Who was it that took away my voice?
The black wound he left in my throat
Can’t even cry.

March is at work under the snow
And the birds of my throat are dead,
Their gardens turning into dictionaries.

I beg my lips to sing.
I beg the lips of the snowfall,
Of the cliff and the bush to sing.

Between my lips, the round shape
Of the air in my mouth.
Because I can say nothing.

I’ll try anything
For the trees in the snow.
I breathe. I swing my arms. I lie.

From this sudden silence,
Like death, that loved
The names of all words,
You raise me now in song.

Two hundred years ago
Issa heard
the morning birds
singing sutras
to this suffering world.

I heard them too,
this morning, 
which must mean

since we will always have 
a suffering world
we must always 
have a song.

O be swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks,
we pastured them in hollows,
cut off from the wind
and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland—
we stepped past wood-flowers,
we forgot your tang,
we brushed wood-grass.

We wandered from pine-hills
through oak and scrub-oak tangles,
we broke hyssop and bramble,
we caught flower and new bramble-fruit
in our hair: we laughed
as each branch whipped back,
we tore our feet in half-buried rocks
and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot—we worshipped,
we parted green from green,
we sought further thickets,
we dipped our ankles
through leaf-mold and earth,
and wood and wood-bank enchanted us—

and the feel of the clefts in the bark,
and the slope between tree and tree—
and a slender path strung field to field
and wood to wood
and hill to hill 
and the forest after it.

We forgot for a moment;
tree-resin, tree-bark
sweat of a torn branch
were sweet to the taste.

We were enchanted with the fields,
the tufts of coarse grass—
in the shorter grass—
we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs—hesitates—
     drops—
climbs—hesitates—crawls back—
climbs—hesitates—
O, be swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading—treading—till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through—

And when they all were seated,
A service, like a Drum—
Kept beating—beating—till I thought
My Mind was going numb—

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space—began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here—

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And finished knowing—then—

Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to 
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

I’m inside the advancing light,
my hands are hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can’t get enough of the trees—
they’re so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I’m at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can’t smell the medicines—
carnations must be blooming somewhere.

It’s like this:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

If the flies did not hurry themselves to the window
they’d still die somewhere.

Other creatures choose the other dimension:
                                                                       to slip
into a thicket, swim into the shaded, undercut
part of the stream.

                               My dog would make her tennis ball
disappear into just such a hollow,
pushing it under the water with both paws.
Then dig for it furiously, wildly, until it popped up again.

A game or theology, I couldn’t tell.

The flies might well prefer the dawn-ribboned mouth of a trout,
its crisp and speed,
                                    if they could get there,
though they are not in truth that kind of fly
and preference is not given often in these matters.

A border collie’s preference is to do anything entirely,
with the whole attention. This Simone Weil called prayer.
And almost always, her prayers were successful—
                                                                              the tennis ball
could be summoned again to the surface.

When a friend’s new pound dog, diagnosed distempered,
doctored for weeks, crawled under the porch to die, my friend crawled after,
pulled her out, said “No!”,

as if to live were just a simple matter of training.
                                                The coy-dog, startled, obeyed.
Now trots out to greet my car when I come to visit.

Only a firefly’s evening blinking outside the window,
this miraculous story, but everyone hurries to believe it.

A hawk flies through it, carrying
a still-twisting snake twice the length of its body.

Radiation, smoke, mosquitoes, the music of Mahler fly through it. 

Sky doesn’t age or remember,
carries neither grudges nor hope.
Every morning is new as the last one, uncreased
as the not quite imaginable first.

From the fate of thunderstorms, hailstorms, fog,
sky learns no lesson,
leaping through any window as soon as it’s raised.

In speech, furious, or tender,
it’s still of passing sky the words are formed.  
Whatever sky proposes is out in the open.

Clear even when not,
sky offers no model, no mirror—cloudy or bright—
to the ordinary heart: which is secretive,
rackety, domestic, harboring a wild uninterest in sky’s disinterest.

And so we look right past sky, by it, through it,
to what also is moody and alters—
erosive mountains, eclipsable moons, stars distant but death bound.  

