Poetry

Saint Peter and the Monk

In the exaggeration of distance between the hotel chapel and the body poised a foot beneath the ceiling’s dust, an incorruptible levitation, an axe in the public air pointing away from the knife’s hilt over the heart.      Murder, from the alluvial elbow to the diagonal breviary. For us, a perfect focus unaware of conspiracy, distracted…

Wires Home

(The Ribbon to Norwood, January 5, 1971)      Will all be well?      To outfly the snow. Waking in the dark . . . . He kneels at the hearth, Radiates the ceiling . . . . No. Older than that. Old. My father lights no fires; I expect no hearth. But today I go, My day…

Explication

Because the top line hurts, flashes garish red glints off galactic petards, it is the night sky. The cupola-shadowed building whose one lit window this midnight is, for instance, the editor’s open office window, could be any government building or whorehouse that from another neighborhood slices your life. The office wall is the office wall…

Nail Letter

In the dark, I picked up a nail to write you a letter on a piece of wood. The iron point of midnight will failed me, I couldn’t send it. I am brave like Joan of Arc in dreams, but things shrink back into place when I awake. There are some tired flowers here with…

A Lot of Night Music

     Even a Pyrrhonist Who knows only that he can never know      (But adores a paradox) Would admit it’s getting dark. Pale as a wrist-      Watch numeral glow, Fireflies build a sky among the phlox,      Imparting their faint light Conservatively only to themselves.      Earthmurk and flowerscent Sweeten the homes of ants. Comes on the night      When…

On Tour with Rita

1. Georgia Black train flying north, Rita’s hat Awfully large and with a white ribbon, Legs crossed, cheap novel in her lap, Fingers casual on a bright necklace; Someone across the aisle is snapping Newspaper pages and blowing cigar smoke— This game of American spaces is tiresome: Trains may pound paradise into honeymoons And politics,…

Ideas

CHARLES and XENIA are discussing them At her place. Interrupted solitaire, Fern, teapot, humdrum harmonies from where Blinks a green cat’s-eye, the old FM. XENIA: Now no. But when I am child my parents Are receiving them. Emigrés I think very old, Distinguished. Spectacles with rims of gold. Clothes stained by acid of expérience. Forever…

Just Stopping By

Who shares your room, I wish I knew. A centipede, with eyes of blue? She will not see me snooping here To count each slipper, boot and shoe. Our little dresser must think it queer To hold her panties pink and sheer. I’ll bet her ass will never quake The coldest evenings of the year….

Primero de Enero

Las puertas del año se abren, como las del lenguaje, hacia lo desconocido. Anoche me dijiste:      mañana habrá que trazar unos signos, dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama sobre la doble página del papel y del día. Mañana habrá que inventar, de nuevo, la realidad de este mundo. Ya tarde abrí los ojos. Por el…