Little by little, wean yourself.

This is the gist of what I have to say.

From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, “The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
The beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.”

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
In the dark with eyes closed.

                                            Listen to the answer.

There is no “other world.”
I only know what I’ve experienced.
You must be hallucinating.

Small bass guard their nest. Next
To our house, the cardinals in their 
Crabapple feed two open mouths.
Parents and offspring, we flex
And swing in this future’s coming,
Mirror we look into only darkly.
My youngest is boarding an airplane
To a New York he’s never seen.
Raised in such slumberous innocence
Of Bible schools and lemonade,
I adjust poorly to this thirst for
Fame, this electronic buzz prizing
Brilliance and murderers. Oh son,
Know that the psyche has its own
Fame, whether known or not, that
Soul can flame like feathers of a bird.
Grow into your own plumage, brightly,
So that any tree is a marvelous city.
I wave from here this Indian Eno,
Whose lonely name I make known.

First I went down to the street
by means of the stairs,
just imagine it,
by means of the stairs.


Then people known to people unknown
passed me by and I passed them by.
Regret
that you did not see
how people walk,
regret!

I entered a complete store:
lamps of glass were glowing.
I saw somebody—he sat down—
and what did I hear? what did I hear?
rustling of bags and human talk.

And indeed,
indeed,
I returned.

A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
of the house. From there I could see and hear the water,
and everything that’s happened to me all these years.
It was hot and still. The tide was out.
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned
and went inside. There was no wind. The sea was
dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade.
Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath
touches it. A fine thread. Intricate.
Before long, before anyone realizes,
I’ll be gone from here.

We had ridden long and were still far from the inn;
My eyes grew dim; for a moment I fell asleep.
Under my right arm the whip still dangled;
In my left hand the reins for an instant slackened.
Suddenly I woke and turned to question my groom.
“We have gone a hundred paces since you fell asleep.”
Body and spirit for a while had changed place;
Swift and slow had turned to their contraries.
For these few steps that my horse had carried me
Had taken in my dream countless aeons of time!
True indeed is that saying of Wise Men
“A hundred years are but a moment of sleep.”

All day I have been closed up
inside rooms, speaking of trivial
matters. Now at last I have come out
into the night, myself a center

of darkness.
Beneath the clouds the low sky glows
with scattered light. I can hardly think
this is happening. Here in this bright absence

of day. I feel myself opening out
with contentment.
All around me the soft rain is whispering
of thousands of feet of air

invisible above us.

The men and beasts of the zodiac
Have marched over us once more.
Green wine bottles and red lobster shells,
Both emptied, litter the table.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” Each
Sits listening to his own thoughts,
And the sound of cars starting outside.
The birds in the eaves are restless,
Because of the noise and light. Soon now
In the winter dawn I will face
My fortieth year. Borne headlong
Towards the long shadows of sunset
By the headstrong, stubborn moments,
Life whirls past like drunken wildfire.

Sunset glitters on the beads
Of the curtains. Spring flowers
Bloom in the valley. The gardens
Along the river are filled
With perfume. Smoke of cooking
Fires drifts over the slow barges.
Sparrows hop and tumble in 
The branches. Whirling insects
Swarm in the air. Who discovered
That one cup of thick wine
Will dispel a thousand cares?

So many want to be lifted by song and dancing,
and this morning it is easy to understand.
I write in the sound of chirping birds hidden
in the almond trees, the almonds still green
and thriving in the foliage. Up the street,
a man is hammering to make a new house as doves
continue their cooing forever. Bees humming
and high above that a brilliant clear sky.
The roses are blooming and I smell the sweetness.
Everything desirable is here already in abundance.
And the sea. The dark thing is hardly visible
in the leaves, under the sheen. We sleep easily.
So I bring no sad stories to warn the heart.
All the flowers are adult this year. The good
world gives and the white doves praise all of it.

