Almost complete poems

Father Goya told me
after the puppets were cut to pieces
you, Franciscan or Jew,
began the year in an ungodly place,
your head collared, protruding
from dead Rocinante’s asshole,
the horse’s belly lanced open
then laced with cord like a boot.
A commoner, you wrestled
through the stench, through the offal and bowels—
barking dogs around your gray head.

A week before, you did not celebrate
Christ’s birthday as your own, as a Russian poet did.
You did not finish your book of unhappy deaths
as Cervantes finished his sacred, funny book,
the master, five years an Algerian slave,
his left arm sacrificed at Lepanto.

Mi papá Goya told me, under the arch
of a bridge not traveled, it was you
who killed the knight’s horse
and crawled in, worked your head out
of a stained-ass window. You died living,
these your last words:
I’ve seen my face and a cloud reflected in a well
but only the sun and moon reflect in a puddle of blood.

SONG OF BARBED WIRE

I’ve heard the red deer of Eastern Europe
climb with their fawns up rocky hills
to graze on poor patches of grass
rather than go down to green valleys
that once were cut off by barbed wire,
’round national borders and death camps.
They respect, fear, remember
the razor wire no longer there.

I graze on fables:
thou-shalt-nots passed on by deer-talk,
that has the sound of our long wet kisses—
buck to doe to fawn, nose to nose. I hear
commandments sent by antlers scraping trees,
received like the color of eyes.

Nazi and Stalinist barbed wire words
send me up a hill to graze.
I know my red deer-like progenitors
passed on to me a need to suck,
to be afraid of fire.
When I try to kiss my way into green valleys
I am afraid to move beyond the human,
I am not naked, wrapped in barbed razor wire.
There is an original blessing.

DEATH IS A DREAM

Death is a dream. Time,
perhaps the illegitimate sister of silence,
mother of space, is seldom dealt with
as a living thing, male or female,
male and female. Time “worships language,”
does not kneel but is a passionate lover
with respect and disrespect
for what is or ever was.
Again, time lives! “Again” is a word
that tries to cage time in
as does the phrase “ever was,”
but the cage is just a grammatical mirror,
without a right or wrong.

I have a lover’s quarrel with the followers
of life is a dream. Time
sits at table with a musical family,
sitting and reading from left to right:
free verse, iamb, spondee, Alexandrian, trimeter,
inflected and uninflected languages,
dear cousins, ancient aunts and uncles.

In a dark repertory theater death is a dream.
Time stands in the pit. She is also an actor.
Like the universe, the theater is empty and a full house.
The play’s The End of Everything, a light-year’s farce.
The action: Rights and Wrongs, each plays the other,
changes costume on stage. Then speechless tragedy:
time measures space inch by inch—
the pity is, in the end she turns back,
unmeasures herself and every other thing.
Death is a dream without measure, no light-years,
no days, no meters, no milestones,
no paces, no walls or fences,
no pints or half-pints, no pounds, no ounces,
no cubits, no handbreadths.

Mozart’s music prolongs my life,
but his Requiem could not prolong his.
I stand on a soapbox in Washington Square,
flying the stars and stripes.
I speak to dog walkers, the homeless,
any passerby:
if death is a dream, it is something else,
without a face, without heaven or hell.
Death is not eternal, will dream and die.
The question is, just before death dies
is there a kind of waking up,
a slapstick Liebestod?
Summer dresses as winter,
night and day fall in love,
die in each other’s arms.
I am proud time lets me stand here, sit at table
from time to time, so to speak, with the family.
We are communal, like the Jews at the Last Supper.
I had a dream I saw a giant silver sea bass
swimming in sky as if it were ocean.

56,000-YEAR POEM

This morning I’m part me, part anything.
In my notebook I uselessly draw
a leaf, a rat that loves a cat, Fatima’s hand.
After anywhere, any place, secondhand,
I set down words on blue lines, like pigeons
flying through the open doors of the British Museum,
or crows on a fence.
I remember . . . a Renaissance painting,
three astrologers, I believe the Magi,
at rest in the desert their faces look inward,
sextant, hourglass, charts beside them—
the intelligence of clouds in the morning sky.
They cross the painted desert without words.
Beyond the reach of their prayers,
they find a Child stabled with His mother,
linger... witness the circumcision,
then journey homeward in the dead of winter.
I gnaw a bone of Spanish poetry.
A thousand years of illumination and wars,
the cow becomes a symbol of Christianity,
the donkey is the Jews. In my España,
protected by Maria and Guardia Civil,
at Easter they slaughter a donkey to please the Child.
Reader, come a little closer, have a whiskey.
Before the stars were named, before there was prayer,
some 55,000 years ago when there were
perhaps 10,000 worldly Homo sapiens,
the DNA in my spit shows
my ancestors hunted in what is now Iberia.
Darling, hairy great-grandfather
to the hundredth power, I blow you a kiss.
I point to your nose and my nose and smile.
I point to the sun and say, the sun, el sol.
I point to the moon and say, the moon, la luna.
A democrat, I look the other way.
I see a thousand years of grandchildren.
My skull blows them a kiss. Margaret
kisses back (I hope my mother’s name is still useful).
I hope she’s heard of Hamlet, speaks some English.
I say to my distant granddaughter, Jew,
tell me what you know about the stars.
A penny for your thoughts.

