THE SNOW POEMS (1977)

for my country

Words of Comfort

Words of comfort,

a railing before the fray,

mumbling shock

away from seizure, between mts

5a drone, narrative, longer wind runs

than mourning, going on over

past the waters of

every expense of care

can modes, syntaxes, rhetorics,

10folkways compete

with equanil (I think not)

to put you away) to sleep

(contemporary verse excepted)

(pick up this week’s

15feelings at your local drugstore)

today misty drizzling (around seventy)

the pleasant pheasant

disappear

drippy-humble

20into the shrubs and few

birds bother: crows emphatically find dead

trees to sit in,

skinned branches, line up

into the wind,

25a black countercurrent

drippy but cool

get a poem big enough

ocean-sea rivers

stream around it

30by the time

a poem is the world

the author is

out of town

pushing fifty—

35those years you waited to fill out, you

aren’t going to fill out, your

biceps firm up:

past fifty the muscles

string free, lean separations into thew and bone:

40pushing fifty, you notice that the

crest due or normal to arrive has

arrived or isn’t coming, not

ever coming, not at all, but something else

quite different, that is certainly coming

45my friend said

if you can

learn to swim

or fence at

forty or crochet

50at forty-two age is just numbers

I go back odd that

over and often death the evidence

to repeat myself: for which is

where repetition is absolute

55imperfect is completely

possibility clears incredible

each of us

exception’s single

One Must Recall as One Mourns the Dead

One must recall as one mourns the dead

60to mourn the dead and so not mourn too much

thinking how deprived away the dead lie

from the gold and red of our rapt wishes

and not mourn the dead too much who having

broken at the lip the nonesuch

65bubble oblivion, the cold grape of ease at

last in whose range no further

ravages afflict the bones, no more

fires flash through the flarings of dreams

do not mourn the dead too much who bear no

70knowledge, have no need or fear of pain,

and who never again must see death

come upon what does not wish to die

Things Change, the Shit Shifts

Things change, the shit shifts,

byways and sideways,

75break out, horn in,

step in the same do twice

I followed the swamp

hogs off, I picked meat

with cousinly buzzards,

80I got rotten meat out

of the ears of old

raccoons while under

the skin next to the

ground, maggots rippled

85in the heat like breezy water

the levelest look’s the jaguar’s

peccary gaze (deadset to flare)

or the weaving thermal gaze of

the viper for the small mammal, mama

90mia, cute frisky little rascal

the curvature of the necessity rides

no more skyward but rounds off,

a comedown comeuppance: in a fallish time,

the birds’ gatherings and flights

95skim treetops, not

much entering in now, no nests, pausing to consider

or dwell, the wide

storm winter coming

.Envy

100Let your friend have

as much of the

world as he can

have, what does

he have: the

105wind blows it

away and your friend

also and

you, freeing all

from any trace of taint

110

but because the dust

mills all looks,

tastes, honors fine,

because of that the

115small hope

cannot extinguish itself

that some flavor

of the self, indelible

in dust,

120qualifies the common end

we are abandoned

here to found

our lives on gossamer

125distinctions

where steel rusts

& rock cannot hold

My

my

longslobberer

130palaver &belaborer

palaverer

(biggest old ugliest

awfulest-looking thang)

Price Slashed (whew)

135For . . .

QUICK SALE

treetops twittering

birds windily gathering

heading south for

140the scallop, scallop-through, in the ridge:

the jay

quince-sits

a minute

and flies north

145into the coloring thicket

when we learn we are trashI’d rather be

flimsy, flowable, our holding the flakey

trivial and slight, we mustfool of hope

not say, if that’s whatthan the

150the universe thinks of us, so smartass

much for the universe:of the

it should be the benefit of oursmall and mean

experience here to realize trash

the just groundwork

155of marvelous devising, feeling,

touching, tasting, looking,

beauty’s unbelievable contrary

Here I Sit, Fifty in the

Here I sit, fifty in the

mid-seventies, the 28th of the 9th, cedarberries

160reddening a veil, vine leapage

and leafage red or yellow flame tips in the trees,

the sky mixed

after pure days of rain,

coolishness and windyishness, most

165birds gone,

hi-flo hieroglyphic geese going over,

a day and decade like most any other

if you put in the wind, sun,

believe the brook’s fuss,

170trees nodding, yessireeing,

the mixture of identifiable hunks of

historicity with permanences and continuos

like geese stringing singings,

the clash and intermingling

175within the boundaries of the momentary

and instantaneous of the

perception of the, ah,

all the wavelengths of time, ah, bending in

& out of themselves like coil worms

180or worm coils

byways and sideways

forth and back

outsight and inlook

(in a time of)

185failing powers, physical,

sexual, intellectual, artistic,

belleslettristic, optimistic, etc.,

it’s hard (a hair firm)

to keep the slant of the curvature

190above horizontal coelum

without bobbing and dozy dipping

below

into the languorous waters of letting

things take their course & get on by:

195no use to wait on you today

nohow, baby, because with the fallings

off of spatiotemporal apples and leaves

and seeds and pods

and skinnyings up for winter, in the

200and because, ah, of the apple cider and

aster honey and the blue glaze on the

brook slowed distillation-column clear

and the yellowjackets

hummed up quiet in the

205stump

waiting for snow to feather to the door

hard to think of going back into spring,

buds, slender parts, sprigs putting

out, early green and preparation,

210then summer filling out, making up,

might as well rush right on through into

ripeness rotten

where like summation or artistic

compression

215seeds velvety in the dried-up pulp

summarize recommencement, time’s compression

would, some will say, there were

a plain simple thing with a fence round it

I don’t know it seems

220possible don’t you think plausible a

bit plausible

or perhaps a few

plain simple things with small fences

you say around them

225a cluster or lay-out of them

organized to cardinal points or rated,

axiologically

rated

according to

230I cut the quince down the other day into so

many stalks it all made a big bundle

upon the lawn high as my head I’d say

but then today I took the pile

thorny limb by branch down to

235the limb&branch pile in the bottom yard

I don’t care I think for quince, the

thorns, I mean, I am pricked and itchy

here and there including the shanks

some branches got to in the carrying

240off well so back and forth which is up

and down (the yard) I went forty times

I think till I began to sweat and stink

and there under the pear tree was a dead

jay, poor thing, which stank in a stream of

245whiff which I hit eighty times,

the universal smell of rotten meat not

really an attractive smell when you get

right down to it. . . .

I do not, can not, will not

250care for plain simple things

with straightforward fences round them:

I prefer lean, true

integrations of ongoing

with recurrences,

255resemblances, half-adventitious or fortuitous

or as some would say accidental,

half-accidental,

not under a third

a live jay lit on the pearlimb (pearl imb)

260over the dead jay,

looked down and flicking shrieked & squawked

directly into the dead ear

two minutes (I don’t insist

on the meaning, only the facts)

265a scolding for dying

or grief trying to make itself heard;

it looked like grief’s rage,

a protest like revenge,

grief’s blue wings and bright cries!

270money can’t buy happinessneither one nor the other

happiness can’t buy moneyeither one or the other

(misery can’t buy either) both (misery loves company)

hark! in my across-and-down-the-street

neighbor’s yard, his apple grove all loaded

275with red half-rotten apples

smelling good and souring the wind,

a mockingbird singing!

