On the Great River

Taos

Blue bones, sunset, bleeding mountain.
The brawling average and the Safeway
Indian. Lorenzo, art is
Homeless. Topophobia.

Santa Fe

Hill and cross, the dustless plaza.
Texas man, his teeth and luggage.
Children Pérez, Sánchez,
and García. Anglophobia.

Albuquerque

Neon nightrest, bursting river.
On her skirts the mushrooms. Her mixed
Wine collapses every Sunday
Noon. Amnesia.

Corrales

Adobe and sticks in the valley.
River-muck, tumbleweed, toad.
A horse turning turquoise in twilight.
My melancholia.

Grammar of Memory

If the light fail
redeem it —
out of no old book.
out of no false stare.
out of no hardihood
for racing the common horse:

but out of the punctual worm,
crashing the coffin lid,
whose great electric head,
breaking the hoggish herd,
stirs those long wide-world
river bells.

World View

The stir of a man through a whirlpool of air
Sucked the hawk backward and down.
Lithe waters caught fire, wild weather
Went whirling the three-o’clock sun around.
A decade of seaweed split open a boulder
The burning high tide gulped down.
In the hawk’s high lingering stare
The spell of a man, shuttered by boughs,
Became a fallen feather of sound.

Poetry and Pedantry

The
moonlit
midnight summer sky’s immensely light-blue-sandy-
(sandy less than powdery) no-wind-will-
cover hush is to the distant-
even-smally-slushing
surf like a hugely
still wide-
open pasture sniffed at by a pent-up sheep herd straining
frantic for a way to enter it who
dimly bleat in feeble puzzle-
ment — crushed because they
simply aren’t
able
to.

Vehicles

The self suspiring
amid the quiet friendship
of things unrelated,
as hot cups
and long-limbed tables,
sees steam and stance
conjoin,
rise to a seething breath
of victory over all
that self is not,
a small vulnerable
in perishing communion
with all it touches
and contrives
to let alone,
vying
with breakable
slim tangibles —
all a known dust after,
conveyed
by wind and death.

Green Sermon

in the green matter of the world
it is a cause of delicate dependency
the who upon the what
the why within the how

so was it always in green time
where feeding goes on undetected
and the bird is with the worm
gobbled up at last

here is it furthering for things
to be and ape at being other things
airy in the sea
in the loud sky gushing free

here sweetness is suddenly
the hush on all the nibbling streams
swept by a minute’s
accidental harvesting

here bones don’t settle down
till stones are where they please
and all is in the high days riding
where nowhere always is

feathered by our luck and kind
we feed on days till one day
snatch us blind to be
the greenest food of light

Arey’s Cove

The hardened beach winks crystal
Stung and clawed again.
Foam clings gray and trembles.
Some thin breeze compels.
Half shells smooth as pearl
Are drier than the sand.
A feather eddies up and stills.
Gold brow to glinting nails
Alert, light spiralling
Her ears, her hair, she stands
And stares. The moment ends.
No seas crash louder than
Her wishing it again.

Pastoral

Blue horses suck the fences paintless
The young oak sings
Some day my acorns will be famous

Blue eyes the starlight rubs in gravel
The old house sings
The generations I unravel

Four rabbits leap the blue alfalfa
Snow down past the sleeping dog
Their blue tongues divide the garden
Their bite has sharpened on his growl

The old gate creaks
The miles I’ll never travel

Blue winds strum the clover

The garden weeps
I’m still young but hopeless

A blue moon topples over

Horse

He stands by water calm
as an early summer melon
grown to bobbing head.

To drink, not a moment’s job
of played conceit lazy
in the head’s reflection,

but the good draught
long as all life flowing
through granite teeth,

through miles of hot canals
past islands dark and struck aloud:
a tide of whispering embraces,

a red corpuscle sea,
to one world-wide tail
lassoing the air.

Pleas

1.

“My shadow turned and cut
the corner like a knife.
Need I say this twice?