SEEMS

It doesn’t take one day for water
to turn into three feet of ice.
– Chinese Proverb

Changing right to wrong takes time
or never happens. Changing wrong to right
takes longer or never happens. Life to death,
death to life is no walk in the countryside.
Under three feet of ice, an old brook flows
into an ice and snow silenced river
that empties into the understanding ocean.
Who can say, “Seems, seems, I know not seems”—
words never spoken by the Prince of Peace?
All water has a face. Oceans welcome,
do not devour rivers and brooks.
In winter, rivers and brooks
become oceans’ beards and eyebrows.
Old to young happens—an old North wind
becomes a summer breeze.

A MISFORTUNE

To idle without direction is best,
forget north, east, south and west.
It’s up and down, out and in,
no room at the inn, and, and
I love a Bernini fountain.
My mother still takes my hand,
leads me in and out of my mind.
My footprints are all I leave behind.
Any time of the night or day
waves may wash them away.
The truth: it’s better to be a whale
than a snail,
better to be a bard
than a postcard.
I’d rather be this than that,
I’d rather be a shoe than a hat,
I’ll take a chance
that sometime I’ll dance,
Lord, sitting on the fence
is better than pretense
but there’s a lot to be said for nonsense.

TWO ARIAS

In an empty house I’m trying to sing a high F,
you’ve heard my baritone and bass,
tonight I’m Coloratura, I’m the Queen of the Night
in The Magic Flute,
from a mountaintop I reach out my arms,
open my wings, lift a clawed foot and sing:
“O do not tremble, my dear son,”
it is the penis and vagina that hear confession,
nipples are saints, the orgasm gives absolution.

Moonlight is not beyond my authority.
Still, there is a king who mounts my darkness
with lion head and eagle-claw feet—my nation.
After, later,
a certain sadness in my haunches I call dawn,
I return to my night owls, my nest of dry grass and time.
There, there. Everything comes home.

Morning, I’m a Hudson Valley baritone.
I live a mile from where, age three, I saw
my first field of wild flowers. I swooned
while my father fixed a flat tire.
Yesterday, twenty-first of June,
I drove through the woods to a concert hall,
roadside wild flowers tuned up, improvised.
I half-forgot music did not come out of
a phonograph, musicians have faces . . .
In good time, the wind blows from all directions.
I tried to live in a house with beauty
constant as gravity.
I tell myself,
you’re living in a child’s tree house.
I caught myself saying if I die, rather than when.
I pretended death was a supernumerary,

so I found myself weeping over little things
after I saw friends I love had little strokes.
I watched them grow thin
with occasional trouble speaking—
the thinking prima ballerina
has trouble going up and down the stairs.

Enough! There’s something between gravel and semen,
between seamen and seeing men. Fantastical
sons and daughters, now that I’ve confused you—
I remind you, when they boiled a kid in its mother’s milk,
a tribe said, “Stop!” and “Stop!” when they killed the firstborn.
In time of war, all four-year-olds ask,
“Why do they want to kill me?”
I did not tell you I fell down
ancient cobblestone steps in Jerusalem,
broke my wrist that quickly turned blue,
I wandered the streets and found cool waters,
the well of Lady Miriam (Mary) . . .
Pope John Paul flew overhead in a helicopter.
I was simply trying to make a name for myself,
following the ancient, popular belief
that each person is represented by a star
which appears at birth. Firmament of parliamentarians,
I simply want to be worthy of such an honor
when I sing, buried alone in my tomb,
man in two persons, son and holy ghost.

REVENGE COMEDY

Running out of time,
I can keep time with my foot,
with or without a shoe.
Truth is, time keeps me.
When I was seven, my mother gave me
a Mickey Mouse watch I hated.
I purposely overwound it.

China has one time zone.
When it is 5 am in Shanghai
and the sun is rising, it is 5 am in West China,
where it is the middle of the night.
My time differs from street to street,
from one side of the room to the other.

So much happened that is always.
So much never happened that is always,
centuries when truth was painted
as the daughter of time.
Hard to believe God pays attention
to what time it is anywhere.
Running out of time,
years, degrees, minutes are dirty little words.

