Poems 1959-2009 (31 page)

Drank silence. Then the silence drank. Wet chin,

Hot, whiskered darkness. Every elm was ill.

What else is there to give but joy? Disease.

And trauma. Lightning, or as slow as lava.

Darkness drinking from a pool in Java,

Black panther drinking from a dream. The trees

Around the edge are elms. Below, above,

Man-eater drinking its reflection: love.

 

Another perfect hour of emptiness.

The final hour, calm as a candle flame.

The evening, enlarging as it neared, became

A sudden freshness, stillness, then the yes,

The fragrant falling yes of summer rain.

The huge grew larger as it neared, the smile,

The smell of rain, and waited for a while,

And went away. Time spilled. It left no stain.

 

“The speed of light is not the limit. We

Are free. We glide. Our superluminous

Velocity will take us far. For us,

The superluminous is only the

Beginning of our birth. How born we are.

Compared to how we started. Vast, oh vast.

A lifetime as the measure couldn't last,

The nearest destinations were too far:

A billion years to reach the one inside

You if you could—who holds you, whom you hold.

You kick the covers off asleep, are cold,

And someone covers you, is all. And glide

Off into space. Is all. Space curved by speed—

We really leave the light behind. But hark.

The infinite beginning in the dark

To sigh the universe out of its seed.

The speck that weighs more than the world. Before

The universe—which has no meaning—was

Before the singularity which does.

Invisible nonzero, and we soar.

We sigh from the beginning, and we soar.

We leave the light behind and soar. And soar.”

 

The way the rain won't fall

Applies a velvet pressure, voice-off.

The held-back heaviness too sweet, the redolence,

Brings back the memory.

Life watches, watches,

From the control room, through the soundproof window,

With the sound turned off,

The orchestra warming up, playing scales.

It listens to the glistening.

The humidity reels, headier than methanol.

Treelined sidestreets, prick up your leaves.

The oboe is giving the
la
to the orchestra.

Someone shoots his cuffs to show his cufflinks,

Yellow gold to match his eyes, and pays the check.

Someone else is eight years old.

Her humility is volatile.

And when they kiss, he can't quite breathe.

The electric clouds perspire.

It's meteorology, it's her little dress, it's her violin,

It's unafraid. It's about to.

A sudden freshness stirs then stills the air, the century.

The new jet-black conductor raises her baton.

The melody of a little white dog,

Dead long ago, starts the soft spring rain.

 

The most beautiful power in the world has buttocks.

It is always a dream come true.

They are big. They are too big.

Kiss them and spank them till they are scalding.

Till she can't breathe saying oh.

Till your hand is in love.

Till your eyes are raw.

Stockings and garter belt without underpants are

The secret ceremony but who would imagine

She is wearing a business suit. She is in her office. She merely touches

The high-tech phone. Without a word,

She lies down across the hassock and eases her skirt up.

How big it is.

Her eyes are closed … She has the votes.

They know she does. They're waiting for her now next door.

The number is ringing.

She squeezes them together. She squeezes them together.

She presses herself against the hassock.

She starts to spank herself.

 

She has the votes; they know she does;

They're waiting for her now next door.

Her eyes are closed.

We were discussing the arms race when the moderator died,

Presumably a performance piece, was

What it's called. He said it is.

It actually wasn't so political was only

Broadcast without a live audience.

The telephone is warbling.

The secretary has allowed the call through which means the president

Herself is on the line.

Her dreams are calling her. The press will be there.

Her skirt is all the way up.

I am the epopt. Thou art the secret ceremony.

 

A man sits memorizing a naked woman—

A slot cut in a wall

Which has a metal slide which opens

When he puts a quarter in

Lets him look for hours.

It seems like hours.

He keeps forgetting what he sees.

He pays and stares

Into the brightly lit beyond

Dancing on a stage just beyond the wall, bare feet

On a level with his chin.

He looks up at it,

Without the benefit of music

Just standing there.

And then the music starts again.

The wall in which the slot is cut is curved.

So when the slot is open, besides a dance he sees

Curving away from him to either side an ocean liner row

Of little windows.

Prisoners in solitary confinement

Might get their meals through one of these—

Presumably behind each one a booth like his.

The open slots are dark.

A slot of darkness in the wall

Is someone.

Someone hidden is hunching there.

From some slots money waves.

The woman ripples over and squats

In front of it, her knees spread wide.

She takes the bill—

Sometimes she presses herself against the slot.

A man stays in a booth.

The door stays locked. The slot stays open.

He can't remember what he memorized.

It seems like hours.

It is too late.

 

Serve me the ice cream bitterer than vinegar

Beneath a royal palm covered with needles.

Tell me a love story that ends with acyclovir

Five times a day for five days.

You never had it so good.

He made me my dog which He took.

Houseflies and herpes He brings.

Buttery ice cream smooth as Vaseline.

Florida. Dawn. Five hundred clouds.

Anal chocolate turning pink.

Oxygen-rich, from an opened artery

In the warm water

In the claw-footed tub. Dawn

Spreads from Gorbachev these arms talks AIDS days.

Will it spread?

Venus on the half-shell, moist and pink rose of salt—

Belons 000 when they're freshest are as sweet.

