I can tear a page out of my notebook
or write about the Sunday newspapers,
Quaker Oats I had for breakfast,
inconsequential dental floss, bottled tears.
I could write about the Pantheon, Christopher Wren,
the meanings of good names, Patience, Prudence, and Mercy,
I never called a dog or donkey Violet or Rose,
but I named a donkey Daisy, and I loved my one-eyed dog
Montauk Daisy. A name’s a good beginning,
some have original sin washed off in blessèd water,
some prefer antiseptic mouthwash.
I’m derailed, but I’m not a locomotive
running on chestnut trees and coal.
I’m simply trying to find out about a loco motive,
the motive that’s under and over: love,
useless revenge and undoings. Heaven help me,
I’m my own bellhop and chambermaids.
In the Grand Hotel of the heart, I’m the concierge,
accept no tips.
I’m reluctant to end a sentence with a full stop.
I’m back to the locomotive, sleeping cars and delights.
You have the right to get off at the next station.
I’m loco about the difference between heart-shaped leaves
of the Bodhi Tree and Absalom’s oak,
the flight to Egypt and Buddha’s ways.
Principessa Lampedusa smiled,
“What a difference Christ’s crucifixion
from Buddha dying after eating mushrooms.”
I still play on my grandmother’s piano.
A child, I composed a little on the piano
without notation. I write this because
I still need to play that musical instrument.
Sometimes I know the music, but not the words.
A word’s a name with a public and secret motive
like names that are proud colors,
Mr. Brown changed his name to Komunyakaa.
Lovers may call summer, winter,
autumn, spring—like rolling over in bed.
I hear you, I’m coming over. I almost forgot
there are names not writ in water,
consequential, mapped mountain ranges
with and without names, I walk through the valleys,
I fear no evil in the Laurentians, Catskills, and Adirondacks.
Genghis Khan said his father was a mountain.
There are other languages
especially good for what they’re good for.
The Spanish word for still and yet, todavía,
is much more beautiful
than the plain English yet and still.
Waters may be still,
yet has no waters.
Still is a time word,
yet is wet with rhymes,
todavía, more Andalusian than Castilian.
Still, today is Buddha’s birthday,
reason to celebrate the Buddha, yet, still,
encore, todavía, toujours.
I’ve leg-wrestled the Rockies, and fellow sailors,
translated Rilke’s epitaph, told his story
“Rose, oh pure contradiction. . . ”
to white rabbits and snow owls in the Alps.
Beautiful African, Buddhist, and Hindu names,
holy as they are, to me are something like pretty girls.
I put on my hat for Abraham, Joseph, and David.
Soon there will be more names of those alive
than all the dead of history.
I’m gargling.