Boys kicking a ball on a vast square beneath an obelisk
and the apocalyptic sky at sunset to the rear
Why the sudden menace in this view
as if someone wished to turn it all to red dust
The sun already knows And the sky knows it too
And the water in the river knows
Music bursts from the loudspeakers like wild laughter
Only a star high above us
Stands lost in thought with a finger to its lips

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives—
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

The Armenian language is the home
and haven where the wanderer can own
roof and wall and nourishment.
He can enter to find love and pride,
locking the hyena and the storm outside.
For centuries its architects have toiled 
to give its ceilings height.
How many peasants working
day and night have kept
its cupboards full, lamps lit, ovens hot.
Always rejuvenated, always old, it lasts
century to century on the path
where every Armenian can find it when he’s lost
in the wilderness of his future, or his past.

Lord let me suffer much
and then die

Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear

Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before

Let the grass stay green
so that the frogs can hide in it

So that someone can bury his face in it
and sob out his love

Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain

And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee’s head

Cosmetics do no good:
no shadow rouge, mascara, lipstick—
nothing helps.
However artfully I comb my hair,
embellishing my throat & wrist with jewels,
it is no use—there is no
semblance of the beautiful young girl
I was
& long for still.
My loveliness is past.
& no one could be more aware than I am
that coquettishness at this age
only renders me ridiculous.
I know it. Nonetheless,
I primp myself before the glass
like an infatuated schoolgirl
fussing over every detail,
practicing whatever subtlety
may please him.
I cannot help myself
The God of Passion has his will of me
& I am tossed about
between humiliation & desire,
rectitude & lust,
disintegration & renewal,
ruin & salvation.

Poor moth, I can't help you.
I can only turn out the light.

Welcome to you
who have managed to get here.
It’s been a terrible trip;
you should be happy you have survived it.
Statistics prove that not many do.
You would like a bath, a hot meal, 
a good night’s sleep. Some of you
need medical attention.
None of this is available.
These things have always been
in short supply; now
they are impossible to obtain.

                           This is not
a temporary situation;
it is permanent.
Our condolences on your disappointment.
It is not our responsibility
everything you have heard about this place
is false. It is not our fault
you have been deceived,
ruined your health getting here.
For reasons beyond our control
there is no vehicle out.

In this dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart 
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That’s why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit 
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.
God had probably planned to tell us later
about this new pleasure.
                                       We stuffed our mouths full of it,
gorged on but and if and how and again
but, knowing no better.
It’s toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads and around us
to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,
a wall between us and God. Who was Paradise.
Not that God is unreasonable—but reason
in such excess was tyranny
and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell
reflecting our own faces. God lives
on the other side of that mirror,
but through the slit where the barrier doesn’t
Quite touch ground, manages still
to squeeze in—as filtered light,
splinters of fire, a strain of music heard
then lost, then heard again.

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence

Yes, his face really is so terrible
you cannot turn away. And only
that thin sheet of glass between you,
clouding with his breath.
Behind him: the dark scribbles of trees
in the orchard, where you walked alone
just an hour ago, after the storm had passed,
watching water drip from the gnarled branches,
stepping carefully over the sodden fruit.
At any moment he could put his fist
right through the window. And on your side
you could grab hold of this 
letter opener, or even now try
very slowly to slide the revolver
out of the drawer of the desk in front of you.
But none of this will happen. And not because
you feel sorry for him, or detect
in his scarred face some helplessness
that shows in your own as compassion.
You will never know what he wanted,
what he might have done, since
this thing, of its own accord, turns away.
And because yours is a life in which
such a monster cannot figure for long,
you compose yourself, and return
to your letter about the storm, how it bent
the apple trees so low they dragged
on the ground, ruining the harvest.

Lying under the stars,
In the summer night,
Late, while the autumn
Constellations climb the sky,
As the Cluster of Hercules
Falls down the west
I put the telescope by
And watch Deneb
Move towards the zenith.
My body is asleep. Only 
My eyes and brain are awake.
The stars stand around me
Like gold eyes. I can no longer
Tell where I begin and leave off.
The faint breeze in the dark pines,
And the invisible grass,
The tipping earth, swarming stars
Have an eye that sees itself.

Buddha took some Autumn leaves
In his hand and asked
Ananda if these were all
The red leaves there were.
Ananda answered that it
Was autumn and leaves
Were falling all about them,
More than could ever
Be numbered. So Buddha said,
“I have given you
A handful of truths. Besides
These there are many 
Thousands of other truths, more
Than can ever be numbered.”