In the yard next door,
a pocket of fog like a small herd of bison 
swallows azaleas, koi pond, the red-and-gold koi.

To be undivided must mean not knowing you are.

The fog grazes here, then there,
all morning browsing the shallows,
leaving no footprint between my fate and the mountain’s.                                    

Standing next to my old friend I sense
    that his soldiers have retreated.
And mine? They’re resting their guns
    on their shoulders
talking quietly.  I’m hungry, one says.
Cheeseburger, says another,
and they all decide to go and find some dinner.



But the next day, negotiating the too
    narrow aisles of
The Health and Harmony Food Store
    --when I say, Excuse me,
to the woman and her cart of organic 
     chicken and green grapes
she pulls the cart not quite far back 
     enough for me to pass,
and a small mob in me begins picking 
    up the fruit to throw.

So many kingdoms,
and in each kingdom, so many people:
    the disinherited son, the corrupt
    counselor,
the courtesan, the fool.
    And so many gods—arguing among themselves,
over toast, through the lunch salad
and on into the long hours of the
    mild spring afternoon—I’m the god.
No, I’m the god. No, I’m the god.

I can hardly hear myself over their 
    muttering.
How can I discipline my army? They’re
    exhausted and want more money.
How can I disarm when my enemy
    seems so intent?

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
it’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
       Dark like me—
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening…
A tall, slim tree..
Night coming tenderly
       Black like me.

I can imagine, in some otherworld
Primeval-dumb, far back
In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and hummed,
Humming-birds raced down avenues.

Before anything had a soul,
While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate,
This little bit chipped off in brilliance
And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.

I believe there were no flowers, then,
In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of creation.
I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his long beak.

Probably he was big
As mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big.
Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.
We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of
     Time.
Luckily for us.

This lonely hill was always dear to me,
And this hedgerow, that hides so large a part
Of the far sky-line from my view. Sitting and gazing
I fashion in my mind what lie beyond—
Unearthly silences, and endless space,
And very deepest quiet; until almost
My heart becomes afraid. And when I hear
The wind come blustering among the trees
I set that voice against this infinite silence:
And then I call the mind Eternity,
The ages that are dead, and the living present
And all the noise of it. And thus it is
In that immensity my thought is drowned:
And sweet to me the foundering in that sea.

Moving & delicate
                           we saw you
that time, fragile as a raindrop
                                                 you seemed then
shining & vulnerable,     in colors
we had not known to be yours,
                                                  rare, jewel-like,
but more alive than a jewel,
                                          grained & printed,
scratched by the finger-nails of the living,
                                                               a thousand
ways of life, millions, even,
                                              with that first
lifting of man’s foot,         heavy on
the surface of the stony moon-rock     we saw you
for the first time, earth, our earth, young,
fresh, bestowed on us as new,     newest of
all possible new stars,        even knowing you
stained, soiled & trampled
                                        by our filth,
all of it transmuted somehow into living sapphire.
emerald breathing,       topaz, carnelian      alight with
fire
             O small bell,      lit with living,
swinging into danger—
                                      where is our tenderness
enough to care for you?

I saw two towering birds cleaving the air
And thought they were Paolo and Francesca
Leading the lost, whose wings like silver billows
Rippled the azure sky from shore to shore,
They were so many. The nightmare god was gone
Who roofed their pain, the ghastly glen lay open,
The hissing lake was still, the fiends were fled,
And only some few headless, footless mists
Crawled out and in the iron-hearted caves.
Like light’s unearthly eyes the lost looked down,
And heaven was filled and moving. Every height
On earth was thronged and all that lived stared upward.
I thought, This is the reconciliation,
This is the day after the Last Day,
The lost world lies dreaming within its coils,
Grass grows upon the surly sides of Hell,
Time has caught time and holds it fast for ever.
And then I thought, Where is the knife, the butcher,
The victim? Are they all here in their places?
Hid in this harmony? But there was no answer.

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner 
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy 
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
                                              I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness 

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing.