I saw three majestic weeds of ragweed

growing in the ditch and

280slipped’em right up out

of the mud and turned their roots onto

the macadam to dry

this part is called

the old Intimidation Rag

285it is never right to play ragtime fast

it is never right to play ragtime

it is never right to play

it is never right to

it is never right

290it is never

it is

it

surface amenities aside

we have little to

295go on

except violence and brutality (the long, flat light

of this bright day comes slicing through)

may lovewords strip

and least a man’s bones

300harm

prevail at

times forevernaked

My Father Used to Bring Banana

My father used to bring banana

stalks home from town

305and place them in the chicken coop

so chicken mites would stick

to them

& a few years ago we had

a flare-up in the local

310papers here about feeding layers

crushed oyster shells

to thicken egg shells

forty years ago in Carolina

we used to

315bring home a towsack full

of oyster shells every time we went

to the beach

and we had this big old anvil and

big old hammer to

320beat up the oyster shells with

I don’t know what became

of the roosters

that ate them

broke out an

325extra set of teeth

my father sure was a mess

this part of my poem is

called chicken (gravy, shit, wing, liver)

sometimes I notice my

330shadow and think

there’s my father

but I’m fifty now

and it’s me

Have You Seen the Severe Waters

Have you seen the severe waters

335(how they flow)

have you seen the nodes of high

glass standing or the sharp slants

by the bank where the bank looks for

itself

340 I care not what is isit’s up

what is seems is is to you

enough for me

I went to the brook and inquired

what do I have now

345how do you mean the bank bushes replied

oh I said

oh I said

and the brook broke saying speak up

so the saying of that day was not

350said and the turn that might have been

added to the mind turned away

clear all day the foliage

coloring etc. the jay loud

the mockingbird still at it

355thickage

Early October

Early October,

fally, papery, yellowy,

watery, raggedy, high

skimmy clouds, brooky

360(last week’s rains,

now run off, brookly,

cool glass flowing,

metal over slate sweeps)

I’m at fifty Octobery,

365not frantic with commencements,

preparations, seedings, searchings

for ways of spring and not

the rage of

summer, clumpy fulfillingness,

370but a throwing of the self out

of gear into gliding’s mild astonishment,

letting up into freefall on

rise’s other side,

the leaves still green or

375holding hints hang,

no longer feeding on light,

an indifference to purpose,

purpose complete, now

color and high view:

380inner purpose given over,

other purposes not one’s own start to

clear the stage:

nothing to dwell on, astonishment right

into startled grief,

385the rising of settled knowledge that

in a short time all here will

clear and go

why speak of that now,

the pears

390hard green after frost’s first smart

and the apples

purple-ruddy, burnt onesided:

still one pauses

to reflect shallow bemusements,

395recall honey,

the inner light of wine,

cold’s tang and burn

(good as ever but not as often)

Terror of

terror of

400interval

(even with

bridge-note reassurance) the slicing

away into

(dentaljuice)^*

405depthless discontinuity, whorey bottom

or bottomless horrid,

too many intervals break up

the road

the sinuous continuous look

410out for slides land snow rock

tree blows freshets bridge-outs

neck wires

hair ties

sorghum broomcane braided

415(vines’ rising risks) down

to handles

log planters

nothing necklaces

cowtooth dangles

420I’m in the swamp I

must have followed

the hogs off

awkweird to go to bed with the

chickens and wake up laid

Ivy, a Winding)

425Ivy, a winding)

an area, specimen one can keep

coming back to,

a place where, as to school, one can

try out one’s explanations

430(exegesis is better than no gesis at

all) but

what

got me

aboutgive

435theup

tree

today

was that

the leaves

440after a season’s

service, their span, serve

fallen: flatten out black

and limber wet and put a film of

chitinous structure on the

445ground so nothing

not even a winding vine, can come up and

take nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water, or

room from the tree:

(they say walnut shells

450falling to the ground

release an antiplant

ingredient) imagine!

writing something that never forms a

complete thought, drags you

455after it, spills you down, no barrier

describing you or dock lifting you up:

imagine writing something the CIA would

not read, through,

the FBI not record or report,

460a mishmash for the fun-loving,

one’s fine-fannied friends!

imagine, a list, a

puzzler, sleeper, a tiresome business,

conglomeration, aggregation, etc.

465nobody can make any sense of:

a long poem, shindig,

fracas, uproar,

high shimmy uncompletable, hence like

paradise, hellish paradise,

470not the one paradise where the points

& fringes of

perception sway in and out at once

in the free interlockings of

permanence:

475roots and moles (and grubs) (and

a microorganism that feeds on

carbon monoxide) live in the ground: fish and

ribbonswale and —worms live in the sea:

birds carrying stable mite colonies

480and crop-worms live in the air: we, we,

carrying fungal and bacterial residences, our

numberless silent populations, flashy molds,

angry, flashy molds, live, though mainly

in the light, a fine fluid

485fragmentation breaks into presence: (any

high consistency, of course,

lacks the differences to know

itself by—hence is unheard, invisible,

unknown, etc) so we are here in a very

490great blackness except when the fluid

surfs against a pumpkin, thinning willow,

boulder (any whole thing in space such as

earth) and the disturbance communicates

itself dispersing through molecular

495air, a frizzling wide static of sight,

and then the eye’s central blackness

none can read or follow creates a

disturbance of color to pick up light

disturbances: O

500fine fluid, fluency,

and then the

finest highest fluids we’ve

learned to live in on occasion or for short

visits, the sheeting pulses of the spiritual

505intelligence which

when it breaks

against & thru us

declares its nature:

if you would shed light upon a thing

510smash it: or adore it, leave it whole,

hold to it in darkness:

who will remember us

we cry

yet we will forget

515before we are forgotten

if you would explain That Which Is by

structure you would have to locate

the spurs and main beams, sills, joists,

of the put-together, whereas anything

520worth taking apart is so put together

it is assimilated

beyond edge, angle, or joint:

niche, cranny, or nookie:

you can erect skeletons of

525structure for their own sake and then

analogize freely: hermeneutic

propaedeutic:

good thing June peas

come loose from the continuum:

530make a moongate of an

oeil-de-boeuf, make the frangible-invisible

infrangible:

the mind buries to let lie:

times, stations, planes

535and overlappings of felt-events give

base and height, structure, to feeling:

vindictiveness, jealousy, greed, alarm,

hostility adjust to deep

dispositions so that reconciliations

540and motions at a greater height can be

released as tenderness, concern, delight:

the error not that the deep

feelings, found, are heaved up

but that

545heaving as a form destroys the

forms of modesty, gentility, and

modulated delight:

at three I realized

that my interpersonal relationships

550considered for example as a cottonball

of interweavings and

closenesses (a warmth, as of a

mother-centered, father-peripheried

group) were going to be sheared off,

555cut through

and that I was going to be a bit of

lint blowing in the irrelevancies of

dissociation: as I grew older

I learned this

560more thoroughly:

I write for those who have

no comfort now and will never have any:

