872 Life poems

You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead, but I have lived two decades longer now than you and all this time I have carried you in my head so I think I have the right to question what you said, dear teacher. My religious upbringing’s residue, you would have thought it foolish. To speak to the dead, however, is sometimes necessary, especially haunted by all the things I know you hoped I’d do with all this time that I have carried you in my head. In a dream last night I followed where you led until you asked me in a loud voice what I knew. (You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead, but I was dreaming and could not refuse.) I said that you were wrong, that I could see your bitter view (since all this time I have carried you in my head) for what it was, and you for who you were. Instead of dreaming your reply I woke as you withdrew. You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead but all this time I have carried you in my head.

I'm working on my poems and working with my fingers not my head. Because my fingers are the farthest stretching things from me. Look at the tree. Like its longest branch I touch the evening's quiet breathing. Sounds of rain. The crackling heat from other trees. The tree points everywhere. The branches can't reach to their roots though. Growing longer they grow weaker also. Can't make use of water. Rain falls. But I'm working with these farthest stretching things from me. Along my fingertips bare shoots of days then years unfurl in the cold air.

john   lord knows you still vexed   reckon me too if my wife stole off durin sleepy night   god an de devil only souls up at dat hour even if i knows she bout to be sold south   even if i knows she was leevin   an you did   you so troubled when i talk about leevin call me a fool   call me cudjo   five years wid you john   yo wife bout to be sold away   jus cus you free dis don’t worry you none you laugh   dunno if i’d miss yo laugh if i was in de south tho thank ya jesus gotta room in philadelphia john   aint big but clean nuf room for us   some chirren too   yo baby   i aint too old jus yet jus round thirty-one   i think   make us a home john    one where we’s both free   free from de lash’s shadow free like de lord mean   got dis suit fo ya john   aint nobody worn dese clothes befo walk proud in dese clothese   dese is free mans cloths

To you born into violence, the wars of the red ant are nothing; you, in the heart of the eruption. I am speaking from immeasurable grass blades. You, there on the rubble, what is the river of vapor to you? You who are helpless as small birds downed on the ice pack. You who are spoiled as commercial fruit by the medfly. To you the machine guns. To you the semen of fire, the birth of the maggot in the corpse. You, to whom we send these gifts; at the heart of light we are crushed together. When the sun dies we will become one.

I sit where I always sit, in back of the Buddha, Red leather wing chair, pony skin trunk under my feet, Sky light above me, Chinese and Indian rugs on the floor. 1 March, 1998, where to begin again? Over there's the ur-photograph, Giorgio Morandi, glasses pushed up on his forehead, Looking hard at four objects— Two olive oil tins, one wine bottle, one flower vase, A universe of form and structure, The universe constricting in front of his eyes, angelic orders And applications scraped down To paint on an easel stand, some in the frame, some not. Bologna, my friend, Bologna, world's bit and world's end. _________ It's only in darkness you can see the light, only From emptiness that things start to fill, I read once in a dream, I read in a book under the pink Redundancies of the spring peach trees. Old fires, old geographies. In that case, make it old, I say, make it singular In its next resurrection, White violets like photographs on the tombstone of the yard. Each year it happens this way, each year Something dead comes back and lifts up its arms, puts down its luggage And says—in the same costume, down-at-heels, badly sewn— I bring you good news from the other world. _________ One hand on the sun, one hand on the moon, both feet bare, God of the late Mediterranean Renaissance Breaststrokes across the heavens. Easter, and all who've been otherwised peek from their shells, Thunderheads gathering at the rear abyss of things, Lightning, quick swizzle sticks, troubling the dark in-between. You're everything that I'm not, they think, I'll fly away, Lord, I'll fly away. April's agnostic and nickel-plated and skin deep, Glitter and bead-spangle, haute couture, The world its runway, slink-step and glide. Roll the stone slowly as it vogues and turns, roll the stone slowly. _________ Well, that was a month ago. May now, What's sure to arrive has since arrived and been replaced, Snick-snack, lock and load, grey heart's bull's-eye, A little noon music out of the trees, a sonatina in green. Spring passes. Across the room, on the opposite wall, A 19 th century photograph Of the Roman arena in Verona. Inside, stone tiers and stone gate. Over the outer portico, the ghost of Catullus at sky's end. The morning and evening stars never meet, nor summer and spring: Beauty has been my misfortune, hard journey, uncomfortable resting place. Whatever it is I have looked for Is tiny, so tiny it can dance in the palm of my hand. _________ This is the moment of our disregard— just after supper, Unseasonable hail in huddles across the porch, The dogs whimpering, thunder and lightning eddying off toward the east, Nothing to answer back to, nothing to dress us down. Thus do we slide into our disbelief and disaffection, Caught in the weeds and understory of our own lives, Bad weather, bad dreams. Proper attention is our refuge now, our perch and our praise. So? So. The moon has its rain-ring auraed around it— The more that we think we understand, the less we see, Back yard becoming an obelisk Of darkness into the sky, no hieroglyphs, no words to the wise.

If they'd had writing in time, Cuba could have been Crete, watery source of the Minoans and thus the Greeks. What's lost? A possible us growing like new foliage out of stony ground, emerging? Last voice, first, a whole world calling— awful, inaudible —into the unstoppable loud (roaring!) hurricane-force sea wind.

When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.

The sounds of traffic die over the back lawn to occur again in the low distance. The voices, risen, of the neighborhood cannot maintain that pitch and fail briefly, start up again. Similarly my breathing rises and falls while I look out the window of apartment number three in this slum, hoping for rage, or sorrow. They don’t come to me anymore. How can I lament anything? It is all so proper, so much as it should be, now the nearing cumulus clouds, ominous, shift, they are like the curtains, billowy, veering at the apex of their intrusion on the room. If I am alive now, it is only to be in all this making all possible. I am glad to be finally a part of such machinery. I was after all not so fond of living, and there comes into me, when I see how little I liked being a man, a great joy. Look out our astounding clear windows before evening. It is almost as if the world were blue with some lubricant, it shines so.

Desolate and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbor's breast And the harbor's eyes.

I am looking for the photo that would make all the difference in my life. It’s very small and subject to fits of amnesia, turning up in poker hands, grocery carts, under the unturned stone. The photo shows me at the lost and found looking for an earlier photo, the one that would have made all the difference then. My past evades me like a politician. Wielding a fly-swatter, it destroys my collection of cereal boxes, my childhood lived close to the breakfast table. Only that photo can help me locate my fourteen lost children, who look just like me. When I call the Bureau of Missing Persons, they say, “Try the Bureau of Missing Photos.” They have a fine collection. Here’s one of Calvin Coolidge’s seventh wedding. Here’s one of a man going over a cliff on a dogsled. Here’s my Uncle Arthur the night he bought the prize peacock. O photo! End your tour of the world in a hot air balloon. Resign your job at the mirror-testing laboratory. Come home to me, you little fool, before I find I can live without you.