I am across the street. Across the street from her. January in Montreal. Snow between us. Reach deeper into the building to. To what? Find me? The snow melted but it got cold again and it started snowing tonight. It’s quiet. It’s much more quiet than you think. Snow has covered the frozen grass on the square. Why don’t you look at the square? Very formal. Very beautiful. Study of benches, metal fence, and trees against the lamplit snow. “Meditation on a Wintry City.” Reach deeper into the building. Recover your straight back. The voice that has no quarrel. Why are you pretending to make a life without me? The solemn city landscape under the window. Very formal. You will be electrocuted if you try to touch a description. You like to think of me as the Virgin of a small altar. You can handle that. You kneel among the people. This is acceptable. The candles. The pressed trousers. Not acceptable. It hurts the head not to be truly among them. A debate whether or not the light should be closed and the desk turned toward the window. Resolved. Leave the room altogether. The kitchen is warmer. Stand beside the water heater waiting for me to speak. What vow could you keep? To fast? To do pushups? To listen for me like a goodbye? Whether or not you believe in miracles. Debate. So deep is your habit of leaving me. So shy to approach. So attached to your headache. What vow? To be faithful to her as she is faithful to you. You forgot the things you taught me. You forgot your noble birth. And now she begins to remind you. An unexpected source of dignity. This paragraph is not inconsistent with your alleged intention of singing songs to women. You may stand beside the chieftain. They need to he told it is good music. Don’t quarrel outside. If only it was tomorrow. If only the girl from La Jolla tapped on the windowpane. Not the dreaded stream. The new music. The courtyard to her Presence. You may stand up straight. There is a second’s worth of pride here. You may use your mind. It is not forbidden, you know. Watch your mind carefully as once again you enter the room with the view of snow and iron fences. It’s not beautiful enough. It’s like me. It’s your whore telling the story. Don’t leave! Don’t summon your fatigue. It could be quiet here. You could really rest. You could speak of objects. The water heater. The stove. The smell of white paint. If it wasn’t for me you could leap to conclusions.
You like to think of me as the Virgin of a small altar.
I kneel in the great market
The Virgin moves her mouth
to give me courage
I sacrifice a tiny disgrace:
the final ruins of my song
Take these relics from my hand
You Who Give Birth To G-d
The old chords, the used-up words
Put them back again
into the unmade world
(New York, 1970)
and these verses of 1972 with which we intend to humiliate him:
Sleepless, with appetite imperial
the woman in the moon could not confine
(although I wanted her to rise and fall
for me, she would be one more concubine)
I looked at all the stars on wires drawn
down the sky, around, and up again
and thought how faint their light compared to one
unborn, to her with whom I have not lain
and these lines from the original manuscript of My Life in Art, written in the summer of 1975:
D. was the usual Italian queen bee. I am tired of the Madonna. They all want a cathedral for their little brief miracle. They love to see a man walking toward them with a stone on his back and a candle in his hand…
but such bitchiness dissolving into:
Mary, mother of, in your blue, whenever you want me to think of you, you put sopranos and a French horn section into my lust. I look up. There you are, standing in your blue between a robe of frozen water and the black winter bark. I kneel down with the rusted stars, another ambition-crazed animal brought down gracefully to the forest floor, and whoever was the girl under my fingernails, she stands up in her blue frozen waterfall with a baby made of dust…