I’m delighted that the comfortless are

a minority and

565that rosy tales amble otherwise for others:

I’m not making a fuss:

I note the determination:

it is a strict script

written in the injustice of

570necessity: I forgive

the injustice, nearly: I no longer cry

to be another, not myself, or seldom:

you who have no comfort

are welcome here, here

575with the chaff

alongside the abundant reaping, among

the weeds, after the gleaners:

I am the writing of what was to be but

did not become: your writing

580strangled mine:

I make seeing because I have nothing else

& nothing to do in the seen:

bitterness

compels me

585to roll my

tongue and spit

a saying

to the loneliness of my unbecoming

unbecoming:

590I bring youno harm that

no harm butis not nothing

I bring you

nothing

this is “lake country” too: I hadn’t thought

595of that: indeed, “finger lake country”: see

you top that one (has a small extra finger or

so): course I’m country and western: I like

music that plinks and means it: western New

York: the poetry isn’t as good either

The Hieroglyphic Gathered, the Books

600The hieroglyphic gathered, the books

numbered and shelved each

to its interior singing, the hum

broken in on or left in high loft

unattended, the quill-conversions to

605mock permanence, so many acts

feared, committed or hoped, regretted—

what a relief to go outside away from

the rooms, seminars, policy-committees

to where stability’s mode is movement, wind

610working with leaves and trash

across the asphalt, windings and

scatterings, starlings flying

into the ivyvine-skein leafless

against the Music building and picking

615berries, the clouds fluffy,

pulling apart here and there into blue

sliver-troughs: the freshness

of breaking down, picking,

churning through

620versus the artifice

ungathered after all anywhere

except into the fluidities of currency

forever: (that happened yesterday

and only gathered hieroglyphics can

625keep it):

distinguish the long

arm of the law from

the member in good standing:

it’s pouring rain but I went walking:

630the first rain on Dr. Ensworth’s dog’s

grave, now mounded among the hedge shrubs:

whiff of earthworm

(I almost said earthroom), puddles

fragrant and in the puddles ornaments,

635stars of green weed bottom-clear:

from every needletip of spruce

bough, bough on bough, spruce on spruce,

hung a drop-bulb, gray lit:

will equanil and elavil replace the

640trances and spells of religion, philosophy,

art, and madness, theories of depth

psychology or depth theories of the deep:

for, altogether, miltown can do more than

Milton can: luncheon muncheon: more

645than fluff and(l)anguish

less than effluvium: milk is white

blood:

clouds giving way, the sun broke

out and turned up the voltage

650in the bulbs: my fingers are so

cold from the walk (another one) I can

hardly type: chez fuck’n’suck: also no

book like a frigit: and no poem

with a bush you could fly your bird in:

655forecast for today

were snows and blizzards

but we may

have a mere

high, empty with glory:

660would a collection

of clarities

be clearer than a clarity

or as the collection

grew would the

665single clarities remain

clear and

a great darkness commence

to surround

or would opposite lobes of clarity

670annihilate themselves

into continuum emptiness:

FINGER LAKES PAINTING

I don’t like any bush

water won’t drip off

675except the

two-legged bush, of course, how happy, and

the golden bramble-bush in whose

branches the Sumerian goat’s horns, vexed,

tangle:

680desert crows,

picky, and the deep desert hawks and

flight-lean eagles, but

walking predators, too, cautious,

big-eyed, and “possessed of a gnawing

685hunger to destroy and ingest” as we

artists, so to speak, would create &

dump, only the hunger remaining likewise

stuck in the bush

and mama goat gone and papa off:

690leaves fall from the thornbush,

hair and meat from the

goat: skeleton, branch,

the slackened-free entanglement:

the goat thrashes and bleats at midnight

695and overhead the desert stars,

big brights (not helping)

and oil underground, the

goat chafing with sharp hooves to

peel and worry down the bush:

700the good of images is

that they make no

statement and the bad

is that they make (evoke)

numberless statements:

705(or is that good, too:

meanwhile, the statement

makes one statement: except

in the clump, thicket,

or cluster of statements

710is the image again)

I could write forever, I mean, I could:

I never would

because boundaries, terminations,

determinations give class to held and holding:

715but the imagistes should have

known that the Golden Calf

narrows, confines, straitens,

identifies, and lessens the Spirit

too much which is shape without

720shape, timeless time,

visible and never to be seen:

poems should imitate the spirit’s motions from

the fabulous limitation, so

golden because so

725striking off temptation, of

the means, uh:

I can speak big and high

(but to which end?)

I can hone the severe metric,

730incision’s incendiary:

but honing misses broadcast:

anyway, who would have one around

speaking big and high:

over dishes: filling the vaporizer:

735emptying the trash:

prefer chitchat to

swales of the austere unknown:

neighbor down the street stakes

his dog out on the lawn, chain

740twenty feet, pretty

good run: I notice a path of peripheral

lawnwear, a ring of loss

where the chain, run out, runs

round: the central self unattended,

745unworn while the untouchable

other, far and away calls forth

the bark, the slaver, slobber,

scenting: to pull up stakes!

I can talk big: I come

750from a land of bigtalkers and

big talkers: what one needs is

the address of relief (relief of

address): (King Kong is on—

Thanksgiving classic): summer

755for dogs is a conflagration of

smells while winter is the ashes

(snow), a sprig of smoke

rising here and there:

all this poetry

760in Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving

Your Full-Service Mover, Madam

Your full-service mover, madam:

your full-service madam, mover:

arouse, attract, specify,

identify, concentrate, propel

765and release unmixed, mixed

emotions: I can package

reactions, lob, locate, and lure

centers, keys, knobs,

slots and play upon you as with

770or upon an organ:

go off to a

country, you see things done

different ways: you distinguish fashion

from nature, an educational

775distance: but, educated, you’re

into fashion more than nature,

a change loosening, shallowing:

overcast forecast a

true cast but this afternoon is

780to open sunny periods, dashed

dashes, clearing exclamation

points, followed by

colonic etceteras:

we need a basis for argument,

785argument always we have enough of,

although probably never more

than we need, but though we have

experienced tugging

this way and that

790and though we have chipped, honed,

polished, dug and double-dug,

we have failed to find

the single, the first, not to mention

mountain or continent, grain (tiny mew) of

795unyielding reality:

what a pity, many will sigh,

having argued at length over nothing:

but many will be grateful,

locating the necessary recalcitrance

800in the unyieldingness to explanation, that

is, finding centers of operations

where, as with juggling, nothing is,

and in contrary motions finding

balance’s informed harmony:

805explanation explains nothing away: get

up the next morning and recalcitrance

has shaded up to opacity again:

think of the medium, the medium’s

malleability, explanation works in,

810wordy nothingness: then how reassured

we are to risk castles only air and how

delighted to know

that explanation changes just itself,

an arrived-at nothing: whereas,

815the work of art (here come the boss)

establishes an empty-centered space,

spiral stabile, wordless where words

may not go,

a recalcitrance of a kind explanation

820can only sharpen itself against:

lukewarm stand to reason

the elm I write of is

not the doomed elm, the dutch,

but the siberian,

825small-leaved, resistant: the two doomed elms

I had were cut down

and hauled away: just now,

a snowbead shower: the beads fall,

springing, on the greenroofed garage

830and roll off the eaves some

but when fall pauses

melt scrubs the white away

(somedays a mist

too fine

835to form drops

at the eaves

or shine the highway)

darkens things a

little, though

When in Early

840When in early

December everything should be

naked

except spruce, cedar, yew,

here and

845there down the side

of a hill or in

a hill’s hollow

will be found

a willow’s fragile clothes,

850yellow dress dropped,

showing the green slip’s

shift

of hidingsnow rhymes

 soundwise but

855 contrariwise

(being alike incolorwise

one set ofwith crow

terms and

unlike in the other

860make oh, my father, you

one whole formsaid, “someday

overmastering your mouth will

the one polarget you in trouble”

unlikeness)you were (I’ve

865  made you)

right

the sheet ofand you said,

snow, thin,“you’ll be a preacher,

missing,like your uncle,”

870mingled with loft,close enough, in that

under cedars andI try to give the

such word life:

under the mailbox oh, my father,

a wind-mingled I am one of the few

875thinning left to miss you

I do not miss you much

mostly representing the reachable or

available sky

like sky like ground

880except for interruptions:

snow’s itself’s scripture

but in addition

written in it

accumulate actions

885reading re-enacts—

the pigeon-toed pheasant,

a hen, I think, walked across the driveway,

short toe inward, long toe, you know,

one foot almost in front of

890the other—a mystery and

contemplation, the beautiful, plain hen

color-coded, her signs

our door mouse

houses between the concrete

895step and a bottom shingle: every now and

then I catch him streaking for

concrete crack or door crack: yesterday

morning, there was an inch of snow,

(remember)

900just enough the mouse could nuzzle under:

he inscribed eventuality on the lawn,

a limber line of snow-collapse showing

behind him: and today, little snow left,

there is the dribble of his feet

905over the white blacktop: if it doesn’t

warm up more

the paperboy will see

his yesterday-afternoon, snow-pressed,

delivery bike trail

910after snow

when evening clears and

night settles

cleared and cold,

crisp forms

915on the snow

midforest

and along starry pond margins

and flavors,

scents dry up, lose their stems to sources,

920where the dogs

cracking crisp

run:

cold cleanses,

brightens, thins:

925if one could save a cubic mile

of this for August!

(magazines advertise

themselves in themselves)

a year, what a year: anus mirabilis:

930what can you do: the inner ring of

relatives in trouble with

their teeth, fixing, lumbago,

running off in Dusters,

and a wider ring of relatives,

935regular mishpucha, coming up for

advice backed up with a loan,

so-and-so’s cousin’s pill

in the wrong end: what is it:

making baskets

940tonight to meet Kammen’s guest

Bailyn, the historian, such a nice

man: there were the Novarrs: they

knew Bailyn way back and Ruth calls

him Buddy, imagine, the National

945Book Award winner, Buddy, also

the Pulitzer

The Arc

The arc

of

the

950loop, the

cradle

of

sway

to be

955rocked

in the heights

(not dropped,

inert, in

earth)

960oh, to carry out the byways of

reverie

(the cedars teardrops

before impact)

(something to feel

965not just the

discursive unwinding of

feeling)

born we scream

fed we ummm and smack

970beboweled we grunt

fucked we groan

and so with death do we tussle and

groan

but why

975when in moments of importance

we hold

our tongues

do we give

significance to articulation that

980only waits the next

seizure out

oh, to be rocked in the arm

of the dwelling, to be

cuddled and cooed to,

985to whisper and sip, slur

and loll in the long

unwindings and squdgings,

the honey, the honey, oh,

the honey high,

990oh, the

air-clear, beer-lit,

oh, the bright drop,

retsyn:

eat a pig dinner sometimes and sit

995down in a deep chair that rightangles

your uplumping belly out

cuts off the avenues of circulation

and boluses of air

form promoting gastric

1000distress:

if it gets severe take a sip

of water, will dislodge

the gasball enough to ease off the

pain but then walk about

1005to re-establish the circulations

also lift your arms, your hands clasped

behind your head and

let go of your belly or heave out your

chest and meanwhile swing slowly from

1010side to side this may ease the bubble

up, also it is important to think you

may not be dying, although you will be feeling

like it, because added

tension forms another airball

1015over itself like those scared, foam-nesting

insects

good reception

fair this morning, much

warmer, over fifty, but

1020cloudy and rainy in the afternoon

with a falling off of temperature down

to where a few snowflakes flew and

so today was mostly dark and lowering

and blustery but nice

There! the Light of Human Reason!

1025There! the light of human reason!

issues from the crevasse of that black

hump of hill-line, rounds a

pastoral fallacy,

is lost behind the Dark Wood,

1030the thicket treacherous,

but reappears as two, the one

light and its dropped reflection

in the Cavity of Eternal Depth (the

dentist’s dream) which is or filled

1035with water or with a liquorish air of

consistency so the

light will not penetrate it but

throw back up into the world

but now there goes the progress

1040around that awful pit but note

the light now introduced

into a lantern, flat-sided with panels

in grapy glass, to make it

past

1045the gash of gorge that strikes

down from the hills through the earth

in a plunge the wind observes

to howl through so that none may pass

unhouseled up (long wait) but there

1050the faithful light reappears on this our

edge, the long going down into and

arising from, and proceeds onward to

meet us: the light flickers and sometimes cannot

in the whole dark scene be seen but

1055with tendance and awful looking we may

severally be reminded that reft of this

bright bit

we sink into greater toothiness and squinting

but so much for the story if

1060no end to the story’s glory (glory’s story?)

what is

matter’s project here, is it, where every

hub is afire with spinning and every

axle taking on the resonance of a

1065dissonance, where every next instant has

a twelve-ton meteorite or thousand-foot

ledge-drop in it, where everything

one once loved drains backward away into

a common hole, where underfoot one

1070feels time’s shimmy, the sludge- and

sledgeweight of gravity’s maw,

where nothing that in this fair

day takes on brilliant delimitations

and delights will miss tomorrow’s

1075indifferent spill, waste, or fill or gravid

mud

(I can hardly care a paragraph for such

fidgeting)

(when the downswoop collects us

1080will we look into the sky’s

mild mien or

back on an

earth we haven’t learned to lose)

matter

1085projects

the breeding of races crusty, to fall

asleep in calamity’s bosom, power

too self-effacing to bear its own

strength, that can be the patient nurse . . .

