Poetry

At the crowded Ganges once I hitched a ride with tour-group tourists in their bus— They'd let me join them for that trip to the airport through seven miles of city, more of countryside. The members of that group wore wide-brimmed straws, sipped Cokes they'd brought along, showed each other trinkets they had bargained for,…

I'm not trying to manipulate reality, please put that grain      of sand back where you got it, thanks, but above all—way high up, above cities, clouds, classes— to make you see, and me write, the silent tip of the talking      iceberg, putting one word in front of another. Not I, but the Gross National Product,…

In Soweto today, two black men, one in the rulers' blue, one in civilian drab—ankle-length britches, a shirt whose once-distinct stripe has faded— faced one another. Each believed the other would take what the believer had—his power, his life— and believed that he, in that instant of history, embodied the force of history. I do…

I love the gold haloes of the saints in Giotto's frescoes of the legend of St. Francis. I love the plainness of the story, plain as the Saint's brown habit. In the Basilica at Assisi, lying on my back with my binoculars, my feet on my guidebook, I trace the tale in fragments. He is…

There is a store, it is an individual, like you, me, a body, corporate, you or I might go into this store and see racks of empty cardboard boxes covered with a picture and with words on the back with the typeface neutral and readable while the title on the front reaches out by some…

Toy tractor under the house, empty clock Plumbing that howls like the sea Within the walls, And the walls dirty-white where the cat rubbed And the child of splashed milk Giggled over a finger game. Sister roaring places. Wet truck. Sky making room for clouds, that black threat Over the grocery, something For Mr. Bandini…

He wanted to tell me something He had not told anyone before It might have been anything When he moved through the door He had not told anyone before Unsure of what he wanted to know When he moved through the door And took off all his clothes Unsure of what he wanted to know…

An iron meteorite is on display in Beijing Planetarium. I said: Once a brilliant orb, who left nothing but this remnant, You mishap of an early death caused by impatience. How disciplined your companions are To hold their assigned courses, never moving an inch away. You exchanged humility and trepidation for enduring      peace And have…

Though my tenancy there ended long ago —when I moved his mistress's pet dwarf orange trees out into the snow— I still live in the closeness of that first summer the deserted comb flowed in the wall and I dodged old honey dripping on my pillow. It tasted saplike, woody, a thick auburn beer. I…