I built on the sand
And it tumbled down,
I built on a rock
And it tumbled down
Now when I build, I shall begin
With the smoke from the chimney.

My body you are an animal
whose appropriate behavior
is concentration and discipline.
An effort
of an athlete, of a saint and of a yogi.

Well trained
you may become for me
a gate
through which I will leave myself
and a gate through which I will enter myself.
A plumb line to the center of the earth
and a cosmic ship to Jupiter.

My body, you are an animal
for whom ambition is right.
Splendid possibilities
are open to us.

Lying down I lift my legs
my soul by mistake jumps into my legs.
This is not convenient for her,
besides, she must branch,
for the legs are two.

When I stand on my head
my soul sinks down to my head.
She is then in her place.

But how long can you stand on your head,
especially if you do not know
how to stand on your head.

Three days
I starve my belly 
so that it learns
to eat the sun.

I say to it: Belly,
I am ashamed of you. You must
spiritualize yourself. You must
eat the sun.

The belly keeps silent
for three days. It’s not easy
to waken in it higher aspirations.

Yet I hope for the best.
This morning, tanning myself on the beach,
I noticed that, little by little,
it begins to shine.

They didn’t have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
“You look like a god sitting there.
why don’t you try writing something?”  

Night, two o’clock: moonlight. The train stopped
in the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a town
twinkle cold on the horizon.

As when someone goes into a sickness so deep
that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,
cold and feeble on the horizon.

The train stands perfectly still.
Two o’clock: full moonlight, few stars.

Old fisherman spends his night beneath the western cliffs
At dawn, he boils Hsiang’s waters, burns bamboo of Ch’u.
When the mist’s burned off, and the sun’s come out, he’s gone.
The slap of the oars: the mountain waters green.
Turn and look, at heaven’s edge, he’s moving with the flow.
Above the cliffs the aimless clouds go too.

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets—
He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize
Divides him. He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting—
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

You’re going to bed now
At the quiet end of business
With the default ingredients
Of your body, no longer inclined
To follow the example
Of molecules or to rub
Your sticks and stones together
Or bustle about at random.

You’ll slowly shrink away
From the obvious to embody
All your philosophy
By turning into a playground
Of teeter-totter, swing,
Sandbox, and monkey bars, 
Steep slide and roundabout
Play the leading and minor
Parts of all the players.

In the earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people 
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
And what people wanted to happen could
              happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That’s the way it was.

The day we die
the wind comes down
to take away
our footprints.

The wind makes dust
to cover up
the marks we left
while walking.

For otherwise
the thing would seem 
as if we were
still living.

Therefore the wind
is he who comes
to blow away
our footprints.

After that moment when you’ve lost all reason
for going back where you started, when going ahead
is no longer a yes or no but a matter of fact,
you’ll need to weigh, on the one hand, what will seem
on the other, almost nothing and must choose
again and again, at points of fewer and fewer
chances to guess when and which way to turn.


That’s when you might stop thinking about stars
and storm clouds, the direction of wind,
the difference between rain and snow, the time
of day or the lay of the land, about which trees
mean water, which birds know what you need
to know before it’s too late, or what’s right here
under your feet, no longer able to tell you 
where it was you thought you had to go.

She thinks she has a pretty good idea
what seaweed is. It’s bushes under water.
and half a clamshell doesn’t call for words

from either of us, so we send it sailing
back to the shallows to fulfill itself.
When asked, I try to explain what a heap of kelp

is doing above the tide line, bladders and holdfasts
shrinking from so much air, but I stop
short when sand fleas jump out of the folds.

I redirect her attention to the horizon,
where the setting sun is doing something more
familiar to her, but she goes wading ahead

to concentrate on the carcass of a scoter
still trailing the black feathers of one wing.
She stoops to pick it up (one thumb, one finger

As precise as a gull’s beak) and holds it dripping
halfway out of the arriving surf
and looks up at me sideways. Our eyes meet.