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

Once upon a time there was an error
So ridiculous so minute
No one could have paid attention to it

It couldn’t stand
To see or hear itself

It made up all sorts of nonsense
Just to prove
That it really didn’t exist



It imagined a space
To fit all its proofs in
And time to guard its proofs
And the world to witness them

All that it imagined 
Was not so ridiculous
Or so minute
But was of course in error

Was anything else possible

Everyone stands alone at the heart of this earth
Stunned by a ray of sunlight
and suddenly it is evening.

What will it do for him, to have internalized
The many slender stems of riverlets and funnels,
The blunt toes of the pine cone fallen, to have ingested
Lakes in gold slabs at dawn and the peaked branches 
Of the fir under snow? He has taken into himself
The mist of the hazel nut, the white hairs of the moth,
And the mole’s velvet snout. He remembers, by inner
Voice alone, fogs over frozen grey marshes, fine
Salt on the blunt of the cliff.

What will it mean to him to perceive things
First from within—the mushroom’s fold, the martin’s
Tongue, the spotted orange of the wallaby’s ear,
To become the object himself before he comprehends it,
Putting into perfect concept without experience
The din of the green gully in spring mosses?







And when he stretches on his bed and closes his eyes,
What patterns will appear to him naturally—the schematic
Tracings of the Vanessa butterfly in migration, tacks
And red strings marking the path of each mouse
In the field, nucleic chromosomes aligning their cylinders
In purple before their separation? The wind must settle
All that it carries behind his face and rise again
In his vision like morning.

A giant has swallowed the earth,
And when he sleeps now, o when he sleeps,
How his eyelids murmur, how we envy his dream.

The children’s room glows radiantly by
The light of the pumpkins on the windowsill
That fiercely grin on sleeping boy and girl.
She stirs and mutters in her sleep, Goodbye,

Who scared herself a little in a sheet
And walked the streets with devils and dinosaurs
And bleeping green men flown from distant stars.

Our awkward, loving Frankenstein in bed
Who told his sister that it isn’t true,
That real me in real boxes never do
Haunt houses. But the King of the Dead

Has taken off his mask tonight, and twirled
His cape and vanished, and we are his
Who know beyond all doubt how real he is:
Out of his bag of sweets he plucks the world.

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel’s “Bolero” the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum, 
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop—in 1945—
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing—in Poland and Germany—
oh God of mercy, oh wild God.

Even as a child I could
induce it at will.
I’d go to where the big rocks

stayed cold in the woods all summer,
and tea mind would come to me

like water over stones, pool to pool,
and in that way I taught myself to think.
Green teas are my favorites, especially


the basket-fired Japanese ones
that smell of baled hay.

Thank you, makers of tea.
Because of you my mind is still tonight,
transparent, a leaf in air.

Now it rides a subtle current.
Now it can finally disappear.

At least the robbers
     left this one thing behind—
moon in my window.

For ages now you’ve been
Beguiled, entranced, and fooled by appearances.
Are you aware of that? Are you?
Right this very instant, when you’re
Under the spell of mistaken perception
You’ve got to watch out.
Don’t let yourself get carried away by this fake and
      empty life.
Your mind is spinning around 
About carrying out a lot of useless projects:
It’s a waste! Give it up!
Thinking about the hundred plans you want to
      accomplish,
With never enough time to finish them,
Just weighs down your mind.
You’re completely distracted
By all these projects, which never come to an end,
But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.
Don’t be a fool: for once, just sit tight….

If you let go of everything—
Everything, everything—
That’s the real point!

Today’s skies are perfect for a clear
Flute and singing kot. And touched

This deeply by those laid under these
Cypress trees, how could we neglect joy?

Clear songs drift away anew. Emerald wine
Starts pious faces smiling. Not knowing

What tomorrow brings, it’s exquisite
Exhausting whatever I feel here and now.

It is Spring in the mountains.
I come alone seeking you.
The sound of chopping wood echos
Between the silent peaks.
The streams are still icy.
There is snow on the trail.
At sunset I reach your grove
In the stony mountain pass.
You want nothing, although at night
You can see the aura of gold
And silver ore all around you.
You have learned to be gentle
As the mountain deer you have tamed.
The way back forgotten, hidden
Away, I become like you,
An empty boat, floating, adrift.