48 Morning poems

I sing this morning: Hello, hello. I proclaim the bright day of the soul. The sun is a good fellow, the devil is a good guy, no deaths today I know. I live because I live. I do not die because I cannot die. In Tuscan sunlight Masaccio painted his belief that St. Peter’s shadow cured a cripple, gave him back his sight. I’ve come through eighty-five summers. I walk in sunlight. In my garden, death questions every root, flowers reply. I know the dark night of the soul does not need God’s eye, as a beggar does not need a hand or a bowl.

Mauve mist-shadow cloaks the sky’s River-blurred, inchoate border. Dawn’s old story; and light tries— Not the last time—to devise Lasting order; From first principles assigns Laws to frame day’s jurisdiction; Drawing contours, shapes, and lines From the nebula, it shines, Strange as fiction. Such designs, though, won’t appear In the plans of a committee. Look. The moon’s pale-copper sphere Rings—a gong too faint to hear— Through the city. Let them linger, unawake. Down the mountain’s wrinkled brilliance Darkness empties like a lake. Minted gold, house windows make Coins worth millions. Both in disbelief and pride All the buildings in the distance On the river’s farther side Take up, as the shadows slide, New existence. Shadow slides along the roof, Past the guttering and gable, Shrinks, and leaves the house aloof Where the light reads out its proof Like a fable.

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The crow’s raw hectoring cry scoops clean an oval divot of sky, its fading echo among the oaks and poplars swallowed first by a jet banking west then the Erie-Lackawanna sounding its horn as it comes through the tunnel through the cliffs to the river and around the bend of King’s Cove Bluff, full of timber, Ford chassis, rock salt. You can hear it in the dark from beyond what was once the amusement park. And the wind carries along as well, from down by the river, when the tide’s just so, the drainage just so, the chemical ghost of old factories, the rotted piers and warehouses: lye, pigfat, copra from Lever Bros., formaldehyde from the coffee plant, dyes, unimaginable solvents— a soup of polymers, oxides, tailings fifty years old seeping through the mud, the aroma almost comforting by now, like food, wafting into my childhood room with its fevers and dreams. My old parents asleep, only a few yards across the hall, door open—lest I cry? I remember almost nothing of my life.

I know my leaving in the breakfast table mess. Bowl spills into bowl: milk and bran, bread crust crumbled. You push me back into bed. More “honey” and “baby.” Breath you tell my ear circles inside me, curls a damp wind and runs the circuit of my limbs. I interrogate the air, smell Murphy’s Oil Soap, dog kibble. No rose. No patchouli swelter. And your mouth— sesame, olive. The nudge of your tongue behind my top teeth. To entirely finish is water entering water. Which is the cup I take away? More turning me. Less your arms reaching around my back. You ask my ear where I have been and my body answers, all over kingdom come.

—at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka Let me break free of these lace-frail lilac fingers disrobing the black sky from the windows of this room, I sit helpless, waiting, silent—sister, because you drew from me the coil of red twine: loneliness— spooled inside— once, I wanted to say one true thing, as in, I want more in this

The snow voids the distance of the road and the first breath comes from the early morning ghosts. The sparrows with their hard eyes glisten in the difficult light. They preen their feathers and chirp. It’s as though they were one voice talking to God. Mornings are a sustained hymn without the precision of faith. You’ve turned the bag filled with molding bread inside out and watch the old crusts fall to the ice. What’s left but to watch the daylight halved by the glistening ground? What’s left but an empty bag and the dust of bread ravaged by songsters? There are ruins we witness within the moment of the world’s first awakening and the birds love you within that moment. They want to eat the air and the stars they’ve hungered for, little razors. Little urgent bells, the birds steal from each other’s mouths which makes you hurt. Don’t ask for more bread. The world is in haste to waken. Don’t ask for a name you can surrender, for there are more ghosts to placate. Don’t hurt for the sparrows, for they love you like a road.

Morning light through the curtain the day hasn't decided what it is yet everything still possible