Poetry

“What forgotten reverie, what initiation it may be, separated wisdom from the monastery and, creating Merlin, joined it to passion?” Yeats, A Vision She pulls the sheet of this dance across me then runs, staking the corners far out at sea. *     *      * O I’m lucky got a car that starts almost everyday tho I…

He made a crude wooden clock that threw him out of bed, a strong-armed Gabriel, he called it. such genius watched the new bone carriages tottering down their chutes, the magical brooms kicking their heels            spreading around the world, until one flipped and the file      sailed from his hand into the sclera. for months…

In the orchards we would take A rolled-up newspaper and light it, And shove this torch into a wasps’ nest. In a moment the hive Would be thick with dead wasps. Only one or two flying out of the fire. *     *      * Now, when I walk in the shade of these trees, I know they…

Unhealthy nymph you come toward me with glitter of decadence sequin drenched blue angel with hectic flush and slanting eyes hard bodied doll tough hands chalked dry you pump, rise drum against the membrane like an infant’s head against the bag of waters held at twelve o’clock the limits of the law What are you…

I hear typing so I go over to see what my wife is writing. There is something like a museum about her tonight, a feeling of great space and flames that burn unseen, inside houses in the nineteenth century. I suppose she can hear hooves go past, outside. I suppose that she can sit by…

The game of baseball is not a metaphor and I know it’s not really life. The chalky green diamond, the lovely dusty brown lanes I see from airplanes multiplying around the cities are only neat playing fields. Their structure is not the frame of history carved out of forest, that is not what I see…

Road, hog, assassin, mirror. Some of its favorite words, which are breath. Or handwriting: the long tail of the ‘y’ disappear- ing into a barn like a rodent’s, and suddenly it is winter after all. After all what? After the ponds dry up in mid August and the children drop pins down each canyon and…

Black summers have baked the yellow stone. Now, wall and earth inseparable: a thickly floored hole. Fat dress-and-scarf-drenched woman. Under a grey stone a lizard squints. Past here are watches But now, in the simmer of a weekly afternoon, A small drum, answering the shofarm here, where Women dumped their babies on the pointed rock….

     1. I keep listening. Where are the words? I wander between stations. The damnation of the beloved Keeps me in fascination. Who shall be made real?      2. Will you arrive With your soft dresses Rolled away in your suitcase? Will you speak elegantly of clouds, Of forgotten shapes? Will you tell me with your subtlety…