873 Life poems

The swinger the swirler the swirled: stop grieving. I drink all night but in a diminishing appetite. The scene outside is obscene from a humbling window. My sentiment spreads, my famine a flagpole, a grizzle. Birds sing next year’s songs, or antique rescues. I write but where shall I send it? Let go — I shall go tie the flowers the leaves the whole orchard. The outskirts are curved, shadows of countrywoman donors    ... You bring me a cup of fresh tea that I love, I return you two kapok leaves — like hand waves. Translated from the Chinese

Summer brings out the girls in their green dresses Whom the foolish might compare to daffodils, Not seeing how a dead grandmother in each one governs her limbs, Darkening the bright corolla, using her lips to speak through, Or that a silver torque was woven out of The roots of wet speargrass. The young are mastered by the Dead, Lacking cunning. But on the beaches, under the clean wind That blows this way from the mountains of Peru, Drunk with the wind and the silence, not moving an inch As the surf-swimmers mount on yoked waves, One can begin to shake with laughter, Becoming oneself a metal Neptune. To want nothing is The only possible freedom. But I prefer to think of An afternoon spent drinking rum and cloves In a little bar, just after the rain had started, in another time Before we began to die — the taste of boredom on the tongue Easily dissolving, and the lights coming on — With what company? I forget. Where can we find the right Herbs, drinks, bandages to cover These lifelong intolerable wounds? Herbs of oblivion, they lost their power to help us The day that Aphrodite touched her mouth to ours.

1 —Yet  sitting  with so little blood  leaving me to cause  this  fatigue ,  on top of the picnic table my ankles are now over its precipice    of at  the  air  over  its edge   over even the hollow circular   and flat  thin stalks and grass blades  growing fast with so much speed no hurry I   can see  beneath  my feet  kicking into the summer air   ——                              looking up   from   underneath  in  front  of  the  on- rushing speed  of  a   cloud   throwing its   first   thrust-shudders over the top edge  of  the  mountain   like      I      thought a spreading out of  the    unlawed —    up  from    underneath    its white   cloud   edge ,   especially harvested  by  all these  fir  and  spruce  and  aspen and  pine top   edges   jutting fragrant fierce with hot smell  ( spill- outs   of their    seeds  ) growing     the   indent- ing of   the    mountain   in their evergreen to blue tone - scented  modulatings   , taperings   , moorings which the now  big  cloud   passing over also  harvests push - ing   some   kind of   lawlessness 2 along           —  —  (  up    from my   feet  I’ve    stopped  kicking  ,  or  now  forget  to  kick  , underneath the   great white  cloud    moving at  varying   and   breakneck speeds   —   Which  I imagine is    unlawed             though   I   am  not moving   —                         imagine moving     out   from     its   nature            but   it is  not    a law    passing   over    the air   waves   the satellite  dish   the meta- llic  meticulous   signals  ,  ,  )  —  I   am losing neither  a little    nor    a  lot of   blood     —             over  the  dropped - down  landscape  thundering  along   its    applause sounds   its  green  to   brown   to   amber  under- neath   feathering  along  its before-fatigue intricacy , which   harvests  the let    me come closer   in — & the   sun    ,        a windfall  enabling   so   much   of  it roving     the   mountain  from  almost  its  very  beginning   to its very  present  height   ,      the world  surges as    world    against  ,       then      dives out   from   into        air and the  lightflow at its fast one   & only    speed     all   smashing  into what   looks   like  a  lumpy  eternity  ,   me  and  the  black summer fly    in its    engines  ,   a  repose   in   the windflow and in  its bumping     up against  ? And  in its  bumping  up   against . Though    ,    I think it    is    also mortal    ,    of moving   ,   of    collision , of  chance encounter until their    currents  ,  until   their wakes let you     in   ,    let     you     through    —

~~ & thus you entered a forest of solitudes where in this great sense your life had been pursued, till like a shadow breaking off a rising body, a need hovered & grew. Some lined feature of another fate strives to be met, sits low & upright. Those qualities which had been energy or grace past pain wove from the nerves a nest or instinct. Your calms are interesting. Write to us during this terrible government. A universe coughs blue & draws a twiceness from the mitred now, while your garden hand spells the inexhaustible forms~~ FOR  ELIZABETH   ROBINSON

Yes, the young mothers are beautiful, with all the self-acceptance of exhaustion, still dazed from their great outpouring, pushing their strollers along the public river walk.

You are the start of the week or the end of it, and according to The Beatles you creep in like a nun. You're the second full day the kids have been away with their father, the second full day of an empty house. Sunday, I've missed you. I've been sitting in the backyard with a glass of Pinot waiting for your arrival. Did you know the first Sweet 100s are turning red in the garden, but the lettuce has grown too bitter to eat. I am looking up at the bluest sky I have ever seen, cerulean blue, a heaven sky no one would believe I was under. You are my witness. No day is promised. You are absolution. You are my unwritten to-do list, my dishes in the sink, my brownie breakfast, my braless day.

Madison, Wisconsin, 1996 Here is a genial congregation, well fed and rosy with health and appetite, robust children in tow. They have come and all the generations of them, to be fed, their old ones too who are eligible now for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age. Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one, heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said. Here there is good will; here peace on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruits of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is abundance, here is the promised land of milk and honey, out of which a flank of the fatted calf, thick still on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction over the loaves of bread and the little fishes, belly-up in butter.