1090The X Press

The X Press Press

The ReXPress

bound and determined

metes and bounds sky-high

1095ground meatsmeets

Mr. Spilldiddler

Mr. Dillspiddler

rough day

stuff tough

Hard Lard

1100Hard lard hard fact

hard wind hard core

hard ball hard time

hard hard

the clouds lower low dipping almost

1105skirting skinny-brittle treetops

but drop a ground-brightening!

the snow, pleasant flakes, dry

enough to worm in the wind

before touching down

1110or brushing stopped against bush, brush,

garagedoor handle or what, even the

clothesline a skinny, longwinded catcher:

people are good for you if nothing

much ails you but if people (cruel

1115and insensitive, survival pluses) ail

you nature is a rescue, go to it,

nonpersonal, decommissioned, an

indifference big enough to cool off or

melt down

1120your differences: sometimes,

when it seems the mind will hesitate,

swell in a realization and break,

and one thinks that perhaps one may

fall down or wobble past resilience,

1125then one turns with relief to nature,

the verbal empire’s blocks, pigeonholes,

axioms, pronunciamentos, and stuff (stuffiness)

chewed up in the simplest

wind-sand design or snow flurry: oh, to

1130break through the strangling entanglements,

binds, clusters of wordy mentality and

feel the luster of woodsfloor under snow!

vitiated by arrogance, jubersome

of seriousness, my language

1135will hardly touch stumps or stump: if words

hurt me, why do I

come to them to move a saying through:

am I saying in words how I wish nature

in fact were, though impersonal: fluent,

1140yielding, showy, a dance of mind not

words (though in words) but things:

I could get something straight but

it would stop winding:

with words to make nature sound off,

1145speak up

till we find the place where it

will say nothing further,

be of no further use, an example to

no further imposition,

1150an illustration of, allegory of, nothing

so that we can achieve the podium of

inhumanity, the clearing, wherefrom

we can look back and away to the

astonishing thing, man’s rise and demise,

1155and then what, the crazy universe here,

here, here for thousands, even millions

of years, going on with purposes, if

any, not ours: room

enough for every correction of view,

1160where perspective is never sold out, utero,

utero, the

commencement before the commencement:

snow sounds like gritty pellets

on the panes:

1165I thought it was a mouse in my paperbox:

here’s a little poem I jotted down this

morning: it’s about a complete action,

ah, except for the purple do: the starlings,

having hung sideways on the music building’s

1170ivyvine collection while picking the berries,

sit meditatively high in the branches of the

oak to rest and then the berries

that had not fallen from the vines fall

from the lofts of oak, empurpling do’s

1175sparse rain:

the starlings barely

got the berries

off the vines

before snow

1180lineations loaded

them up again

once there was a maple tree: during

the summer it produced lots of

maple seed: when the leaves fell,

1185clusters and clusters of dry maple seed

were left, ruffles, hanging in the tree:

when the first snows came, squirrels

were often in the maple tree eating seeds

and, soon, most of the branches were

1190empty: one day a dog came by and startled

a squirrel as he was eating from a cluster

of seed far out on a branch: the squirrel,

leaving one seed in the cluster, stopped

eating and ran back to the trunk to go

1195up higher in the tree: but the dog went

on and the squirrel turned back to eating:

but not back to the single seed

far out on the branch: hard cold set in

one day and for weeks no squirrels came

1200out: then on a warm windy day in March,

two maple seeds, the only two left on the

tree, softened in their stems and blew

away: one seed fell on the macadam and

the tires of a car crushed it: the other

1205seed, the one the squirrel, interrupted

by the dog, had left behind, fell next to

the garage between two rosebushes: that

was the sunny side of the garage, and the

rosestocks helped hold the warmth, so the

1210seed germinated and soon was a tiny tree

with a leaf of its own: I thought, my

goodness, all the maple tree’s seeds

produced one tree, but I

couldn’t have a tree that close to

1215the garage so I pulled it up

a poem is a machine made out of worlds

a poem is made of words fed to machines

hard farthard tackI feel so much

hard warehard sellbetter on my

1220hard head   hard boilfeet provided

I have something

to lean against

Hard Fist

Hard fist

hard turd

1225cool whip

soup dip

freezer queen

candy 6pack

full quart

1230good thru

strawberry preserves

boneless ham

personal butcher

save more

1235windshield washer

raisin bran

will allrarely has so much

my talkbeen said over so

not dissolvelittle unsaid

1240reticence’s pellet,

dishonorable silence’sbig wig

unwanted bead

pay attention

pay no mind

1245“up yr nose“up your dick

with a rubber hose”with a toothpick”

in yr ear

with a hornet’s rear“up yr ass

     with a blade of grass”

1250many fears are born of

fatigue & loneliness

scraps from, the trash of, the verbal

environment

saved, retention’s waste, waste’s

1255retention, the scary, sublime,

heavy musk anal honey, but also

the collection, munitions

for colonic assault

save a life

1260return my dog

my brown and white

female dog was takenRecord

from the Straight

Lobby Friday Dec 5My wife, the

1265she is my closestweightlifter,

companion and I amsmiles and three

destroyed without hertons

(from a bulletin board) rise from my back

Golemon juice

1270crabmeat claws

Old ageswiss slices

getssalad shrimp

setlean roast

to sitbaking mix

1275downapple sauce

pie filling

ground chuck

minced clams

corned beef

1280the elm

also (like thein

willow) latethis

to loseour

its leavesown

1285has (likeday

the willow)and

lost themtime

arrange these words so that they make

sense

1290people, self-centered,

inconsiderate,

cheer news of a darkness darker

than theirs, a deeper gouge

into a wound more rotten:

1295least can they bear news

of a happiness close to them

I side

a minority of myself

with the majority

1300against the majority

of myself

which is a minority

there it is

equation-tranquil

1305mesh itmake little

with life andof much

it can (almostmake much

unfailingly will)of little

breakor

1310downmake little or much

or short circuitof much

and little

I won’t weep

though:

1315the rhetoric

“make a big fuss over nothing”

is not a good poetic,

not even a

good idea,

1320not even

“make a big fuss over something”

make molehills

of mountains

8:45 A.M.—Doorbell Rings: Wife

8:45 A.M.—doorbell rings: wife

1325answers: voice says, “Good morning,

I have a chest for you.”

wife says, “Right up the stairs.”

I’m right up the stairs on the stool,

door and butt cracked; here they come:

1330conceptualization is

self-correcting (don’t worry)

and not as bad as I’ve made out, I’ve

made out: for example, imaginative

forms derive from bioforms, take the

1335maindrifts and subtleties: the big

channel moves away from the heart of

the matter directly and sizably (as

to volume) but then, moved away, begins

to correct itself

1340to the pressure

to break down, lessening in—

to distinction so as

to become available

to organs, tissues, and cells,

1345to establish deep and wide application

and relevance: but there rationality,

though at its sharpest ramification and closest

to its immediacy, commences

to break down, the mind unable

1350to bear so much division of matter

with no lessening of rationality as

“form”: the mind reacts with dullness

to

too much subtlety and falls asleep:

1355but just as rationality has lost its way in—

to contact with every body cell, there it

corrects itself, having achieved an

ocean presence, where distinctions are

so slight and multiple, they assume

1360the wide look of universal constitution:

the mind, refreshed by that playing

out, at least, returns slowly

through the capillaries, regathers

itself in—

1365to its main drifts and

considerable matters and, announcing

itself, returns

to the circulations:

I think I already wrote about (or

1370thought about) this but

the alimentary canal as river with falls, lakes,

etc. is a good form, also the form

expansion-contraction: lot

of them, probably, all finding

1375ways to play in the imagination,

too: how delightful:

I saw through the earth once:

a clearing-through as if of light:

terror made the light, drilled it through:

1380the earth spindled, insubstantial as life:

another fellow saw through, once:

I hope the shakes did not shake him long

kill time

expect turmoil, gusts, shifts in stone,

1385expect the arms of change to spin

but allow the Singing Sage

to slip by on his Big Boat singing

Turmoil is Illusion

at the Heart of

1390the Great Peace

bedrock nestles

in flow

and flow rides

highways

1395tips of flame plume:

but under that,

deeply within,

the most fluent fluid, motion,

establishes the citadel

1400I can see but little,

and that with much leaning,

of the elm from this window and

indeed no part of that attached to the

ground but outbuoyed branches only,

1405mostly tips

nevertheless

possessing curvature of definition

in the uttermost, the tips ending in an

invisibly inscribed continuity or

1410configuration of nothingness:

if I worked in the other room

next to the elm

(a winter-sunny room)

I’d get to know more about

1415the elm

but so much more would dominate

the poem: to want a poem about

an elm is not to want a poem

too much so, or too much poem

1420too much so: if I need more

elm to say, I can

mosey over and peer

out into further information)

overwhelm whelm helm elm

1425this day bluedog clear

I stood in it absolutely

unoccupied a minute and

said how sharp the world

that cares nothing for

1430us is

but now at dusk,

billows come up

over the west looking

solider than hills

1435and black and blue with

snow, I think

how is it possible the world

so entertaining and extravagant

has nothing to do with us (on a personal

1440basis) though we

in the formation of gene arcs, contours,

sweeps, saliences, and spirals

were tested bit to bit by

billows, swell of snowwind,

1445bright our sandy river,

and found to survive the astonishments,

coping, throwing them back:

behind bars

when I have studied the elm

1450I hope to devote myself to the weather,

majors and minors of substance, the high

substance nothing is done about, the

low showers narrowed into washouts,

the happy variabilities day to day

1455winding round the deep variabilities of

season (reason, treason): the year

cycles, sunspot cycles,

micro, meso, macro: bi:

it’s too dark to see to write:

1460gather it up and rip it off

Shall Will Be Used Properly or Will Shall

Shall will be used properly or will shall

here near

midDecember

grayworks(if we have

1465hit the deepa falling off

dismal,we’ll fall

days clippedinto a

off onfalling out)

both ends till you can

1470hardly find the middle

but then comes a winter

festival (festival

estival) inaugurating

longer light

1475the city that cares

for tares(egad,

has no needgasso,

for weedsglorybe)

the M Sea bore

1480Civ, unhappy

daughter

(dumping the dump from 400

million sets of human guts

plus industrial scours, washes,

1485rinses) now killing

the mother,

a daughter who unless made a Bridegroom

of Intelligence

must swoon away into

1490self-poisoning unredemptive guilt,

whereas

with Wisdom for the weed,

Care for the ground cricket

(whatever is good for the ground cricket is

1495good for the country)

Concern for the undersea

rocky ledges of octopuses

the mother might

still have lineations of

1500life left which, clearness drawn deeply into,

would begin to show again

an image Mother Mediterranean:

but nothing is to be

expected of man, his

1505intentions tedious &

mean: by accident

he is wise or noble:

he sees not his life

one life among many

1510kinds of life, every

kind attuned to a

careful impulse

that lets it boom

and loll in its own

1515dwelling: Civ,

inconsiderate daughter, maker of weeping,

unnaturalizer, fabricator of

fabrications, pretender to feeling, huzzy,

it would hardly be unfair if

1520Sea gobbled you up so you could not harm

Forest, Icecap, Deep Trench, or Friendly

Breeze again, baby:

natural gas is okay on a cold night and

antibiotics are so fine when you need them:

1525but man’s fabrications aren’t as subtle

and resilient, flexible, accommodating

as natural complexes: why can’t we proceed

but show the proper respect:

FreshLARGEEggs

1530This carton is bio-degradable

a contribution to environment

(also, what are we to do with it if

you bring it back) a contribution, tribute,

offering, tithe

1535as if to the new god: ok then a few more

worshippers will do it:

playacting:

playoffs:

(Redskins, Raiders, Steelers,

1540Colts, Dolphins, Cowboys)

(look, cavity, no moms)

poeticules shrink up

into starved strategies

and strive to prove

1545skinny devices significant,

but I, I mean . . .

nothing works without a nearly

equal tug the other way:

and then one is fifty and feels oneself

1550(if no one else will) (no one else will)

in the tug of

a tendency, as if one were an

impurity rushed through

various waters

1555to the kidney of selection

where the organism engages in certain

abandon:

but the mind, imagination, is only getting

fresh at last, wind free, ready for

1560treetop castle or diamond waterfall,

recalcitrance flowing loose, a clear honey

to the embrasures of sight:

truth’s a show,

a good one one that does not end before

1565the audience leaves: that holds

up a cranesweep of meaning,

snakes or eels or noodles, great

wound-up unwindings, heavy, light: that

lets no direction or effect grow pure

1570without contrariwisdom, counter-purity:

say not what

I have made

say what made

I have cut

1575free of:

Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman,

European, Holy-Roman, Anglican: we have

hills old-low,

lines of windbreaking lombardies:

1580windrows:

thickets wind-settling:

spruce nook moving nothing, resident

authorities

big rig

1585spoontangbig zig

spoontonguebig cig

dongtongbig fig

dungtonguebig MIG

tightassed tightend:big dig

1590eternal journal:big pig

big gig

big jig

mindgoggling:

the poet abandons a

1595place to the reader

I sometimes catch myself

fearful I’ve

let out the news of death,

told more than people will

1600please to hear,

a news, though, nowhere to be

kept still:

it flies loose and about

and is (must be) told in

1605every ear till

told too loud

no one’s there to hear

ass/mind balls/heart

ball loose flag down

1610it’s 4:20 dusk coming

the Redskins have a touchdown

to go with their fieldgoal

Phyllis made seven fruitcakes

undetermined square or round

No Tirement Like Retirement

1615No tirement like retirement

no floppage like stoppage

busy busy boys and girls

old geezers,

strungout ninnies (no

1620treads

like threads

retreads)

having made avocation vocation

I must now

1625rise through

making vocation avocation

so I can spend

my

time rusting(l)agony

1630dressed, undressed, redressed

use is the best polish

(drooping thru the chills of the

sorghum to

where the spinnet’s broke)

1635after so many days of

mingling, cloud and hill,

mists, skirts of vapor

dripping and valley-dragging, fringes,

brushing ghosts

1640through hillbrush, moon

and soon

I mean sun

clorox twins

everything lifted this morning and there

1645between the devil and the deep blue

between a rock and a hard place

between a cliff and a sharp slope

was the source bright,

looking central

1650a warmish morning walkable and how musty

I’d grown far off from the lean, mean

brook

its quick scars of light

its breaking, regathering,

1655ledges and clear heights underwater,

its mosslawned banks, rock terraces,

tangled vestment vine

(choked trees

deadwood trellises)

1660(those with

inclinations to

sprawl on

you, spurn,

sprawl on them)

