I. PASSIONFLOWER

We grew the miraculous flower:

five corpse-white spokes

sunk in pubic hair

with that radial penumbra

just hovering

over the flimsy purple core —

and sat there gloating, ah,

the triumph after such care!

 

How long did it last?

till a painter sat down

and put it all into a sketch

before it could wilt from view.

Then from his painting

came so many feasts

for we can’t count

how many eyes.

 

But no trace at all

of our passionate growth.

A bush of dark mint,

too vigorous, bunches up there,

assailing the air,

and now in that corner

where two fences met

flaps the painter’s folding chair.

 

II. QUARREL

Next morning my brain slid back

into the whole slimy mess

picturing your shiny mouth

open for screaming

meaning you’d had it

with your big left toe crushed

after kicking back

meaning you found not me

but the same door shut

 

Then the small smile

coming on

meaning you’re sorry

because the whole world

rackets around in your head

meaning only

I can’t take it any more

but will forgive you me

if you forgive me you

 

III. PROMISE

Let me tell you again

where I must go

Back to the farm

without you without them

without you or them

 

I must go without wife

without sons

and live on the farm alone

feed every animal

draw all the milk myself

 

I must hear myself breathe

so the song will come

of the wheat I grow

and the power to work

and master the ground

 

To bury the past in darkness

and wake every day

in the smell of the cold

off the hay and the smart

burn of the wood stove fire

 

Home will be bearing the tale

of the farm I work

without you without them

while sun smashes down

and rain bears away my life

 

IV. CLAIR DE SOLEIL

Beyond home where the world unsettles

a try for love fell through

a try for a different

love fell through

 

The ancient voice of lovers was

a ghost in a tree

that sang “Here’s where

love fell through”

 

In a tree substantial love’s voice

took one morning

the whole great eye

as it shot through

 

Love with all leaves growing

and the red bird singing

in the roundest tree

the sun shot through

 

The voice that sang out mourning

from the ancient tree

was a ghost of song that morning

love fell through

 

When we awoke that morning

the world was settled in

the torn tree where

my love fell through

 

V. VOICES FROM CRACKS IN THE FLOOR

1

You say, “Don’t say a word.

To think of your mouth,

that will rot underground,

spouting now, is absurd.”

 

2

Not hearing me — sure,

it’s a treat you can bear:

with everyone screaming,

my quiet’s not there.

 

3

You say, ” Let it out,

all that you know,

in one word. Enough!

Now don’t breathe.”

 

4

I scream, “Do you hear?”

You say, “It’s wind

from a mouth

no longer here.”

 

5

Wind whirling over

this house the words

you never heard

before I died.

 

VI. PARTING NOTE

Believe me, as you go dead I’m all set

to be your elegist,

making of my bungling hands in love

these separating claws.

 

Hunched into that half-life you led until

the minute we clapped eyes,

then rousing only as I made you come

alive enough to love me:

 

Notice this time how distance breeds itself.

Where we were we weren’t

and, though breathing close enough to touch,

aren’t even there.

 

Past-me past-you were strands we looped into

a last embracing noose,

hangman-woman fondling each other’s neck

we patiently would break.

 

How much, how long did glances jab and flay

until we found the vein,

then furious with bodies to be lugged away,

saw each other dead.

 

I wait. Can you resist that you-before

patched up and hunched again,

and only that way willing to be loved,

uncrowded by a hand?

 

VII. WHAT WE STOOD FOR

Whole eras of men & women in countries beaten

& bearing their mad tyrannical rulers

with armies marched to the sea & drowned

bombed houses swallowed wet in the dirt

 

sons & daughters of mothers & fathers counting

for something to someone flushed out

& stilled in their endless everyday blood

& the rulers themselves snuffed out in time

 

hanged upside down in a hate-all poetry

or burned with the dry crusts of the poor

their sorrows’ gold eyes wept & shat out

 

so we can dance through their mirror’s crack

glide by the discard & dreck of their days

into the light of our fresh & dying tomorrows

 

VIII. DOING TIME

In bed hearing the wind

round the house

like a getaway car

bend after bend

 

I think of my plans

how they don’t belong

I think of my motives

they aren’t mine

 

Things click themselves

off so fast I ask

Is it me

or someone passing

the window outside

that takes this all in

in a flash

 

I can’t sleep

though of course

I will try

telling the shadowless walls

I’ve climbed all night

I’m the wind and

how many empties like me

are there left to pick up

before I die

 

IX. I NEED YOU

What the two windows want:

the bridge and the cycle

and the tree cut down,

 

the foghorn mounting

the cold milky ground,

the tombstone missing a name.

 

What the whitewash wants:

on the grubby facade,

sunlight rousing a smile.

 

What the cracked roof wants,

watching the farmer

float with his iron into the sky:

 

the squirrel stuck stiff to the floor,

the lovers in bed long dead

unmaking the child

 

already grown to a man

groping past loving, past light,

roped to the end of his life.