She seems to be accusing me of something
she can’t yet say out loud. I hear
my teacher’s impassioned voice recite John Donne:

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore.
but keep it to myself. She lets the bird fall
back to where it had been and balances
her brand-new body above the water and sand
and against the wind splashes ahead of me.

Although I’m telling them once more the sun
is larger than the Earth and the moon smaller,
that large sources of light cast two-toned shadows
beyond small objects, they refuse to remember.

I’ve joined those other teachers trying to show them
everything that’s known about erring stars,
who’ve graded them slightly down for believing in something
else out of their dream-filled-love for the sky.

If they won’t puzzle out the solar system,
why should I scold them? Neither would Sherlock Holmes
or the wisest wise men before Copernicus.
They all settled for nests of crystal spheres.

Emerson said a kind of light shines through us
and makes us aware we’re nothing. “Nothing” seems wrong.
We transmit something or other. We interfere.
Cosmically speaking, we have a nuisance value.

And nobody knows why, not even today,
not even the first that rounded the sun-kissed moon,
tongue-tied with wonder, garbling old testaments,
just barely raising moondust while sleepwalking.

Though the Earth has caught our moon in the outer cone
of its double shadow for a while this evening,
at dawn the sun will make up for lost time
by spinning fire around all daughters of men.

My daughters are both playing
under the sun this morning,
in and out of the shade
on primary-colored swings
and slides and spiral ladders,
and they’re being just as good
as can be at tagging others.

They’re among the most evasive
(when they’re not It) and clever 
enough (when they are)
to touch the ones they’re after.
I’m proud watching over them
from my safe place on the bench.

A man sits next to me.
His long gray hair hangs down
the back of his wrinkled coat.
He’s wearing a yachting cap,
thick glasses, a woman’s skirt,
sneakers with open toes,
and blue-and-white batting gloves.

He’s holding much of his life
ready to eat or wear
in a plastic shopping bag.
He leans my way and offers
the part of it that’s French fries 
and tells me I’d better help
myself or be sorry later.

And now two women are guiding
three disadvantaged children
out of a van. A girl,
maybe eleven, who scuttles
to a sandbox and sits down,
laughing. A younger boy
who knows how to run and clamber
up onto a platform
and straddle a tunnel slide.
A teenage Latina, her arms
akimbo who smiles around
at the wide world of sports.
All three are as pale as if trained
to grow up in the dark.

The girl in the sand is squealing,
lifting, and letting fly
whatever these handfuls are.
The boy in the air
eyes shut in ecstasy,
is pounding his blue drum.
The Latina is strutting around
on the grass like a mistress
of ceremonies, waving
as if to coax applause
or to congratulate
herself for winning something
by shaking most of the hands
of most of the babysitters
within reach, including mine
and the two in batting gloves
beside me, that go on shaking
hers over and over
and won’t let go till she sees
he’s as proud of her as a father.

       Do you believe you are a poet? If so, then what you must do
       is obvious.  Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.
Do you still believe, old man, you are a poet?
If so, what you must do is so obvious,
you shouldn’t need reminding. You should keep trying
to do whatever you haven’t done or start
doing again what you didn’t manage to do 
right in the first place. You should stay alive
as often as possible and keep yourself open
to anything out of place and everything
with nowhere else to go, to carry what’s left
of your voice out and beyond, into, over,
and under, past, within, outside, between, 
among, across, along, and up and around
and to be beside yourself when the spirit moves you
and to thank Miss Clippinger for your prepositions.

Worshippers who can sing
(or try to) don’t want their faith
taken for granted. They long for
melodic turns of phrase
and memorable cadences.
They’d be listening in the pews
if they hadn’t needed to make
music of empty air.

Any tone-deaf preacher
had better do his damnedest
as an off-the-beat, white-throaty,
black-robed, timorous,
sharp, flat soloist
for critically minded singers
sitting there behind him,
flinching at his droning
and trying to forgive him
for conducting only himself
and turning his back on them.

Is everything we think
we know as certain truth
             a metaphor we make
             between our capable hands
and our heads? We recognize
resemblances, and whatever
             we do or see is like
             something we did or saw
before, and isn’t it strange
to realize we’re repeating
             ourselves, working and dreaming
             in tandem, in ways
we’re trying to give names to
as we bring our cupped palms
             full of cold water
             up against our faces

and feel the chilling 
relief of lifelessness
           and shut our eyes
           and try to blink it away
as if we might be happy
to have a clearer look
           again at what’s going on
           around us in broad daylight.