1665if you come into the world

with an unspeakable structure or

stricture to speak,

a weird move to the freak fringe,

then you got an insoluble

1670problem, an

“immedicable woe”

you got a sore with a lifetime supply

of scabs, you is, in other words, in

business

1675the average person is average

the common people is common

the straight people is straight

you gone be the crooked weird

rare intelligent bird creep type

1680that what you gone be, honey

you gone look funny

when they put you in your

coffin

like you something

1685unright

like you ain’t

worth dying

like every day when they passes out the

honey

1690you gone get a little vial of fear and

you gone drink it yes you is

cause tomorrow when they passes out

the honey again

you gone git another one of those little vials

1695and what you gone do with them vials

honey better go head drink up one at a

time

cause you gone have something to

shake about too

1700while the others is shaking with

the sweetness

you gone be breaking out in the high

jives of terror

shaking like you done met up with some’m:

1705I hope no young’un mine

go through with that

(salt talk with a dash of pepper)

being there is the next best

thing to long distance

1710may I by

being me be

you for you

trust money

or will youand trust people

1715take my Ito try to get it

to be youaway from you

for a minute

as I will

take you

1720looks like an

to be Iall-day gray

when I can

maybe your you

Light Falls Shadow and Beam through the Limbo

Light falls shadow and beam through the limbo

1725limbboughs, short and long mixtures,

lineations,

staff and heading, balling the

boughs, clusters, white bass clefs

churning rotund

1730thunder and up there sparkling and

bellying out

skeins and scads of treble felicities,

cones and points:

tree as music in the light,

1735the scoring of the permanent

enchantment,

a presence not regular but hastening

or not like the imagination or

the wind

1740and telling

nothing but that though the gorge roars

and though

sodden swatches of forest spill

from a high ravine and though

1745a beaver is shut in by a boulder time

will slowly budge

and though we ourselves see and do not

know what we see and cannot tell why

we are here attracted to enchantment

1750and scriptures intermingling substance

and light—

oh, the hillways, passes, the peaks

of the thoroughly achieved!

some such dwelling in the light,

1755hardness in the ray,

the interpenetration

that in leaving, separating out,

never leaves out,

that bringing things still again runs away

1760also with everything into night

Mist Curtains Lower and Dissolve

Mist curtains lower and dissolve

the ridges halfway down

(imagine

a thunderstorm predicted

1765for midDecember,

55 but

no thunder yet: rain,

though)

1:01

17701:00

 :59downspouts

the threequarter

moon at midnight

shining from a

1775high sky’s well

on this host of

hills, the lake

off to the side

there glimmering

1780in a big space,

a Christmas tree

crystalline with

colored lights

down a near slope,

1785way over the valley

a string

of glitter, a

highway, ropes a

slope: how can we

1790be here: how is

it possible, here

with earth moon sun

these people these

myths and dreams:

1795were we not here

we could never

be

thought of:

oxbows of

1800highway rise

like a

small elation

over the opposite

ridge

The Snow Is Fine-Sightless Today the Ground

1805The snow is fine-sightless today the ground

brightens white for no cause

and the green garageroof

is all at once side-white

the elm’s grooves and streaks

1810of bark are highlighting: it’s 28

again to be 10 tonight

make

all the fuse that’s lit to glinta

one handy tool (ah) difference

1815arm milkwhen we

eye cunt cheesehave nothing

hip shitsignificant

leg cometo say

ear bloodspelling it

1820toe waxright matters

lip eye cracklings(makes a

jaw snotdifference)

rib spit

I reckon

1825cornholers get dooky

on their tools (and yucky blood)

time’s dust is a rinse

nothing resists

to get the spook off language,

1830the microphone, pulpit, lectern, the high

whines and

broad moans out,

scald and rinse every word

till it takes on and gives off

1835the exact hue (drift)

for for

the most part

language moves our lips while

we grind, hiss, haw—

1840let the words have no rich soup

they cannot themselves generate

if fellows burr, hum, buzz, loop

break out strict shears

snip ropes from the heavy molasses to

1845hang those fellows with

tipping from pole to pole

we flash through uprightness, stability,

truth but

unchanging reality

1850is the polar extreme’s

intolerable

exaggerated weather

the temperate zone the land of soft announcement

one desires leisure, ease, if

1855those are to be desired, when one

might desire action, stress, doing

as being, too, ideal

I write this to be writing,

wife gone off with a stationwagonload

1860of women to Rochester in the snow,

son at school,

office hours this afternoon,

meeting,

Christmas coming,

1865me home

go through

I’m not sure there’s enough light

out there to make a day of

but look

1870a patch of blue the size of a man’s hat:

it could grow into a radiant clearing,

blue inanition, dome of

high feeling, starvation

when a father dies

1875the sky comes unlooped from the stars

The Hen Pheasants Streak Out of the

The hen pheasants streak out of the

thicket

down the hedgeline through the

yard

1880selfcentered shortsightedness

fag pag jag

feg peg jegtrouble

fig pig jigshovel

fog pog jog

1885fug pug jugstir-fry

is life ais life aa puzzlement

show deathshow truth a bit of

corrects killsa difficulty

or is or is

1890death atruth a

show lifeshow life

correctskills

as you go into life (some say they

wish they were alive or dead) you must

1895forget where you’re going

which is into death

but as you go into death you must begin

to take a more general and perhaps

generous view of life, and not be

1900so particular

but that may be the difficulty

that we are heavy

to relinquish our made selves,

mirrorments, to the trust of the

1905great unwieldy, unspecific self:

in these transmissions

we are not like to be consulted:

our talents turn to attitude:

verbal flak:

1910(a bishop or royal personage

displays his

flabella, a touch to the

human that he sweats)

picking up brilliants, bowerbirdwise,

1915etc., or as with the builder

of beercan palaces, tidbits, also, of

tile, mirror, sherd, whatever with a

paste, mortar, of cogitation, sealing

throughout making of-a-piece: but if

1920you seek brilliants it’s

no matter what shines:

the value is apparent in apparent shining

but those who dwell upon

and on the invisible

1925value not the visible

apparency

not diamond-shine

but rarity or hardness

so invisible

1930to deal with muddlement

which is not

just a mixture but

a single speaking of multiple clarities

(very puzzling unless the

1935clarities are so small

as with sand

they will lose their special identities

to a general view)

to deal with muddling or muddlement

1940confine the currency of inquiry

within fairly narrow banks urging

and also guiding flow

so that means can go out among the

areas and question closely

1945so to speak

or drop bits of matter at the roots

of things so that answers may grow

(we need have faith

only

1950that of course currency is

winding

that can never wind away,

cannot go far without returning,

an observation

1955so succinct

faith

is perhaps too high a shelf to bother)

when I look death

in the eye

1960my pavilions quiver

and my crystal battlements

and walls of high castle

dance in the afternoon breeze

this one

1965death swept

shape

broken off from the

earth broken off

from the mother

1970spent now except

for the flicker of

burning out

supposed to get cold tonight

the ephemeral lasts because

1975it’s back fast

Dawn Clear

Dawn clear

by sunrise

hazes rifflesyou want to be

furrows and floats bullfucked when

1980of fluffmine is no longer

appearthan a penguin

so the sun

has too much

to come throughquilt raffle

1985to come throughantiques

handcrafted gifts

make verballive country music

things tangleswhimsies, furbelows, and

mazes puzzlessundries

1990clusters

consonancesbitter winds

dangles knots &clink the tinkle

stuff to havebell in the tree

somethingand find

1995to fool withcold’s exact key:

when time hasthe big male

a bigger presence,pheasant sulls

margin, thanlow on one foot

things or actions

2000I make things

and abandon

them for you

the sun didn’t do much for us today

but it de-snowed the garage roof

2005and left a crop of

smallish icicles down the eaves-row

If You Were Standing under the Elm and

If you were standing under the elm and

looked up it would be dark

but if you were above it (flying?)