It walked ahead, behind
my life. Note the device?
Well? I said: My shadow…“

2.

“All right, genius mine,
I get the point — but” (sneeze)
“since when am I your shadow?

I’m your wife. And so?
It’s late, let’s go to bed.
Snap off the lights. Please?”

Failure

The man next door who bawls at our dog
Glares from his porch with jaws ajar.
His heart like china swaddled in straw
Imagines a doctor bent to explore
The bulge of the thing, the chill of the thing
Struck deaf and dumb, forgetting to stir.

On Sundays he swarms, glossing the roof,
The nose, the gaudy warm flanks of his car.
Teetering over the perfect motor,
He nuzzles his head in the ladylike hum
Of the thing that never while he attends
Can be imagined forgetting to stir.

But some gray Sunday to come, I picture
The lazy exhaust, the glittering cold,
While he lies bunched like a rag on the hood,
His china blue heart cracked in his jaws,
The motor beneath him, deaf and snug,
Humming on velvet for hours, forever.

Monuments

Hammocked in a net of shade,
The cemetery sun deflects
A beam that winks along the path
In flecks of quiet endlessness.

Grim, alert, the twins emerge:
Upstart spinster monuments;
Pails scarcely swinging, they step out,
White classical American.

Blueberries big as grapes are at
The brims. Their bony fists clench handles
As they join the mortal street.
And the livelong summer fondles them.

How like them in fifty years
(To one absurd, sun-struck as I)
Their spinster nieces pass alert
With berries plundered off their graves.

Witnesses

“I see you like our mountains.” And can I say
I do who dream of olive trees toughened
By the angry winds of Zion, a thorn-
Entangled memory of Isaac who
On patient knees before the stone awaits
His father’s knife, but gets the broad-armed angel
Thrusting him to life?

“Your mountains, sir?” I stare. Liking
Mountains was a benediction on
The earth, the hardening of lava and
The twist and gush of rivers, to those who
Agilely upon their fathers’ bones
Would lie and hear the sound of sons
Treading on their own.

“Yes, I like them very much.” And who
Are we to quibble over heritage — I,
The testy newcomer, and he, old salesman
Of a lifting view? For, even to exchange our eyes,
No angel ever would arrive to recompense
His stony adoration, and no sweet son
Bring my bones alive.

Mission

White, puritan, and muscular in heaps,
the snow moves softly into places
reserved for other things.

Solid weather, shroud of heaven,
who can guess its purpose, oblivion
packed, whole as sin?

Obstacle of the routinary, its sudden
weight strains thc lawful brain
of progress to rebellion.

Children grasping up the balls
of holiday use it intensely
as a gift in kind.

But the temporary vast monument
of its mission inflicts dumb
desert on the mind,

Muffling fields of cluttering invention,
silence of an age that leaves
all man behind.

Have You Watched Your Hand?

The hand that listened to a pocket clink
With change was drawn to finger clammy coins,
Exulting in the expert touch that told
The shabby penny from its mates, until
In each was traced the dead exact number
And, like safecracking hand auditing
Dark dials, quickly clicked the sum, knowing
Better my dense pocket weight than I
My rent and airy mind.

Then the notion struck, a minted fancy:
Could not round copper, silver, lead, in any
Pocket bottom dangling, rubbing backs,
Of themselves produce the hand that weighs
And strokes in them each finity inert
And cold, and so stir up that mindless muffled
Clink, a travesty of mastery in
Subjection like a pet’s?

The seed clutched up in widowed womb from hero’s
Ash, and soon turned foetus, popped out god —
Perhaps is such a thing-engendered hand.
But coin-sprung monster come alive with drachma,
Doubloon, ducat, under ruined cities stuffed,
Could lead a death-free, palm-oiled life exchanging
Glinting treasuries…. By God! Have
You watched your hand? and does it burn to ransom
Greece or Babylon?

