1269 Arts and sciences poems

I was reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s new piece In The Atlantic— it was the one about President Obama’s decision not To be persuaded by a commonplace That our credibility hinges on the use Of swift and massive lethal force despite Pressure even from his own Cabinet Appalled that Assad shelled Ghouta with sarin gas — When I thought of your poem on the way Of denial, “Via Negativa,” whose lines Celebrated their (your rhyme) reticence. Why am I even talking this way to you? I watched you being buried, yet in the end I wonder if I had ever been your friend.

having studied swarthmore charts and mirrors, fashion magazines, foucault, bloom, bad light, whereof—hereof—had not become clearer; what vision to present as first self-sight. self quit; put on boots and a see-through dress, some thought it was ironic "self-object- ification", said they were not impressed. some guessed that "honesty" was self's subject, were put off nonetheless, self-asked: to sleep with me? who would? self flat, self one inch deep, self-glimpsed not much in that giant mirror: innocence -credulity, self doth protest! hey! presumptuous interlocutor! pissed off, thwarted, played, and soon, undressed!

Alone it stands in Poesy’s fair land, A temple by the muses set apart; A perfect structure of consummate art, By artists builded and by genius planned. Beyond the reach of the apprentice hand, Beyond the ken of the unturtored heart, Like a fine carving in a common mart, Only the favored few will understand. A chef-d’oeuvre toiled over with great care, Yet which the unseeing careless crowd goes by, A plainly set, but well-cut solitaire, An ancient bit of pottery, too rare To please or hold aught save the special eye, These only with the sonnet can compare.

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

for Helen Vendler O for a muse of fire, a sack of dough, Or both! O promissory notes of woe! One time in Santa Fe N.M. Ol’ Winfield Townley Scott and I ... But whoa. One can exert oneself,ff, Or architect a heaven like Rimbaud, Or if that seems, how shall I say,de trop, One can at least write sonnets, a propos Of nothing save the do-re-mi-fa-sol Of poetry itself. Is not the row Of perfect rhymes, the terminal bon mot, Obeisance enough to the Great O? “Observe,” said Chairman Mao to Premier Chou, “On voyage à Parnasse pour prendre les eaux. On voyage comme poisson, incog.”

Close by the jerkwater rancheros tonight, the round gloom longs, a window in the gloom, an attitude in the window, a pleading in the attitude, an unwitnessed ravishment in the pleading. A man stands there in the window thinking about how naked the water looks, thinking the water looks like emptiness, it looks like nothing. His heart aches to think how many gamblers have broke down on this highway? How many princesses of ice? I know I'm suburban, I've got a shitty whiskey in my hand, I work a job like eating a knife . . . Everyone's sperm all over my life, the sad waiting. Here's to the simple and endless desperate person lifting this glass. •  •  • If you imagine you're at the base of a cross coming out of your chest, that its vertical beam is a café and its crossbeam a bar of inebriates running along the rear of the café, that you're in a soft booth in the vertical beam of the cross facing a blonde over whose shoulder you happen to glance at the instant the TV above the bar broadcasts the unmistakable image of fate, the Vietnamese man getting a bullet shot into his ear, then you understand that I had to stop eating my squid stew. I started to cry. Susan tried to make some gesture, baby playing in front of the cobra's den, and it was enough: I was lodged in the moment, we were the treasure. •  •  • Sweet heat each breath of air, sugar of fire, and yet Dark said she was my date. She told me Don't be late. I guess it is our fate here in the mental hospital of passion and forgetting to scream inside the dream, put back the suicide, stand upon the corner starkly lit by the beam of memory from the face of a friend amid the glass of a toast, and wait that wait. •  •  • But I always come back to the corner of feelings and the sponge of vinegar. What is made with the hands rises up to seize us and press every word to its service so that I can never look at anything that hasn't been talked about a thousand times already, but I saw him screw his face up like a child in suspense of some mischief, and they blew his brains out. Your homework is more important than Cub Scouts. His head jerks. There's a blue-and-white menu by Susan's left hand. He collapses as if full of sand. You'd better settle down and eat. At the next table before his mother the boy in the Cub Scout uniform settles down and eats.

His piercing pince-nez. Some dim frieze Hands point to a dim frieze, in the dark night. In the book of his music the corners have straightened: Which owe their presence to our sleeping hands. The ox-blood from the hands which play For fire for warmth for hands for growth Is there room in the room that you room in? Upon his structured tomb: Still they mean something. For the dance And the architecture. Weave among incidents May be portentous to him We are the sleeping fragments of his sky, Wind giving presence to fragments.

banging around in a cigarette      she isn’t “in love” my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of the west my hands make love to my body when my arms are around you you never tell me your name and I am forced to write “belly” when I mean “love” Au revoir, scene! I waken, read, write long letters and wander restlessly when leaves are blowing my dream a crumpled horn in advance of the broken arm she murmurs of signs to her fingers weeps in the morning to waken so shackled with love Not me. I like to beat people up. My dream a white tree

It’s like I thought it would be. Absolute silence. Just me and my poem. But, as I stand onstage preparing to start, I realize the audience is quiet because they want to hear me. Silence isn’t scary. It’s like Mr. Carey said, silence is my chance. And so I speak, slowly and clearly, and I don’t see the faces in front of me. I see the images of my poem, and I think only of what I’m saying and how much it means to me. My voice grows stronger and I don’t have to struggle to remember the words. I know them because I wrote them.

Sick in bed with a sore throat, I can’t get out of my mind the image of the cat harpsichord from the eighteenth century, soothing a prince with laughter. It worked like this: the tails of them attached to the strings of the instrument were pulled by different notes, and the difference between the way the cats cried was music. A shadow is only a shape. Which is why certain individuals can put their hands in light and make them birds, can say in shadow what they can’t in light. The tiny branches of the hedge in the yard that separates my house from the next look like the rib bones of a bird when the sun hits lunch. The world, they say, is best for a nest but no good for a flying place. Come back, I say to my dead, and the branches don’t even graze the window, when I eat it hurts.