She knew where it was,
that thing you were looking for,
and if it wasn’t there
           she could tell you just how long
           you’d have to wait for it
           to be yours, not quite
long enough to finish perhaps 
or as long as you could hope for,
but in either case
           you would hear from her
           when she wanted it back
           as soon as (or even sooner)
than possible. If you became
over time familiar
with her ways and obeyed
           the rules and even understood
           why they were hers, who knew
           when time was up,
who could keep quiet
or at least hold his speaking voice
down, who could go without
            food or drink, who could show
            the proper attitudes
            of polite attention
or even of being lost
in thought, she would give you
for a while whatever
            you might desire within
            reason, and if it turned out
            to be what you really hadn’t
been looking for at all,
she would take it back
without the least sign
               of resentment (perhaps a sigh),
               within the natural bounds
               of the love of propriety,
she would give you almost anything
else you might still have
in mind, this good librarian.

After he’d strung the turtle shell with catgut,
the ends of his numb fingers (which he’d thought
he knew how to bring together and tell apart)
had trouble deciding which of the strings to pluck
and which to press down on. But because
he’d been swearing with it, his ordinarily
so-so baritone voice had soured, had gone
to hell and back and kept refusing to meet
or match the strains he could still hear in his head.

He sat down on a rock and tried his damnedest
to think about something else. He thought of the woods.
He thought of weather. He thought of picking daisies.
He thought of selling his lute and leaving home
and going to sea and forgetting about all this
music business, all this mechanical strumming
sharp and flat and this memorizing
and rearranging the picking at dull tunes.

Meanwhile, behind his back, the trees bowed down.
snow melted on the mountains. Wildflowers flourished
in a constant springtime, and the noisy ocean
lowered the crests of its waves and paused to listen.

Do they catch their hands
muttering sometimes
when they’re not signing, their fingers
           whispering to each other
           or trying to tell whoever
           that might be at the other end
of an arm what they’ve forgotten
and must remember? Do they
hesitate to go on saying
           what they won’t have the slightest
           chance of meaning tomorrow?
           Do slips of the fingers count
against them? Do they practice
sleights of hand? Do they slur
under the influence
           of second thoughts or do battle
           almost helplessly
           with those quicker to reach
conclusions, with interrupters,
with careless, heavy thinkers,
with ambiguous partners
          or strangers? It must be easy
          to babble or go crazy
          without half trying, but how
can lovers hold hands
unless they mean to go
quietly all the way?

It will seem strange at first
going back under water,
            but soon your difficult breathing
            will feel like a birthright,
and you’ll settle down
to a more buoyant life
            where each step and each touch
            will be an easy impulse
to give in to. Your body
will discover old proportions,
             old whispered asides,
             sotto voce wheedlings
and basso profundo groans,
and even your angriest shouts
             will be dissolved in the wailing,
             the whistling and humming
of others who came back
to their senses. In place of speech
              you’ll have your exclusive silence.
              Now the dissolution of shadows
and the scattering of the sun
into ribbons and broken crescents
             will show what swims around you—
             diatoms, plankton, the suspense
of colloidal particles—
and will blur your vision
             momentarily
             into the visionary
and you’ll know why you’re here
why you’ve grown tired 
             of breath, earth, and sunlight,
             tired of your heavy torso
slumping. If you go back
to the glare and the wind, if you flounder
             ashore on the sand and lift
             your shape on surprising legs
and finally stand once more,
beached, weighted down,
             your strange nose in the air,
             you’ll find what’s left of yourself
sinking slowly, easily,
into half-sleep once more.

Its face, as calm as the air,
holds an invented world
of trees and a trembling sky,
and I’m looking at a garden
as far away from my eyes
as if I lay underwater.

What the seers and sibyls learned 
in their rippling mirrors no one
can say for sure. A dropped stone
would send it flying and show
where the earth begins again.

All I can ask for answers
from what I see in my mirror
are the shades of apple blossoms
over which water striders
lighten the touch of bees
against the mud of heaven.

