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The grave has more power than the eyes of the beloved. An open grave with all its magnets. This weight on the wings. The sky is waiting for an airship. I have the feeling that I haven’t got much life left. Three hours after the celestial attack. Why don’t I respond when I’m being offended? Because my religion doesn’t allow me to. Exterior maps: geography. Interior maps: psychography. And in your hard cathedral I kneel. Mountains pass camels pass like the history of wars in antiquity. Of all the men I am, I can’t find any of them without the control of the intruding eye. Problems. Mysteries that fasten themselves to my chest. All I want is not to see businesses nor gardens nor markets nor eyeglasses nor elevators. In order to serve all radio listeners, without discriminating between social classes, I speak a tongue that fills hearts with the law of communicating clouds. I have my brain or whatever it is full of skull moths. For the world to go on being what it is it must —per force—take another form. True poems are fires. When something cherished burns instead of the fireman I call, rushes forth the incendiary. It says: live, live, live! It is Death.

I dunno yer highfalutin' words, but here's th' way it seems When I'm peekin' out th' winder o' my little House o Dreams; I've been lookin' 'roun' this big ol' world, as bizzy as a hive, An' I want t' tell ye, neighbor mine, it's good t' be alive. I've ben settin' here, a-thinkin' hard, an' say, it seems t' me That this big ol' world is jest about as good as it kin be, With its starvin' little babies, an' its battles, an' its strikes, An' its profiteers, an' hold-up men—th' dawggone little tykes! An' its hungry men that fought fer us, that nobody employs. An' I think, "Why, shucks, we're jest a lot o' grown-up little boys!" An' I settle back, an' light my pipe, an' reach fer Mother's hand, An' I wouldn't swap my peace o' mind fer nothin' in the land; Fer this world uv ours, that jest was made fer folks like me an' you Is a purty good ol' place t' live—say, neighbor, ain't it true?

—for Patrick Rosal Because I must not get up to throw down in a café in the Midwest, I hold something like a clownfaced herd of bareback and winged elephants stomping in my chest, I hold a thousand kites in a field loosed from their tethers at once, I feel my skeleton losing track somewhat of the science I’ve made of tamp, feel it rising up shriek and groove, rising up a river guzzling a monsoon, not to mention the butterflies of the loins, the hummingbirds of the loins, the thousand dromedaries of the loins, oh body of sunburst, body of larkspur and honeysuckle and honeysuccor bloom, body of treetop holler, oh lightspeed body of gasp and systole, the mandible’s ramble, the clavicle swoon, the spine’s trillion teeth oh, drift of hip oh, trill of ribs, oh synaptic clamor and juggernaut swell oh gutracket blastoff and sugartongue syntax oh throb and pulse and rivulet swing and glottal thing and kick-start heart and heel-toe heart ooh ooh ooh a bullfight where the bull might take flight and win!

To make beauty out of pain, it damns the eyes— No, dams the eyes. See how they overflow? No damns them, damns them, and so they cry. What shape can I swallow to make me whole? Baby’s bird-shaped block, blue-painted wood That fits in the bird-hole of the painted wood box? The skeleton leaf? The skeleton key? Loud Knock when the shape won’t unlock any locks. I hear it through the static in the baby’s room When the monitor clicks on and off, sound Of sea-ice cracking against the jagged sea-rocks, Laughing gull in the gale. What is it dives down Past sight, down there dark with the other blocks? It can’t be seen, only heard. A kind of curse, This kind curse. Forgive me. Blessing that hurts.

Krushchev is coming on the right day! the cool graced light is pushed off the enormous glass piers by hard wind and everything is tossing, hurrying on up this country has everything but politesse, a Puerto Rican cab driver says and five different girls I see look like Piedie Gimbel with her blonde hair tossing too, as she looked when I pushed her little daughter on the swing on the lawn it was also windy last night we went to a movie and came out, Ionesco is greater than Beckett, Vincent said, that's what I think, blueberry blintzes and Khrushcev was probably being carped at in Washington, no politesse Vincent tells me about his mother's trip to Sweden Hans tells us about his father's life in Sweden, it sounds like Grace Hartigan's painting Sweden so I go home to bed and names drift through my head Purgatorio Merchado, Gerhard Schwartz and Gaspar Gonzales, all unknown figures of the early morning as I go to work where does the evil of the year go when September takes New York and turns it into ozone stalagmites deposits of light so I get back up make coffee, and read François Villon, his life, so dark New York seems blinding and my tie is blowing up the street I wish it would blow off though it is cold and somewhat warms my neck as the train bears Krushchev on to Pennsylvania Station and the light seems to be eternal and joy seems to be inexorable I am foolish enough always to find it in wind

Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline lana turner has collapsed! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Octopus floating in earth’s ink-ore core whose arms extend up here as trees may your branches squirt their black across my pages please

My hair had hardly covered my forehead. I was picking flowers, playing by my door, When you, my lover, on a bamboo horse, Came trotting in circles and throwing green plums. We lived near together on a lane in Ch’ang-kan, Both of us young and happy-hearted. ...At fourteen I became your wife, So bashful that I dared not smile, And I lowered my head toward a dark corner And would not turn to your thousand calls; But at fifteen I straightened my brows and laughed, Learning that no dust could ever seal our love, That even unto death I would await you by my post And would never lose heart in the tower of silent watching. ...Then when I was sixteen, you left on a long journey Through the Gorges of Ch’u-t’ang, of rock and whirling water. And then came the Fifth-month, more than I could bear, And I tried to hear the monkeys in your lofty far-off sky. Your footprints by our door, where I had watched you go, Were hidden, every one of them, under green moss, Hidden under moss too deep to sweep away. And the first autumn wind added fallen leaves. And now, in the Eighth-month, yellowing butterflies Hover, two by two, in our west-garden grasses And, because of all this, my heart is breaking And I fear for my bright cheeks, lest they fade. ...Oh, at last, when you return through the three Pa districts, Send me a message home ahead! And I will come and meet you and will never mind the distance, All the way to Chang-feng Sha.

At Robben Island the political prisoners studied. They coined the motto Each one Teach one. In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners Address them always as “Profesor.” Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say. Culture the lock, culture the key. Imagination That calls boiled sheep heads “Smileys.” The first year at Guantánamo, Abdul Rahim Dost Incised his Pashto poems into styrofoam cups. “The Sangomo says in our Zulu culture we do not Worship our ancestors:we consult them.” Becky is abandoned in 1902 and Rose dies giving Birth in 1924 and Sylvia falls in 1951. Still falling still dying still abandoned in 2005 Still nothing finished among the descendants. I support the War, says the comic, it’s just the Troops I’m against: can’t stand those Young People. Proud of the fallen, proud of her son the bomber. Ashamed of the government. Skeptical. After the Klansman was found Not Guilty one juror Said she just couldn’t vote to convict a pastor. Who do you write for? I write for dead people: For Emily Dickinson, for my grandfather. “T he Ancestors say the problem with your Knees Began in your Feet.It could move up your Back.” But later the Americans gave Dost not only paper And pen but books. Hemingway, Dickens. Old Aegyptius said Whoever has called this Assembly, For whatever reason—it is a good in itself. O thirsty shades who regard the offering, O stained earth. There are many fake Sangomos. This one is real. Coloured prisoners got different meals and could wear Long pants and underwear, Blacks got only shorts. No he says he cannot regret the three years in prison: Otherwise he would not have written those poems. I have a small-town mind. Like the Greeks and Trojans. Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good. Did he see anything like the prisoner on a leash? Yes, In Afghanistan. In Guantánamo he was isolated. Our enemies “disassemble” says the President. Not that anyone at all couldn’t mis-speak. The profesores created nicknames for torture devices: The Airplane. The Frog. Burping the Baby. Not that those who behead the helpless in the name Of God or tradition don’t also write poetry. Guilts, metaphors, traditions. Hunger strikes. Culture the penalty. Culture the escape. What could your children boast about you? What Will your father say, down among the shades? The Sangomo told Marvin, “You are crushed by some Weight.Only your own Ancestors can help you.”

Dreamer of purified fury and fabulous habit, your eyes of deserted white afternoons target, stiffen, riot with unicorn candor so I swallow your body like meanings or whisky or as you swallow me. Break rhythm here:      your kiss is my justice: look then now how orange blooms of jubilation unfold in satisfied air! This sex is more than sex, under the will of the God of sex, so I softly invoke transformation of your rueful image of haven –those frozen rocks, that guilty lighthouse isolate from temptation– to warm Flemish landscape green and brighteyed with daisies of dizzying color where pilgrims are dancing after gospelling bird who sing of new springs, good water.