I

Inamoratas, with an approbation, Bestowed his title. Blessed his inclination. He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat Tawny, reluctant, royal. He is fat And fine this morning. Definite. Reimbursed. He waits a moment, he designs his reign, That no performance may be plain or vain. Then rises in a clear delirium. He sheds, with his pajamas, shabby days. And his desertedness, his intricate fear, the Postponed resentments and the prim precautions. Now, at his bath, would you deny him lavender Or take away the power of his pine? What smelly substitute, heady as wine, Would you provide? life must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some. Would you have flowers in his life? suggest Asters? a Really Good geranium? A white carnation? would you prescribe a Show With the cold lilies, formal chrysanthemum Magnificence, poinsettias, and emphatic Red of prize roses? might his happiest Alternative (you muse) be, after all, A bit of gentle garden in the best Of taste and straight tradition? Maybe so. But you forget, or did you ever know, His heritage of cabbage and pigtails, Old intimacy with alleys, garbage pails, Down in the deep (but always beautiful) South Where roses blush their blithest (it is said) And sweet magnolias put Chanel to shame. No! He has not a flower to his name. Except a feather one, for his lapel. Apart from that, if he should think of flowers It is in terms of dandelions or death. Ah, there is little hope. You might as well— Unless you care to set the world a-boil And do a lot of equalizing things, Remove a little ermine, say, from kings, Shake hands with paupers and appoint them men, For instance—certainly you might as well Leave him his lotion, lavender and oil. Let us proceed. Let us inspect, together With his meticulous and serious love, The innards of this closet. Which is a vault Whose glory is not diamonds, not pearls, Not silver plate with just enough dull shine. But wonder-suits in yellow and in wine, Sarcastic green and zebra-striped cobalt. With shoulder padding that is wide And cocky and determined as his pride; Ballooning pants that taper off to ends Scheduled to choke precisely. Here are hats Like bright umbrellas; and hysterical ties Like narrow banners for some gathering war. People are so in need, in need of help. People want so much that they do not know. Below the tinkling trade of little coins The gold impulse not possible to show Or spend. Promise piled over and betrayed. These kneaded limbs receive the kiss of silk. Then they receive the brave and beautiful Embrace of some of that equivocal wool. He looks into his mirror, loves himself— The neat curve here; the angularity That is appropriate at just its place; The technique of a variegated grace. Here is all his sculpture and his art And all his architectural design. Perhaps you would prefer to this a fine Value of marble, complicated stone. Would have him think with horror of baroque, Rococo. You forget and you forget. He dances down the hotel steps that keep Remnants of last night’s high life and distress. As spat-out purchased kisses and spilled beer. He swallows sunshine with a secret yelp. Passes to coffee and a roll or two. Has breakfasted. Out. Sounds about him smear, Become a unit. He hears and does not hear The alarm clock meddling in somebody’s sleep; Children’s governed Sunday happiness; The dry tone of a plane; a woman’s oath; Consumption’s spiritless expectoration; An indignant robin’s resolute donation Pinching a track through apathy and din; Restaurant vendors weeping; and the L That comes on like a slightly horrible thought. Pictures, too, as usual, are blurred. He sees and does not see the broken windows Hiding their shame with newsprint; little girl With ribbons decking wornness, little boy Wearing the trousers with the decentest patch, To honor Sunday; women on their way From “service,” temperate holiness arranged Ably on asking faces; men estranged From music and from wonder and from joy But far familiar with the guiding awe Of foodlessness. He loiters. Restaurant vendors Weep, or out of them rolls a restless glee. The Lonesome Blues, the Long-lost Blues, I Want A Big Fat Mama. Down these sore avenues Comes no Saint-Saëns, no piquant elusive Grieg, And not Tschaikovsky’s wayward eloquence And not the shapely tender drift of Brahms. But could he love them? Since a man must bring To music what his mother spanked him for When he was two: bits of forgotten hate, Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts: The little dream his father humored: the thing His sister did for money: what he ate For breakfast—and for dinner twenty years Ago last autumn: all his skipped desserts. The pasts of his ancestors lean against Him. Crowd him. Fog out his identity. Hundreds of hungers mingle with his own, Hundreds of voices advise so dexterously He quite considers his reactions his, Judges he walks most powerfully alone, That everything is—simply what it is. But movie-time approaches, time to boo The hero’s kiss, and boo the heroine Whose ivory and yellow it is sin For his eye to eat of. The Mickey Mouse, However, is for everyone in the house. Squires his lady to dinner at Joe’s Eats. His lady alters as to leg and eye, Thickness and height, such minor points as these, From Sunday to Sunday. But no matter what Her name or body positively she’s In Queen Lace stockings with ambitious heels That strain to kiss the calves, and vivid shoes Frontless and backless, Chinese fingernails, Earrings, three layers of lipstick, intense hat Dripping with the most voluble of veils. Her affable extremes are like sweet bombs About him, whom no middle grace or good Could gratify. He had no education In quiet arts of compromise. He would Not understand your counsels on control, nor Thank you for your late trouble. At Joe’s Eats You get your fish or chicken on meat platters. With coleslaw, macaroni, candied sweets, Coffee and apple pie. You go out full. (The end is—isn’t it?—all that really matters.) And even and intrepid come The tender boots of night to home. Her body is like new brown bread Under the Woolworth mignonette. Her body is a honey bowl Whose waiting honey is deep and hot, Her body is like summer earth, Receptive, soft, and absolute ...

Who won? I said. The game’s tomorrow, he said. And I became the snail I always was, crossing the field in my helmet. But I’d given it my all, while the plane arced on its way to a landing, when I overheard the woman behind us say I was gathering wildflowers to make a wreath to lay on my mother’s grave when my son fell off a mountain in Italy