Chincoteagues from the bay are as plump.

Freshly squeezed is as sweet.

This is your life. You live in France,

Klaus Barbie, in 1983, and '84, and '85, and '86, and '87.

And every day is the bissextus.

And every dawn is Hiroshima.

Hallali!

 

My life.

I live with it.

I look at it.

My spied on, with malice.

It's my wife. It's my husband.

It sleeps with me.

I wake with it.

It doesn't matter.

If I'm unfaithful—if I drank too much—

It's me. It's mine. It's all legal.

I smell the back of my hand,

And like the smell.

Twenty-five years ago when I was still alive.

I was twenty-five.

My penis pants. My penis

Rises, hearing its name, like a dog.

I ought to cut it off

And feed it to itself.

Like the young bride in the Babel story

Forced to eat her husband's penis

By the peasant who has cut it off.

A railroad telegrapher and a peasant

On the White Army side have found some Jews.

Russia 1918.

Interior railroad boxcar.

The boxcar door is slid open from the outside

Like a slowly lifted guillotine blade.

There they are.

I am fifty today. I hold the little cape and sword.

I dedicate this bull

That I'm about to kill

To the crowd.

To the crowd.

To the crowd.

To the crowd.

To the crowd. To the crowd. To the.

 

I don't want to remember the Holocaust.

I'm
thick
of remembering the Holocaust.

To the best of my ability, I wasn't there anyway.

And then I woke.

My hands were showing me how they wash themselves.

They're clean. The heart is too. The hands are too.

They flush in unison like a row of urinals

Every few hours automatically. Two minutes Cockfosters.

My heart was pure. And stood on a subway platform in London

Staring at the sign. One minute Cockfosters.

I wasn't there anyway.

I don't believe in anything.

I was somewhere else

Screaming beneath an avalanche.

Skiers wearing miners' headlamps were not

Skiing down the mountain in the dark,

It would be beautiful. Seeds of light floating slowly on the dark

Downward without a prayer

Of finding any elephants to save because

The International Red Cross and the Roman Catholic Church had not.

I cannot move.

I move my face from side to side

To make a space to breathe. I cannot breathe.

The screaming stops.

 

The solemn radiance

On the radio is Poulenc.

The boy soprano seems to dream

He doesn't breathe.

And then the much shyer wings,

Of new materials, that add enormous range.

Oh, the power of the perfume!

The boys choir glides high above

The airborne orchestra.

Sweetness poured calmly and with innocent

Translucency blown

Into a glass.

While it's still warm it cools.

The glass is warped

On purpose, beautifully.

Poulenc, Auric, Milhaud, et cetera. Les Six.

A champagne flute contains the tears of Christ.

For this is France.

The radio predicts the weather for the region with such charm.

Charm followed by more rain will crucify the harvest.

And it is cold. So far,

The summer day is pure

Boy soprano blue without a cloud.

The naive fields of sunflowers don't know they suffer.

Suffer the little sunflowers to come unto me.

Their childish big faces gaze at everyone with love.

They sing so sweetly in the cold. They sing completely.

Shy wings repeat the

Seven last words of Christ,

I don't feel anything but it hurts.

I'm typing this with fingers of cold wax.

I can see my breath in the salon.

In August,

With green leaves warbling liquids of birdsong,

We have reached the Pole.

The Poulenc ripples chastely as an eel

Off the shores of silence, immaculately

To the place where they press olives.

Jesus prostrates himself on the ground.

Jesus jaywalks through the perfumed night air

Back and forth. How sweet it smells.

He is davening and stops.

Abba, Father.

He looks for them and finds them

Fast asleep, Peter especially. Could

You not watch with me one hour? They couldn't

Even stay awake.

They sleep in the dark.

Who when I thought my son was dying slept.

My son was dying slept.

There she was.

Who when I thought my son was dying slept

And slept while I paced,

While they performed the emergency operation.

For hours. But then I too.

Could you not watch with me one hour?

Can't wake from my life either.

I too must wake.

The sun streams in and makes

Sunbeams of my solid house.

Blond air is my igloo.

The houseflies cryogenically unfreeze

And regain consciousness in order to be flies.

Before they fly, they jitter-walk around and pause

To rub their two front legs together.

Androgynous Akhenaten is singing his hymn to the Aten.

The awed wide-eyed words rise

On the wings of my houseflies,

Franciscan in their intimacy which shook the earth.

The radio is singing Christ is risen.

The sunflowers are singing to the sun.

These words I say to you are sunflowers singing to the sun.

There was a God

With human chromosomes, nearly human … I fly

Across the inland flatness of the Cher

In my old car, in love. I give you God. I fly my car.

I'm bringing God back to God.

It doesn't matter what happens.

And when I said my car was me, instantly

My dingy bronze Simca's alternator was broken, yesterday.

We overheat up to the red.

We'll try to float to a garage.

I'm going nowhere fast. The

Same old 66.

Same difference.

Shades of the past. It doesn't matter what happens.

Just outside the door,

The dear cur snores on its tires. It sleeps in la France profonde.

The centerlines are silver, the roads are gold, en Berry today.

Shed a joyous tear for me

And my bronze-colored pal.