But I’m not there. Right now
I’m sitting in a room
alone, remembering
being there. I can feel
absolutely sure that creek 
is rushing forward, pausing
in hollows, turning over
and under itself and pouring
whatever it has to give
in whatever order water
manages to perform whatever
whitens into a constant
cascade of what it was 
all along and is and is
going to be again
and again. It comforted
and bewildered me, both 
of me, at the same time,
year after year. It kept saying,
I’m here. I wasn’t here
an instant ago, but now 
I’m here and gone.
I’m going to be here again this moment,
and already I’m falling out of the same place 
I’m going to be always.

DUST
By David Wagoner

Through stubble the color of dust, the dust devil
spins down the sloping furrows, the only cloud
at this day’s end gone furious under the sky
and on earth in a coil toward me, snarled
tight at the churning base, one streamer
flung up and around and lost and left
with a hunch and hump sideslipping
to tanglefoot past me full of itself
and tall as a house with nothing
and no one home long enough
to matter in its hurry to be
done with it, to outrace
what it lifts, swivels, 
and tosses to earth
to settle for less
and less, now
for even
less.

Whatever frightened you, whatever you thought
might happen someday, is not happening now.

This is only a test so we can be sure
we can tell you when we think it’s happening

before it does or at last no later than
simultaneously. What you should do

(when you hear the official sound we’re about to make
at almost any moment) is to listen

as closely as you can, then tell yourself
This is what it’s going to sound like

When it might happen. You’ll remember how 
to hear yourself thinking if it ever does.

Though he would have no clothes worth borrowing
except for amusement, he wouldn’t borrow yours
and leave them scattered around, unwashed.
He would forgive you for making impolite noises
and listen to any exaggerated entries
in your overlong, untitled, unpublished,
and unpublishable autobiography
with its anecdotes about schools and carnal love
with a straight, polite face. When the rent was due 
and you needed to render unto the landlord
what was the landlord’s, he would forgive and forget
if you forgot or didn’t or couldn’t give,
and he would clean up after himself. If you didn’t
he would do it for you, and you’d feel guilty,
naturally, and most certainly move out
when he gave shelter to beggars, thieves, crackpots,
lepers, down-and-out whores, or you again.

         When energy is destroyed in one form, it reappears in a 
         corresponding quantity in another.

You can pound it, pound it
down till you think, Thank god,
            It’s finally gone away,
            or you can shoot it
up in the air and hope
it will keep on going
            and going somewhere else
            and leave you alone
at last, but here it comes
in disguise, not only claiming
           to be your long-lost brother,
           but your father and the father
of your father’s children. No matter
how many times you snap
           your wrist and your fingers
           to get rid of the shred
of plastic, it clings there
like flypaper as you grow
           warmer with exercise,
           or you can huff and puff
at a candle flame: the seizure
of the diaphragm is transformed
           into a moving column
           of air, which narrows
between your lips 
to send a burning gold
           hydrocarbon crown
           back to the blue beginning
and in its smoky way
into a jangle of molecules,
           leaving you to recover
           your breath in your own darkness.

Holly is calling me from the cemetery.
She wants to plot my future. She really wants me
to be considerate of my loved ones
in advance, to make all the arrangements
now so none of them will have to feel
the expensive thrill of it at the wrong time,
and she can make a place for me all at once
over the phone and spare every one of us
our pain and awkwardness. The facilities
I wouldn’t believe. They’re in a sylvan setting,
which means it’s like under trees with a very tasteful
horizontal stone so the grass around it
can be mowed off of my name and dates, and a twelve-
(or under)-letter characterization
engraved there (such as Dearest or Beloved
Or in my case Husband) would be visibly
permanent regardless of growth. She’s offering
today what she won’t call a once-in-a-lifetime
discount, but let’s face it, it sort of is.

