Poetry

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,…

They left my hands like a printer's Or thief's before a police blotter & pulled me into early morning's Terrestrial sweetness, so thick The damp ground was consecrated Where they fell among a garland of thorns. Although I could smell old lime-covered History, at ten I'd still hold out my hands & berries fell into…

One college night twenty years ago Snyder and I shared a quart of Cutty Sark, and after every drink hurled shot glasses at the concrete wall and Jimmy Cagney. Thinking we were tougher than punks, we swallowed lit cigarettes and kicked each other in the gut. When the proctor ordered us to knock it off,…

He's built a large house, for himself and his third wife, in the country, and you're here for the dinner given to honor the famous poet, who knows Professor B., the host, from college. The poet looks drained, not just from meeting faces he must be cordial to, but from something deeper and more painfully…

Fire shimmied & reached up From the iron furnace & grabbed Sawdust from the pitchfork Before I could make it across The floor or take a half step Back, as the boiler room sung About what trees were before Men & money. Those nights Smelled of greenness & sweat As steam moved through miles Of…

The child patting the dog felt the feathering side of the dog falling and rising as the dog dreamt. And the child was dog, became dog sleeping there by the fire; he matched the dog's in and out breathing, the dog's happiness in being petted. Oblivious, the dog dreamt, twitched, warmed by fire, fur, and…

for Robert Duncan The small white roses are the first to bow, drying closed to withered buds the way I've seen a girlishness fold over my mother ordering in restaurants, finding a seat on the bus. See, see. The small white roses and freesias and red berries falling from the rhapsodic stalks. See what the…

Driving home from your funeral there was nowhere else to go except along that two-lane switchback, into the town of Plain Dealing, Louisiana, nothing open at 10 p.m., no place I could stay. Further on I found the sky-blue motel with a sign in the yard that crackled like a bug light, an old man…