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The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

My parents kept me from children who were rough Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes Their thighs showed through rags they ran in the street And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams. I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys Who copied my lisp behind me on the road. They were lithe they sprang out behind hedges Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud While I looked the other way, pretending to smile. I longed to forgive them but they never smiled.

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind, For else it could not be That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me And cast my love behind. I'm sure my language to her was as sweet, And every close did meet In sentence of as subtle feet, As hath the youngest He That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree. O, but my conscious fears, That fly my thoughts between, Tell me that she hath seen My hundred of gray hairs, Told seven and forty years Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace My mountain belly and my rocky face; And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.

a love person from love people out of the afrikan sun under the sign of cancer. whoever see my midnight smile seeing star apple and mango from home. whoever take me for a negative thing, his death be on him like a skin and his skin be his heart’s revenge. * lucy one-eye she got her mama’s ways. big round roller can’t cook can’t clean if that’s what you want you got it world. lucy one-eye she see the world sideways. word foolish she say what she don’t want to say, she don’t say what she want to. lucy one-eye she won’t walk away from it. she’ll keep on trying with her crooked look and her wrinkled ways, the darling girl. * if mama could see she would see lucy sprawling limbs of lucy decorating the backs of chairs lucy hair holding the mirrors up that reflect odd aspects of lucy. if mama could hear she would hear lucysong rolled in the corners like lint exotic webs of lucysighs long lucy spiders explaining to obscure gods. if mama could talk she would talk good girl good girl good girl clean up your room. * i was born in a hotel, a maskmaker. my bones were knit by a perilous knife. my skin turned around at midnight and i entered the earth in a woman jar. i learned the world all wormside up and this is my yes my strong fingers; i was born in a bed of good lessons and it has made me wise. * light on my mother’s tongue breaks through her soft extravagant hip into life. lucille she calls the light, which was the name of the grandmother who waited by the crossroads in virginia and shot the whiteman off his horse, killing the killer of sons. light breaks from her life to her lives… mine already is an afrikan name. *

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain. The day is gone and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done. The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung, The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green, My youth is gone, and yet I am but young, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen, My thread is cut, and yet it was not spun, And now I live, and now my life is done. I sought my death and found it in my womb, I lookt for life and saw it was a shade, I trode the earth and knew it was my tomb, And now I die, and now I am but made. The glass is full, and now the glass is run, And now I live, and now my life is done.

My puppy’s in the garden. He loves to smell the flowers. To help them grow my puppy always sprinkles them with showers.

Or is it on account of my radiant eye I have lived so long?—I never slept in the study hall, or called anyone by an improper name. I never urinated in a desolate synagogue. I never ate or drank in a desolate synagogue or picked my teeth. I did not walk into a desolate synagogue in the summer just because of the heat, nor in winter just because of cold rain. Also, I know one may not deliver a eulogy for an individual inside a desolate synagogue. But you can read scripture inside a desolate synagogue, or you can teach in a desolate synagogue, or deliver eulogies for the community. When synagogues are deserted they are to be left alone and weeds allowed to grow. One should not pick the weeds, lest there be anguish that the synagogue is in ruins. When are the synagogues to be swept so that weeds do not grow inside them? When they are in use.—When synagogues are in ruins, weeds are not to be picked there. Because I know these things I was approved, although unworthy, after a three-day oral examination before the king of Sicily to whom by custom the power of approval is entrusted. Thereafter, I have worn the laurel crown—my eye radiant to this day.

One by one they appear in the darkness: a few friends, and a few with historical names. How late they start to shine! but before they fade they stand perfectly embodied, all the past lapping them like a cloak of chaos. They were men who, I thought, lived only to renew the wasteful force they spent with each hot convulsion. They remind me, distant now. True, they are not at rest yet, but now that they are indeed apart, winnowed from failures, they withdraw to an orbit and turn with disinterested hard energy, like the stars.

To Frank O’Hara Sometimes when my eyes are red I go up on top of the RCA Building and gaze at my world, Manhattan— my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in, lofts, beds, coldwater flats —on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind, its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men walking the size of specks of wool— Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine, sun go down over New Jersey where I was born & Paterson where I played with ants— my later loves on 15th Street, my greater loves of Lower East Side, my once fabulous amours in the Bronx faraway— paths crossing in these hidden streets, my history summed up, my absences and ecstasies in Harlem— —sun shining down on all I own in one eyeblink to the horizon in my last eternity— matter is water. Sad, I take the elevator and go down, pondering, and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s plateglass, faces, questioning after who loves, and stop, bemused in front of an automobile shopwindow standing lost in calm thought, traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me waiting for a moment when ... Time to go home & cook supper & listen to the romantic war news on the radio ... all movement stops & I walk in the timeless sadness of existence, tenderness flowing thru the buildings, my fingertips touching reality’s face, my own face streaked with tears in the mirror of some window—at dusk— where I have no desire— for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese lampshades of intellection— Confused by the spectacle around me, Man struggling up the street with packages, newspapers, ties, beautiful suits toward his desire Man, woman, streaming over the pavements red lights clocking hurried watches & movements at the curb— And all these streets leading so crosswise, honking, lengthily, by avenues stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums thru such halting traffic screaming cars and engines so painfully to this countryside, this graveyard this stillness on deathbed or mountain once seen never regained or desired in the mind to come where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear. New York, October 1958

What I lose you let me, accusation always gets one in. But I want to talk like the dead remember that town where we went or how do I know when I’m just a soul — not when I’m leading? A soul can lead, fight and kill; in the sketchy rain there, but you can’t kill where we’re dead. That’s the best thing — no one has any power. How can I lead you without power? We want to find out ... Drop everything? — there’s no gravity. Are you grave? There’s no bravery. I’m going to lead you into a you you don’t know ... Most people want to go. There we risked being wrong but that was a linguistic quality, or you could have brought us to hell. Outside of gravity, instead, is the house. It wasn’t built with raisins. The light there, but what’s it for? For eyes. He called me “Four Eyes” now I have billions. It’s a house on the coast Is it the House of Answers? I will continue to reason for you, living on no particular income deep in my soul. The house has a basement I didn’t know about connecting to My Sea, Mare Meum. The answers break with foam and wild pearls. The wind is me too — you know who you are — where’s the desert? The sea came back to this land, to the abandoned its lover. The kind of sea you can’t drown in. You can want to coincide with me for I am the soul your leader the clear rock of kind mind, senseless. Senseless free will — the only thing here.