 

X. A NOTE TO BODEGA FROM THE MIRIAM HOSPITAL

Distant light

from fields

where you live

comes to me here

 

quickening

the air

I breathe

for a spell

 

by this touch

of what we started

which because it was

more than we knew

 

seeps through me now

a drop

or two

from a plenitude

 

XI. ON THE WAY BACK

Morning gapes.

The spirit spreads,

touching what touches me.

 

A living overflow

can’t be too much

for itself.

 

The source my body

is the flow that knows

the overflow.

 

Only sick night

brought me to

her imminence.

 

One day they paged

Miss Murphy

Moonlight.

 

Next day it was

Miss Mary

Newlight.

 

Recovering today

I heard Miss Major

Noonlight.

 

XII. SECOND LOVE POEM

Like & let & again

towards one another each time

the tender & rough fulfillment

 

where it should be

an approaching of warmths expectant

the touch to relieve & to join

 

the tipping of fire to fire

letting blood brightness

into coagulant dirt

 

the waking to each like a rebirth

of small lights grown into

the larger through air

 

pouring & gathering streams

Vesuvian & Himalayan

through bodies the same

 

mixtures of tongues

spoken & dead

of babblers to listeners rigid

 

uncaring & caring alike with

always the difference insistent

it matters so much nothing matters

 

I fly to you needy

while only pacing this room

& finding you always missing

 

or just about to appear

or equally soon to vanish

I hold to you fast changing

 

myself in you edging away

you in me passing off

in my hands the fire turned ashes

 

yet we who were there once as one

shot out of the dark

still burn toward the light

 

I prepare for tenderly roughly

letting this summer sing still

in which we keep turning & dying

 

XIII. AFTER THE SEPARATION

Back to your room

after my weekend visit,

you play underseas war

using the closet & windowseat bay

for submarine lairs,

your mouth devising

flesh & gun disintegrations

coughing fast-flashing sallies up

out of mind

 

I see your dark pupils

figure the damage —

Is it worth shoveling up

just to get on with now?

 

There’s a blind man under the bed

wanting to show you where to hide

when the homework stacked

like tank-flattened GIs

gets punishingly high.

 

“Daddy I’m frightened —

or maybe just bored,”

you want to cry

as my car miles off

turns screeching back.

 

I pound & pound

on the big front door.

 

XIV. THE HOUSE

The house killed by your word

withstood much deeper wounds

before it let go.

Those were years we lived

wrangling inside

without daring to ask

should we patch it or part.

 

Those absentee summers

neighbors by moonlight

were statues

climbing the trees,

training their mirrors of air

at the windows,

were we dead or merely asleep?

 

Night snowfalls in winter

imprisoned bulls

charged beeches and pines

hunched in the driveway

till eased off

by ploughs next morning,

the bright air a diamond.

 

Those were years the lawn

thickened and spread,

having no care

but the weathers run wild,

small vandal gangs

assaulting and dying,

child by child.

 

Dogging all-night refusals

day-calms and word-gusts

pretended relief.

At breakfast some mornings

we sat like vacationers

facing the bay

already polluted.

 

Now a gold-fisted flagpole

thrust from the lawn

against vengeance

and vandals

that crept up regardless

stands flagless,

detached from the house.

 

Last summer new lights

riddled the waters,

night planes hurtling

through air

cleared the heat of neighbors

still churring

and scorching the grasses.

 

Exclude, exclude, echoes the house.

Dead rattan rockers nod

in a desert of sunlight

as we leave, separate,

and the new owners’ eyes

smilingly rise

from the lawn.

 

XV. LETTING GO

Awake, as to flickers

and whispers in grass,

hot summer reflecting a time

almost stiller than time,

a sea-bleached rope

asleep in a basket,

my groveling heart

touches a thing

not yet dead

in your staring.

What can it be?

 

What is it now?

Me released in a flutter

of withholding sight —

that excluding

perfection of glass?

Am I all disappeared there

but for an eye-

shuttering tic returned

by a memory probe?

 

Am I the mote

in your self-

riveting eye

or the crimp there

my being alive

and once loved

sometimes betrays

in its hectic

surface-devouring glance?

 

Before letting go to let you

be whole without me,

let me recall,

as through whispers

and flickers of summer

pausing adrift,

this once loving voice

dissolved in an eye

about to be stilled

in its own

nearly perfect reflection.

 

XVI. OPENING

gray lips

 

this hour’s

hourless light

turns wooly morning

not yet rising

light finger touching

wind falls

hard footsteps

on pavement

soften in grass

 

we loved

 

we who are

no longer for each other living

though arms

still arrns hug

as though we ourselves are others

opening

gray lips

 

hourless

 

morning labors

wet mouthed

on pig iron gates

a woman

who cannot rise

there lies

 

impaled

 

XVII. RULE APPLIED

The lacquered brown wall reddens

 

Like our own wishes

we are carved out of air

 

touched by the afternoon sun

 

The part of us feeding a wish empowers

then lives past it

 

warming and worming its way

 

While the wish exists it lives

apart from the empowering part

 

deep through the windows

 

Because to exist a wish needs

detachment from what feeds it

 

as if to engrave its light

 

The possibility to continue detached

is probably almost infinite

 

in the sleeping house forever