Old black-and-white photos of musicians cover the walls at Alvin's Twilight Bar. A fire burns in the grate. The patrons are neighbors. I read the Free Press until a woman I know comes in for soup and beer. We listen to blues on the jukebox, drink a lot. So far talk is easy. Lady Day,…
for Leonard 1. Planets My body anabolic in sleep, my dream-mind fertile and easy, feeling no distress at missing trains—they're me but not mine. Awake I watch “Not-Mars” Antares fling planets back in an arc across the line of transit. Mars looms; Jupiter's a distant shout of white. Venus, name-laden, Mater Matuta, blazes cool in…
It lay like a dark pond behind your eyes rotating on the axis of despair. As someone considers a move to the country you imagined that change of scene. And as your life came to resemble a solitary walk around a deserted lake you dipped your foot into that black water. You took longer walks,…
Of this low stool, the base is a woman naked, stooped, who bears it up with large hands— much larger than her face. For the chief, her hands express service. They gave the carver ten points through which to engineer the stress. Ornamented, they're part of the carver's pleasure in his skill: the fusion of…
(i) I measure ways out of here. Scan a room, Memorize each exit sign. count the stairs. It's easy to blame the dark, the infinite For what hasn't happened yet. I know all the names Of the highways, the exact wrenchings of elevators, Their clutch: every night I have had to lie a little more…
i am taking in taking in like a lump of a dead baby on the floor mama kicks me i don't feel anything * * * i am taking in taking in i am reading newspapers i am seeing films i am reading poetry i am listening to psychiatrists, friends someone knows the way someone will…
I There's a sky with nothing in it— No parachute, as if to save you, Has buckled from the empty ceiling: Your nieces must be taken to the zoo; Their voices are squeaky like vermilion cellophane. The hill to the antelopes you storm, but their shoes Are wrong for such an outing: the straps will…
James Arthur Baldwin 1924-1987 Hungers of the flesh, the timeless terror of our need, the barter of our liberty for lies, these were your watchwords and your witness, the steel of your surrender to our song: True believer, I want to cross over into camp ground. One fiery still November, not in Harlem, nor Paris,…
Now I'm Rembrandt's age when he died. For years I've been tracking his self-portraits in the museums of Europe and America, watching the bright eyes of his twenties gradually sadden into old age. In those last portraits he seems to be saying, “I have seen enough, lost enough, died enough.” But when I look at…
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