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I have sat here happy in the gardens, Watching the still pool and the reeds And the dark clouds Which the wind of the upper air Tore like the green leafy boughs Of the divers-hued trees of late summer; But though I greatly delight In these and the water-lilies, That which sets me nighest to weeping Is the rose and white color of the smooth flag-stones, And the pale yellow grasses Among them.

A wound is a blossom but only to the living. A May night, birdsong before the first light pierces, chirps out of blackness: My daughter's angry at me and her mother as I was once angry at mine. It's a way of crossing over. I'm so tired now. And my core's all water, flowing somewhere where the sea can't find her. And neither can I. How much longer till I finally lose her? Where is the first dawn wet blossom? Who recalls how I touched her mother once? Or many others? How night is not always easy. Nor are daughters. Nor are sons. And how is it I've become a father watching light sift slowly into the daughterless dark.

She said what about San Francisco? Another second chance. There would be bridges "shrouded in fog." Streets "pregnant and glowing" with traffic. Dawn, she didn't know, would maybe "draw near." He said dawn draws near everywhere. She said a city but a city close to nature. A backyard scattered with birds he wouldn't be able to identify and something exotic rotting. Avocadoes. They'd play a game on the bridge, she'd lose control of the car, he'd kick her foot away and mash the gas pedal to the floor until she screamed and they'd have a name for the game and later it would be a story for their kids if they had any kids later. But no city is close to nature. Her body is a white slash beneath the green sheet. Or "a sterilized instrument." Last night's wine dregs are both "the color of the valley as it ignites" and in fact that color. He pulls the sheets from her again and says he'll cut their coffins from a wazi'hcaka even if it leaves a gray jay homeless. The lumber's astringency. Fuck guacamole. Deep in her knots and sap. Faster and faster. Second nature. And now a different dawn drawing near.

The sun rose over the sweep of the hill All bare for the gathered hay, And a blackbird sang by the window-sill, And a girl knelt down to pray: ‘Whom Thou hast kept through the night, O Lord, Keep Thou safe through the day.’ The sun rose over the shell-swept height, The guns are over the way, And a soldier turned from the toil of the night To the toil of another day, And a bullet sang by the parapet To drive in the new-turned clay. The sun sank slow by the sweep of the hill, They had carried all the hay, And a blackbird sang by the window-sill, And a girl knelt down to pray: ‘Keep Thou safe through the night, O Lord, Whom Thou hast kept through the day.’ The sun sank slow by the shell-swept height, The guns had prepared a way, And a soldier turned to sleep that night Who would not wake for the day, And a blackbird flew from the window-sill, When a girl knelt down to pray.

In memory of   Janusz Korczak What did the Old Doctor do in a cattle car riding to Treblinka on the 5th of August over a few hours of   blood flow over the dirty river of time I do not know What did Charon the volunteer do ferryman without an oar did he give the children the remains of   his breath and leave for himself just the shiver in the bones I do not know Did he lie to them for instance in small numbing doses picking from their sweaty heads the skittish lice of   fear I do not know but for that but later but there in Treblinka all their terror all the tears were against him oh it was only so many minutes a whole life is that a lot or a little I was not there I don’t know suddenly the Old Doctor saw the children become old like him older and older they had to catch up to the grayness of  ash then when he was hit by an Askar or SS man they saw how the Doctor became a child like them smaller and smaller until he was not born since then together with the Old Doctor there are plenty of  them nowhere I know Translated from the Polish

It’s ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly. At five I wake, the air mournful in its quiet. My wife’s eyes swim calmly under their lids, her mouth and jaw relaxed, different. What is happening in the silence of this house? Curtains hang heavily from their rods. Ficus leaves tremble at my footsteps. Yet the colors outside are perfect-- orange geranium, blue lobelia. I wander from room to room like a man in a museum: wife, children, books, flowers, melon. Such still air. Soon the mid-morning breeze will float in like tepid water, then hot. How do I start this day, I who am unsure of how my life has happened or how to proceed amid this warm and steady sweetness?

35? I have been looking forward To you for many years now So much so that I feel you and I are old Friends and so on this day, 35 I propose a toast to Me and You 35? From this day on I swear before the bountiful Osiris that If I ever If I EVER Try to bring out the Best in folks again I Want somebody to take me Outside and kick me up and Down the sidewalk or Sit me in a corner with a Funnel on my head Make me as hard as a rock 35, like the fellow in The story about the Big one that got away Let me laugh my head off With Moby Dick as we reminisce About them suckers who went Down with the Pequod 35? I ain’t been mean enough Make me real real mean Mean as old Marie rolling her eyes Mean as the town Bessie sings about “Where all the birds sing bass” 35? Make me Tennessee mean Cobra mean Cuckoo mean Injun mean Dracula mean Beethovenian-brows mean Miles Davis mean Don’t-offer-assistance-when Quicksand-is-tugging-some-poor Dope-under-mean Pawnbroker mean Pharaoh mean That’s it, 35 Make me Pharaoh mean Mean as can be Mean as the dickens Meaner than mean When I walk down the street I want them to whisper There goes Mr. Mean “He’s double mean He even turned the skeletons In his closet out into The cold” And 35? Don’t let me trust anybody Over Reed but Just in case Put a tail on that Negro too February 22, 1973

In those days I began to see light under every bushel basket, light nearly splitting the sides of the bushel basket. Light came through the rafters of the dairy where the grackles congregated like well-taxed citizens untransfigured even by hope. Understand I was the one underneath the basket. I was certain I had nothing to say. When I grew restless in the interior, the exterior gave.