Plato believed the gods
           had aimed our eyes and feet
forward because looking
           backward, though necessary
sometimes, was less important
           for the fulfillment of tasks
than getting on with them.
           We were contrived to swivel
suddenly and jump, to hang on
           and wait for the right moment
to let go and run for it.
           Our lateral symmetry
and our bundle of bones
           allowed for that and for simply
walking away, maintaining
           the balance of our burdens
with our well-defined hands
           and fingers, sometimes more
eloquent than our mouths.
            He thought the spherical skull
had been fashioned purposefully
            in the manner of sun and moon
to keep the house of the soul
            from being broken into
by intruders. Our apparatus
            stood to reason and sat
to think better of it, knelt
            to save what little it could,
crouched to be slightly less
            apparent, or lay down
curled to be shut against
            (or at length more open to)
the wisdom of the night.

When a man or a woman died, something of theirs,
some token—a beaded belt, a pair of moccasins,
a necklace—would be left beside the path
where a hunting party, returning, would see it
and know that name was dead now.
They would remember how to say it,
but not at the campfire, not in stories,
not whispered in the night to anyone else,
but only to themselves.

Then, after years, when the right one had been born,
they would hold that child above the earth
to the four directions and speak the name again.

You have been taken down
           the first and only step in the learning process,
                  so even a raw beginner
like you is already skilled in every aspect
           of our craft. Your envies and temptations
                  at last are over. Who wore the best clothes?
Who had all the money? Who knew exactly
           where to go when there was nowhere to go?
                  Who could recite all five of the wrong names
of love by heart? Now, even if you tried
           as hard as you once knew how, you won’t have time
                   to think of any more answers. At one stroke
in the eyes of your only teacher you’ll achieve
           a comfortable failure
                   and be marked present, absent, and excused forever.
              

The waterfall on South Mountain hits the rocks,
tosses back its foam with terrifying thunder,
blotting out even face-to-face talk.
Collapsing water and bouncing foam soak blue moss,
old moss so thick
it drowns the spring grass.
Animals are hushed.
Birds fly but don’t sing
yet a white turtle plays on the pool’s sand floor
        under riotous spray,
sliding about with torrents.
The people of the land are benevolent.
No angling or net fishing.
The white turtle lives out its life, naturally

Autumn is crisp and the firmament far,
especially far from where people live.
I look at cranes on the sand
and am immersed in joy when I see mountains beyond
              the clouds.
Dusk inks the crystal ripples.
Leisurely the white moon comes out.
Tonight I am with my oar, alone, and can do
             everything,
yet waver, not willing to return.

The rain’s pounding away
        at the rusty eaves.
Twirling, sliding bubbling foam—
       well, that’s rain.

You too, and I should walk now
       as free as that
on cloud, on air, the meadow
       and the vapor roads.

Move around up there and here below
       like this liquid thing,
flowing into human life on rooftops
       and on shoes.

San Miguel, N.M.

The long night
moves over my walls:
inside a candle is lighted
by one of my daughters.



Even from here I can see
the illuminated eyes, bright
face of the child before flame.

It’s nearly time to go in.
the wind is cooler now,
pecans drop, rattle down—

the tin roof of our house
rivers to platinum in the early moon.
dogs bark & in the house, wine, laughter.

After Picasso (painting of this story)


It is the little girl
guiding the minotaur
with her free hand—
that devourer

and all the terror he’s accustomed to
effortlessly emanating,
his ability to paralyze
merely by becoming present,

entranced somehow, and transformed
into a bewildered
and who knows, grateful
gentleness…

and with the other hand
lifting her lamp.

The wind blows the line out from his fishing pole.
In a straw hat and grass cape the fisherman
Is invisible in the long reeds.
In the fine spring rain it is impossible to see far
And the mist rising from the water has hidden the hills.

I lie in my bed,
Listening to the monastery bell.
In the still night
The sound re-echoes amongst the hills.
Frost gathers under the cold moon.
Under the overcast sky.
In the depths of the night,
The first tones are still reverberating
While the last tones are ringing clear and sharp.
I listen and I can still hear them both.
But I cannot tell when they fade away.
I know the bondage and vanity of the world.
But who can tell when we escape
From life and death!

I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wine glass,
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake.

Full of the grey wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
above the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches
is setting in Western America.

I can see thousands of droplets
of steam—each a tiny spectrum—rising
from my goblet of grey wine.
They sway, changing directions
constantly—like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.

Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!