Poetry

for Roy De Carava For a boy on the street in 1920 you don't need art supplies, some colored chalk for hopscotch, the pigeontoed balls of the feet. At the Guggenheim you don't figure a white dress on a black woman's wedding day is really subject matter for the Family of Man, but she enters…

I want to report to you that in my name, SUE ANN OWEN, I have found the word SNOW. I can also spell out without much trouble the animals that dare to live there, SWAN, EWE, and that old SOW, though the SNOW makes it quite cold for them. This is not to mention the…

“O Marcel,” she says to me, “O Marcel, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here.” A gale from her shoulder left me in dishabille. I was in dishabille anyway as I was just back from the kaleidoscopic society. I was just there to salute her…

He goes to cartoons, then to the western; in a suitcase, bound in leather, are pistols used in a duel; upstairs there is a drawing board, a table, the wine-cellar pop bottle sits on the nation's prose, the summer prose of the field.      With a straw hat, and no brim, he whispers about the east,…

The sabbath morning sunlight was coaxed out with promises of wine gums and toffees. Parishioners sped by in spruced up motors: one look for city slickers and country folks. I was left alone with a precocious youngster, blue-eyed, hair greased and groomed, an obstreperous gleam flashed across his features, as if, it seemed, no invisible…

Lawn a mastodon's matted hide Roof shingles dinosaur skin From the fencepost a crow watches afternoon throttle the small white house Clouds unskeining from the maple's hands Down from his front porch The old man      steps Pauses Tests      his balance on a slab of light

THROUGH ME IT LEADS TO THE CITY SORROWFUL. THROUGH ME IT LEADS TO THE ETERNAL PAIN. THROUGH ME IT LEADS AMONG THE LOST PEOPLE. JUSTICE INSPIRED MY MAKER ABOVE. IT WAS DIVINE POWER THAT FORMED ME, SUPREME JUSTICE AND ORIGINAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NO THING WAS CREATED THAT WAS NOT FOREVER CREATED, AND I SHALL…

I won't go with you to Munich's planetarium though I have always loved a wandering moon. I cannot bear to bless a German heaven. Dachau. The sign appears, colloquial amidst the traffic; the radio sputters stau — or is it heil? Everything continues in this language! Every chimney rises with a grudge. The Arbeit gate…

Bare bough clawing for sky Street soaring from town All the crimped rooftops neatly coiffed Fences buckle around plump green yards      buttoned with flagstones Time wedged in the town hall tower Sky clamped down Station closed no train but tracks still strike through the heart and here is the postman again unlocking the trunk of…