Both lying on our sides, making love in spoon position when she’s startled, What’s that? She means the enormous ship passing before you— maybe not that large, is it a freighter or a passenger ship? But it seems huge in the dark and it’s so close. That’s a poem you say, D. H. Lawrence—Have you built your ship of death, have you? O build your ship of death, for you will need it. Right here it would be good if there were a small orchestra on board, you’d hear them and say to her, That piece is called Autumn, that’s what the brave musicians played as the Titanic went under—and then you could name this poem “Autumn.” But no, the ship is silent, its white lights glow in the darkness.

1 The autumn shade is thin. Grey leaves lie faint Where they will lie, and, where the thick green was, Light stands up, like a presence, to the sky. The trees seem merely shadows of its age. From off the hill, I hear the logging crew, The furious and indifferent saw, the slow Response of heavy pine; and I recall That goddesses have died when their trees died. Often in summer, drinking from the spring, I sensed in its cool breath and in its voice A living form, darker than any shade And without feature, passionate, yet chill With lust to fix in ice the buoyant rim— Ancient of days, the mother of us all. Now, toward his destined passion there, the strong, Vivid young man, reluctant, may return From suffering in his own experience To lie down in the darkness. In this time, I stay in doors. I do my work. I sleep. Each morning, when I wake, I assent to wake. The shadow of my fist moves on this page, Though, even now, in the wood, beneath a bank, Coiled in the leaves and cooling rocks, the snake Does as it must, and sinks into the cold. 2 Nights grow colder. The Hunter and the Bear Follow their tranquil course outside my window. I feel the gentian waiting in the wood, Blossoms waxy and blue, and blue-green stems Of the amaryllis waiting in the garden. I know, as though I waited what they wait, The cold that fastens ice about the root, A heavenly form, the same in all its changes, Inimitable, terrible, and still, And beautiful as frost. Fire warms my room. Its light declares my books and pictures. Gently, A dead soprano sings Mozart and Bach. I drink bourbon, then go to bed, and sleep In the Promethean heat of summer’s essence. 3 Awakened by some fear, I watch the sky. Compelled as though by purposes they know, The stars, in their blue distance, still affirm The bond of heaven and earth, the ancient way. This old assurance haunts small creatures, dazed In icy mud, though cold may freeze them there And leave them as they are all summer long. I cannot sleep. Passion and consequence, The brutal given, and all I have desired Evade me, and the lucid majesty That warmed the dull barbarian to life. So I lie here, left with self-consciousness, Enemy whom I love but whom his change And his forgetfulness again compel, Impassioned, toward my lost indifference, Faithful, but to an absence. Who shares my bed? Who lies beside me, certain of his waking, Led sleeping, by his own dream, to the day? 4 If I ask you, angel, will you come and lead This ache to speech, or carry me, like a child, To riot? Ever young, you come of age Remote, a pledge of distances, this pang I notice at dusk, watching you subside From tree-tops and from fields. Mysterious self, Image of the fabulous alien, Even in sleep you summon me, even there, When, under his native tree, Odysseus hears His own incredible past and future, whispered By wisdom, but by wisdom in disguise. 5 Thinking of a bravura deed, a place Sacred to a divinity, an old Verse that seems new, I postulate a man Mastered by his own image of himself. Who is it says, I am? Sensuous angel, Vessel of nerve and blood, the impoverished heir Of an awareness other than his own? Not these, but one to come? For there he is, In a steel helmet, raging, fearing his death, Carrying bread and water to a quiet, Placing ten sounds together in one sound: Confirming his election, or merely still, Sleeping, or in a colloquy with the sun. 6 Snow and then rain. The roads are wet. A car Slips and strains in the mire, and I remember Driving in France: weapons-carriers and jeeps; Our clothes and bodies stiffened by mud; our minds Diverted from fear. We labor. Overhead, A plane, Berlin or Frankfurt, now New York. The car pulls clear. My neighbor smiles. He is old. Was this our wisdom, simply, in a chance, In danger, to be mastered by a task, Like groping round a chair, through a door, to bed? 7 A dormant season, and, under the dripping tree, Not sovereign, ordering nothing, letting the past Do with me as it will, I savor place And weather, air and sun. Though Hercules Confronts his nature in his deed, repeats His purposes, and is his will, intact, Magnificent, and memorable, I try The simplest forms of our old poverty. I seek no end appointed in my absence Beyond the silence I already share. 8 I drive home with the books that I will read. The streets are harsh with traffic. Where I once Played as a boy amid old stands of pine, Row after row of houses. Lined by the new Debris of wealth and power, the broken road. Then miles of red clay bank and frugal ground. At last, in the minor hills, my father’s place, Where I can find my way as in a thought— Gardens, the trees we planted, all we share. A Cherokee trail runs north to summer hunting. I see it, when I look up from the page. 9 In nameless warmth, sun light in every corner, Bending my body over my glowing book, I share the room. Is it with a voice or touch Or look, as of an absence, learned by love, Now, merely mine? Annunciation, specter Of the worn out, lost, or broken, telling what future. What vivid loss to come, you change the room And him who reads here. Restless, he will stir, Look round, and see the room renewed and line, Color, and shape as, in desire, they are, Not shadows but substantial light, explicit, Bright as glass, inexhaustible, and true. 1O My shadow moves, until, at noon, I stand Within its seal, as in the finished past. But in the place where effect and cause are joined, In the warmth or cold of my remembering, Of love, of partial freedom, the time to be Trembles and glitters again in windy light. For nothing is disposed. The slow soft wind Tilting the blood-root keeps its gentle edge. The intimate cry, both sinister and tender, Once heard, is heard confined in its reserve. My image of myself, apart, informed By many deaths, resists me, and I stay Almost as I have been, intact, aware, Alive, though proud and cautious, even afraid.