more, how many angels on this train huh?                      snore for there she lay on sheets that mock lust                  done that 7 times been caught and brought back to a peach nobody. To Continue: Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan hates yr brain my dears amidst the many other little buzzes & like, Today, as Ron Padgett might say is “A tub of vodka” “in the morning” she might reply and that keeps it up past icy poles where angels beg fr doom then zip ping in-and-out, joining the army wondering about Life by the Public Library of Life No Greater Thrill! (I wonder) Now that the earth is changing I wonder what time it’s getting to be sitting on the New York Times Square that actually very ritzy, Lauren    it’s made of yellow wood or I don’t know something               maybe This man was my                       it’s been fluffed up friend He had a sense for the vast                               doesn’t he? Awake my Angel! give thyself to the lovely hours        Don’t cheat The victory is not always to the sweet. I mean that. Now this picture is pretty good here Though it once got demerits from the lunatic Arthur Cravan He wasn’t feeling good that day Maybe because he had nothing on paint-wise I mean PART 3 I wrote that about what is this empty room            without a heart now in three parts a white flower came home wet & drunk                2 Pepsis and smashed my fist thru her window in the nude As the hand zips you see Old Masters, you can see well hung in New York              they grow fast here Conflicting, yet purposeful yet with outcry vain! PART 4 Praising, that’s it! you string a sonnet around yr fat gut and falling on your knees you invent the shoe for a horse. It brings you luck while sleeping “You have it seems a workshop nature” Have you                                              “Good Lord!” Some folks is wood seen them?                                          Ron Padgett wd say amidst the many other little buzzes past the neon on & off night & day     STEAK SANDWICH Have you ever tried one Anne?          SURE! “I wonder what time ‘its’?” as I sit on this new Doctor NO             I only look at buildings they’re in as you and he, I mean he & you & I buzz past in yellow ties      I call that gold THE HOTEL BUCKINGHAM (facade) is black, and taller than last time is looming over lunch         naked        high time        poem       & I, equal in perfection & desire is looming         two eyes         over coffee-cup (white) nature and man:         both hell on poetry. Art is art and life is “A monograph on infidelity” Oh. Forgive me stench of sandwich O pneumonia in American Poetry Do we have time?                           well look at Burroughs 7 times been caught and brought back to Mars & eaten. “Art is art & Life is home,” Fairfield Porter said that turning himself in Tonight arrives again in red some go on            even in Colorado                                 on the run the forests shake meaning: coffee            the cheerfulness of this poor fellow is terrible, hidden in the fringes of the eyelids’ blue mysteries          (I’M THE SKY) The sky is bleeding now onto 57th Street of the 20th Century & HORN & HARDART’S Right here. That’s PART 5 I’m not some sailor off a ship at sea I’m the wanderer                                                                (age 4) & now everyone is dead sinking bewildered of hand, of foot, of lip nude, thinking laughter burnished brighter than hate Goodbye. André Breton said that what a shit! Now he’s gone! up bubbles all his amorous breath & Monograph on Infidelity entitled The Living Dream I never again played I dreamt that December 27th, 1965 all in the blazon of sweet beauty’s breast I mean           “a rose”           Do you understand that? Do you? The rock&roll songs of this earth commingling absolute joy AND incontrovertible joy of intelligence certainly can warm can’t they?        YES! and they do Keeping eternal whisperings around (Mr. MacAdams writes in the nude: no that’s not (we want to take the underground         me that: then zips in & revolution to Harvard!)                 out the boring taxis, re- fusing to join the army and yet this girl has                asleep “on the springs” so much grace                   of red GENEROSITY) I wonder! Were all their praises simply prophecies of this the time!           NO GREATER THRILL my friends But I quickly forget them, those other times, for what are they but parts in the silver lining of the tiny cloud my brain drifting up into smoke the city’s tough blue top: I think a picture always leads you gently to someone else Don’t you? like when you ask to leave the room & go to the moon.

Like all his people he felt at home in the forest. The silence beneath great trees, the dimness there, The distant high rustling of foliage, the clumps Of fern like little green fountains, patches of sunlight, Patches of moss and lichen, the occasional Undergrowth of hazel and holly, was he aware Of all this? On the contrary his unawareness Was a kind of gratification, a sense of comfort And repose even in the strain of running day After day. He had been aware of the prairies. He had known he hated the sky so vast, the wind Roaring in the grasses, and the brightness that Hurt his eyes. Now he hated nothing; nor could he Feel anything but the urgency that compelled him Onward continually. "May I not forget, may I Not forget," he said to himself over and over. When he saw three ravens rise on their awkward Wings from the forest floor perhaps seventy-five Ells ahead of him, he said, "Three ravens," And immediately forgot them. "May I not forget," He said, and repeated again in his mind the exact Words he had memorized, the message that was Important and depressing, which made him feel Worry and happiness at the same time, a peculiar Elation. At last he came to his people far In the darkness. He smiled and spoke his words, And he looked intently into their eyes gleaming In firelight. He cried when they cried. No rest For his lungs. He flinched and lay down while they Began to kill him with clubs and heavy stones.