Abel the Water Bomb

Argument:

It is the end of time and I still encase my eternal mind, coveting its tiny
ticking sleep. The hazards of staying afloat, a disused water bomb, the
scintillating wreckage all about me — things remembered, outward now —
miraculously take on their own absurd reality. It is at least a start. Look,
isn’t it growing light already?

Now in my heart day breaks
where the world wakes
and all light seems wheeling home.

Father death, unnatural mother,
you who made me late for life,
early born for night, my home,
to scrabble over one dried-out bitter loaf
for which my life was taken in God’s fold;

You who’ve unfused me, disabled me
for all the scintillant proud pleasures
promised in the life I never learned,
created darkness for a home
and birthed me there, guileless
grazing shepherd, victim-to-be;

Unnatural mother, father death,
who’ve used me, man’s first martyr,
dead child of favored potency,
for a worldly legend of abuse,
a small blood-crawl of uselessness
most coveted in dark time;

Dear, dumb parents of forever, you
who’ve wracked me on my brother’s shadow,
he who always died
steeped in his deeds,
daylight’s ruddy prince,
hero of heretofore,
hereafter’s swallower.

Back in his golden agelong world of day
towers first began to tilt,
floods wavered and began to fall.
One waterfall death wrought
still falls beautifully for newlyweds.
The rock beneath it chips, erodes,
the helpless flood still rolls down,
pounding toward his memory —
animal and alive as sallow serpents
trying to erase the world,
fill all oceans with the nullity
of a heretofore forever.

And I, disused, barely afloat,
my own mind’s litter,
become the world’s one small-eyed hope
it will survive.

Unnatural mother, father death,
who made me:
dark was my coming hither,
and in the dark home,
engendering from his bloody corded arm
this fuse of murdered love,

I, first and last the lapsing ruminator,
now bound toward my brother’s home,
hum silently:

In my heart day breaks
where the world wakes
and all light seems wheeling home.

Shut

I must ask you to be still
for once —
for there is mockery in your words

that mean to love that cannot
even hate outright,
so much you hate yourself:

a phosphorescent thimbleful
of pride borne shakily
in self-starred night,

a nose ring of moral cannibal,
searching for a guilt
delicate enough to eat

by teeth herbivorous as faun’s,
quivering a harsh nose jangle
at his own beast smell —

be still, I say!
I will not let you munch
my flowering will away.

Noonday Prey

The streets are turmoil
with implied disaster
as pedestrians assailed
by autos topple
on the walks
in strict disorder,
like crabs shored up
by waves, unscrambled
by a seaward-pulling
fate that points
to timelier graves.

Pigeons in retreat
yield up their pavement
pasturage to line
a nearby rooftop
where with mannerly
restraint they improvise
the shoulder hunch
of buzzards busy
with delight
at multitudes
of staggering prey.

Pragma

I cannot remember
anything worse
in many an eon

of the soul’s
unkempt struggle
with its god

than the philosophic
gentry peddling
their tamed swan

for that true
and native bird
who once screamed

disdain at the tidy
swan-infested lake
then raised a red wing

and besoiled itself —
the celebrated
flamingo!

The Tragic Flaw

Deep in the jewel box where it lay
The new-born infant stared with onyx eyes
Asking to be read behind each
Eyelash sprouting from its minute
Full-grown head.

As I watched the carved magnificence,
The glowing midget cheek, the pared
And half-moon nails, the spiral
Junctures where the flesh turned
To hidden rose,

I heard the doctor’s cough nearby
And felt behind his guarded hand
Those thumping homespun mouthfuls
Garrulous and out of place
As virgin jokes.

Then I knew the child was mine,
Its box the casket of imagined form,
The contents effigy of hopeless
Momentary life regained, immaculate
And still-born.

And the doctor, offhand, coarse,
Prattling of something else,
Audience-catharsis to the act, waiting
Ubiquitous to swallow it in the grave
Of a laugh.

