Poetry

1. The upraised arm, first clenched, ready to hit, fist clenched and cocked, ready to throw a brick, a rock, a Coke bottle. When you see this on TV, robbers and cops, or people in some foreign alley, is the rock in your hand? Do you shift and dodge? Do you watch the story twitch…

She carries the garden tools to the hill And starts to beat a hole She finds a garland of roses Full of ears and salvage A shield bush A crown of peas and a glass of juice She has to drink that first Crown the girl! Crown the two of us      heart and right arm…

Have we grown old before our time folding our hands without a smile or a piece of bread like monkeys, our faces unrecognizably human? We jump and clap to be cursed and mocked. And when we speak no one pays attention. And when we sleep even a bird can wake us. Israel, 1989

Il temporal foco e l'eterno veduto hai, figlio, e sei venuto in parte dov’ io per me più oltre non discerno. —Purgatorio, XXVII, 127 When a mind goes, how much we never knew goes with it. Always singular, the self in its familiar guises moves among us, breaking bread, spending a Sunday on the Battenkill,…

I lift my hands to my face      my hand's the biggest thing around and filled with rivers      it has stems I can see through to the dark fuzzy air I hold my hand to my face and down below I feel my legs curl up to my chest I look out at the door of…

Wanting, the enemy cast off, wades in a dark pool outside. Wanting, the oppressor, grows anklets and beads in a wet heat. Charity, the curse in love with patriots, gives all her possessions to the night, takes off her robes and waits on the narrow bed for ruin. The slightest cusp of wind disturbing both…

Twenty-one turkeys amaze our eyes, come traveling north from the Berkshire Museum (Art and Natural History). It says there boa constrictors do not harm humans. False Laocoön! not to mention Eden.      On Route 7 nobody stops; but if they had a gun (or a camera in Yellowstone) they'd stop to shoot the hideous buffalo. Turkeys…

Then. No. Now. A long silk scarf of voice, pulled through the loop of throat— Jo Stafford singing on the radio. He wants so much to hear a voice like that, and it exists, as simply as creation, the way the world provides an image for the feeling that's richer than the feeling, so that…

Eat a third, drink a third, and leave a third for anger. And after waking rise slowly. And after lovemaking rise slowly. And after too much wine rise slowly. And after bloodletting rise slowly. We rise slowly after silence, taking a breath at a time. After days bent over the garden, slight comment about our…