I
The mind wakes to a whistle
blown in the flesh, whose pea the mind is,
wakes and flows down being’s slipway,
then knows the sheers of river light,
bridge-rivets and factories,
and raw, panting jungles so humid
the snakes hang straight down, ghettos,
and parkways where dogs salute trees
and picnickers laze on gingham squares
under the lightly buzzing stars.
O the mind, the spidery mind
on whose web the flies of meaning walk.
Nature neither gives nor expects mercy,
but the mind quests to be fit, to be seemly,
and fears second (dying is first)
to become just as plural as all it surveys.
So the autos of habit pull up
to each club at the prescribed hour.
So tidy moments of rapture unfold in the dark.
So the moon rises like a fat white god.
II
Who can know the dervish rhythms
of the mind that whirls for truth
in odd ports-of-call: a New Jersey stadium
whose dry surplus is autumn, late at night,
when the Morse code of the galaxy
pales behind the fainter lights,
and, gifted with the breezy rhetoric
of his legs, a tall, willowy Beckenbauer
swivels, bluffs, and floats long passes,
running upfield among spoon-hipped Latins
playing soccer as if their sun could never cool.
Those tense men in mild weather
who hive and swarm, flying dense circles
around the ball’s white flower
to ply the queen of wins with the honey
of their fatigue—for them, defeat lies
in the open scream of a goal-mouth,
and cheers rush like surf breaking
on the bony shoulders of their private sea.
Speak to me, Beckenbauer, about the rhythm
of the mind that searches for perfect order
in imperfect places: art galleries and polling booths,
books, sin-bins, and churches:
and can turn even ceremonial violence
to the mercy of a workable peace.