Ballads for Janus

I

Two men were sitting in a dark quiet room
figuring out their lives,
coming to no conclusion.
One said, I want to rule the earth.
Other said, I want to limit birth.
One said, I need a thousand wives.
Other, turning on the lights,
said, Brother, you’re my enemy.
One took out a gun,
aimed at the other’s head.
Other moved faster, shot him dead;
standing in the room, tired,
said, Now I’m done,
shot himself like he shot the other one.

II

Two men were walking in the middle of the night.
One turned left, other turned right.
One went through hell, sweating like a fool.
Other smelled lilies, in a pool.
One lost his arms grabbing at shadows.
Other kissed girls on their toes.
One lost his face, walking through a wall.
Other lay with ladies great and small.
One met the other waiting at the end.
What did you find, my lucky friend?
Lilies, pools, a thousand wives.
Hell, walls, a thousand knives.
Grinning, they broke each other’s head.
One hadn’t lived, the other was long dead.

III

In the golden old days the twins sat down,
played on lutes while all danced around.
A little later when the earth was proud
they sang to kings while others bowed.
Then came days when the whole earth groaned;
they tinkled like beggars and were stoned.
Came an age of wolves and fools;
one walked hungry, other in jewels.
Camps now are set for the mad and the sane.
They shoulder each other, they are one again.

Reconversion

Here it is, the safe distance,
the utter wall, and in the center
the round idea of comfort abandoned
like a pillbox by the enemy,
apertures no longer bristling
with offense, but being suddenly
disarmed of menace, looking silly
as a toy mistaken in its use.

Prowling in the uniform
of an enemy turned friend,
I find myself lone marauder
of a landscape shrunk
to garden size by a future
suddenly arrived, — devised,
with time’s collusion, as heir
apparent to this patch of peace.

A century of weight is leaning
on the wall: a rowdy sky
disseminating cynical horizons
perpetrates a hoax of clouds
over the tongue-tied land,
and my garden waiting new
and barren as a billiard table
asks me how to grow.

Disarmed by freedom, I myself
become the arm of freedom,
pressure on a space to be,
filling earthworms with devout
commotion, penetrate the round-
house of idea to find seeds
in crude love-notes promising
lifetime harvests in a year.

Original Sin

Death around the corner
and death beneath the skin
have nothing at all to do, Sir,
with where I saw it begin.

A child with tested eyes
taught me where to look;
It wasn’t in upside-down skies
or behind the coat on a hook.

It wasn’t under the bed, Sir,
or rasped from the radio,
or in the night of furniture
that creaked until dawn, no

It wasn’t in the usual places,
Sir, that’s what surprised me too;
the window where horror gazes
framed this unfabulous view:

A head closing in from above
first wearing the maternal grin
hardened his eyes to love,
told him that life is to win

From another his bread and butter;
where love is love of the womb
to lose is to face without supper
the selfless walls of his room.

From hot home of the flesh,
cool doom of quickening sin
woke death up with the wish,
Sir, to be severed under the chin.

My Witness, My Lady

We were listening to sounds the circus made
When the darkness twisted out of his head.
“Look how his bloodstream is oozing away!”
Cried the lady hugging her heart-shaped purse,
Her back to the horses parading with streamers
And steam in their tails. I was afraid
Nobody else had seen him erupt
But me. He never whimpered at all

Between the lady and me, a column
Of silence facing the horses and drums.
But had she really perceived, I wondered
Without changing direction or biting my lip.
When I brought down the hammer again (the crowd
Was cheering the quivering thighs of a drum
Majorette), had she perceived the plump
Little echo made by his wound the moment

She cried, the moment I pulled the hammer
Away? Because it was then in a panic
Of pity I saw her again through the loop
Of his arm as he rested a hand on a hip.
Torn by the instinct to scream and the fear
Of dropping her purse if she opened her arms
To help and the anguish of missing behind her
The loudest part of the circus parade,

She did nothing but shut her proud little eyes,
Turn on her hard round heel and shuddering
Walk away. Later I wanted
To find her and tell her, “My witness, my lady,
You who were so afraid, do you know
How we triumphed, your victim and I, the rest
Of that day? How all those loud steaming horses,
The