When I was a child I slept as a child,
the sun used to wake me and my mother.
We had intimate conversations while my father slept.
He awoke and lived with nightmares in his eyes,
perplexed, enlightened, without a Guide—
son and assassin, a boy, I was his disciple.
He and I fished with copper line, a gut leader
and a spoon for landlocked salmon.
He caught one beauty. It was, he said,
the happiest moment of his life.
My father was whipped by time
and he whipped back. I was in the middle.
What was knifing him, cutting out the flesh
under his shell I never understood.

Now I wake at dawn, the sun mothers me.
My father sees to it and I say okay,
every day is a school day.
Until I was 50, I never wore a watch,
then like Antonio Machado, I set my watch back
24 hours. My sundial never tells lies
when the sun is down.

BURIAL OF THE GRAVEDIGGER’S DAUGHTER

I’ll take her to the hill
Near the olive tree.
Can I do it in the daylight?
I’m afraid what I shall see.

Not all the graves I’ve dug,
Dry and wide and deep,
Can hold the sweetness
Of my daughter not asleep.

In our village someone
Must dig the graves for all,
Her death has just begun
Under her prayer shawl.

My shovel is my cross.
My shovel cannot bless.
My child, I must soil
Your white lace dress.

WHAT

My first dream came with a gift of What?
the infant’s first wordless question.
I stand before you a sleepwalker
rubbing out, out the damned spots of yesteryear.
A saint or Zadig invented the words:
“¿qué causa?” “what?” so we might ask honest questions.
In a dream of curiosity, I ask—what,
how, who, which, where, why?
The dream of curiosity stages matters out of the question:
dramas about the living and the dead,
where each often plays the other. A little rouge,
a little powder, a change of wigs, who knows what’s what?
Night changes to day, and day to night.
You think it’s all sun and moon, not trickery?
True I hold the portfolio chargé d’affaires of my life,
but I am a corrupt official, easily bribed
by a tree into saying “beauty is the answer.”
I sell visas to Anchorwhat and Paradise.

What is an atheist on the temple mount, and way of the cross.
What says “Rome’s Wolf is younger than Manhattan’s Mastodon.”
Rivers of what, what, what, what,
run into the ocean, flood two thirds of the world,
“The poet is the instrument of language,
not the other way around.”
Flocks of where, how, which, who, why—fill the sky,
while over Latin American jungles voiceless Stringbirds
sound cello-like purple-feathered love calls with their wings—
now stringed instruments—a dark paradoxical gift,
like John Milton’s gift of inner sight after his loss of outer sight.

There is no proof that reality simply is what is.
What—does not enter the past but is entered by it.
What—protects the truth by offering itself
as prey to the raptor fact.
The Stringbird is never caged,
as gods are caged in houses of worship.
Sometimes I hear its wings calling in the woods.
What . . . happens . . . is never quite comprehended.
What is a tree whose roots are a bear’s heart;
the blood of What flows in mountain streams and rivers,
past spines of ocean life.
Because Proverbs says,
“The leech has two daughters—
Give and Give!... and the fire never says enough”
— I remember Kunitz put in a garden for Cal Lowell
and Caroline, in Ireland. When Stanley returned
in June, he found only wildflowers in rubble.
Still, walking with them across their hillside,
hell and love glances in their eyes,
there was reason to hope because of love,
laughter and nightingales, the lovers might find
the golden bough that once allowed a Roman
to pass safely through the underworld—
but dreadful, unwanted guests were coming.
What’s to do? Turn the key, it may unlock or lock the door.

Now death is in fashion but life’s not out of style,
whatever the hemline, glove or cuff.
I don’t see proof death’s worthwhile.
It never says enough.
I spit in death’s ocean.
Death is time away
from here, from everywhere,
today is here,
anterior.
Life and death are hand and glove:
life’s the hand, death’s the glove.
What caresses my face with love
smacks it with an empty glove,
heavy as the ocean.

WHY

I know my love of “whys?” is a faithless sin.
I am a worm. You, Lord, are my Robin.
I think the Holy Spirit is a Crow, a Dove, any bird.
Born beyond redemption, I will never repent,
I curl around the serpent,
temptation to temptation, disobedient.
I never swallowed that You made the firmament, Your Word
that in the beginning was the Word.
I swallow my foolish questions—many “whys?”
I pick from between my teeth the letter “y.”
I am not wise. Now I am absurd.

Since there is no place in heaven for curiosity
or anyone with my beliefs,
I will take in the long haul earthly simplicity—
I will sleep with Mother Nature, my weak spot,
perhaps dreaming of questions, not in a Greek pot
but in the dirt among the leaves
parked under an apple tree to rot
in a place less pagan than hallowed ground,
never again to fool around in the company
of any living thing that fools around with me.

One day when I am far from useless,
You will throw me still wriggling in the river of loneliness
while You listen to the praise of gulls, frogs’ applause.
“Why? Why? Why?” Your grand answer: “Because.”
Old Fool, I have no desire for the afterlife.
I want to stay here with You, to hang around
with Your trees, Your animals and my wife.