2010and looked down it would be

white:

dust or flurry snow, the fine

sifty stuff, has not missed a twig,

hiding it from the sky: but if it

2015gets windy and wrenching or if a

crow lights somewhere and flaps his

wings squawking, then

darkness may be noticeable

In the Old

In the old

2020days

of vaginal, or coincidental,

sprays

hairpie diners

could have plum

2025tart, peach or

strawberry

tart (in the old days words didn’t buy

much)

get morepedazo

2030out ofde

going outburro

authentic theatrical

forms with

mimes, masks,

2035puppets, processionals, players

(singers

keepgroups

mybands

wordwriters

2040composers)

islets and islettes

informal (isles)formal (tisles)

soup aisle

aisle de soup

2045do-ahead dough

super bargains in vinyl flooring

roll-ends for bathrooms, entryways,

pantries, laundry rooms

grind

2050she said this afternoon that

because of the snowsqualls she

might have to put a damper

on her shopping expeditions

the sun came out enough

2055to moon

behind the snowclouds

so, everything loaded,

there’ll be no unloading

today

2060unless by dusk the wind comes unsprung:

the hemlocks,

sculpture all day, now

nod in the breezy free-ends

ohyesohyes

2065so many whales plundering through,

more whaleback than water

hemlocks made to order

to hold snow

were also made

2070limber to sway snow

loose

or at least hang unsplinteringly

in white

holding:

2075lamb sandwich

Namath, ribs bruised, limped off the cold

field today, Shea Stadium snowy, windy,

four days before Christmas, Namath who

broke all showing-them-how’s expectations!

2080if we are reluctantif only one could

to step into the fieldmake or find a bit of

when it is our timewisdom that turned

we may be reluctant to leavethrough a situation

the surroundingsor two would hold

2085when our timestill or still hold

has passed

it’s after sunset

cloudy

cold and gray

2090but tomorrow is

to reach the mid-thirties

Forecast for Today (Winter’s Firstday)

Forecast for today (Winter’s Firstday)

(you may

recall) was

2095thirty-five or so (which hasn’t seen

twenty yet)

beefed up this morning by a promise of

sunny spells

but now at five minutes to one the drifty

2100tinkle of snowflakes

merely continuos: a few minutes ago,

in truth,

a blue patch appeared sky-high but the sun,

wintering elsewhere, wasn’t there so

2105nothing hit the ground here:

couple three months ago

I cut a grapevine out of the big cedar

to reduce weight’s becluttering darkness

but here the snow’s

2110getting into the tree as much as

grape leaves shaded light out:

at dusk a flock of pheasant

will be-wing, shrieking rusty flanges, up

and beheist themselves,

2115belaboring beswung boughs:

the squirrels in the thicket

had such a good time this fall

up-and-down winding

chasing each other

2120I bet there isn’t a flake

of loose bark unfallen

on a trunk

in the whole blame thicket

all I ever know is

2125rigor between the shoulderblades,

lumber in the gut,

hard theory-light in the head:

I process life by shaking,

I’m a sifter: I wish I were limber

2130and relaxed, able to affirm the self

and take from the world a small taking

limberer than lumber

I swerve attention out of the mix of

myself into the outerness where otherness

2135can conjoin my outerness whereas

only I can look into myself

and I spend enough time doing that

the sun broke out before setting

but set behind new clouds moving

2140in: the Christmas tree’s up and

John & I have bought presents,

everybody has bought everybody presents

I Come in from the Snowy World

I come in from the snowy world

of muffled roads and she says

2145how’s the outside world

and I say

still outside (gotterdattoom)

Giants Beat Saints

you can’t step forward with

2150both feet on the ground

proverbs suck up recalcitrant reality

and spit out a beam of light but

emerge among them

systems of conflict, divergence,

2155contradiction: too many

proverbs obstruct the view

but enhance the reality:

not the wisdom but saying’s finding:

the middle regions

2160toilet paper chinks cracks

against excessive windiness:

jocundity

the beswirling elm this morning was attacked

by white bees

2165last night after sunset the weather

warmed up, night-snow-blue clouds

heaped on the horizon,

holding, glowing underneath in earthshine

in winter here

2170the sun arcs a

southern circle of small compass

and has

slight surface relation

to temperature

2175except

ice will melt off a car or

highway great

in direct radiation

but it warmed up last night after sunset

2180to twenty-five and the fronds and

jungle foliages (that make

in teens climates)

ran off the windows, thaw’s

deconstruction:

2185how does a running back hold it

sight

feeds on a

medium

whose

2190source blinds

but no big

sound gives

off little

earfuls

2195although the ear can be exploded

(not death

but life canone forgets

bebefore one

missed)is forgotten

2200the squalla bit of

comes ondried hydrangea

from the westblossom

across the lakecomes loose and

with the sunthe wind

2205behind itrolls it

suffusing it,over a yard of

oblivion meltingsnowcrust the wind

everythingvariable

enough to

2210play

the blossom with us,

no, there it

goes behind

the garage

2215on the way down

but then the

squall hits

with fierce soft

mingling

2220snow

ghosts stand up

and walk off the roof

Poetry Is the Smallest

Poetry is the smallest

trickle trinket

2225bauble burst

the lightestf

windseed leaftipr

snowdowne

poetry is the breakse

2230the least loopd

fromo

the general curvaturem

into delight

poetry is

2235the slightestf

hue, hint, hurtr

its dance too lighte

not to be the wind’s:e

yet nothingd

2240becomes itselfo

without the overspillm

of this small abundance

•

you don’t mind, do you, I

2245said to the mountain, if

I use this ledge or, like,

inspiration pavilion to say

a few things out over the

various woods, streams, and

2250so on: by all means, said

the mountain: I was a little

concerned, I said, because

the speech is, like, aboutonly

the individual vs the majorwhere

2255structures and, like, Iwe

are

was thinking of siding withto

the individual: but, oflose

course, said the mountain:all

2260well, but, I said, itare

we

doesn’t make any differenceto

what I say if it doesn’thave

make any difference: please,here

2265said the mountain, be my guestand

there

•a

trifle

a slice of clearingonly

2270widened over the ridge atwhere

sundown and the sunwe

stood in it a minute,are

full glow flapping up againstto

the garage and treeslose

2275and through the windows againstall

the walls and it was very niceare

say around four twenty,we

gold effluvia goneto

by four twentysevenbe

2280here

•beholding

everything

poet friend of mine’s

dick’s so shortstill his fat wife’s

2285he can’t pull it long enoughradiant every morning:

to pee straight with:he humps well, probably,

not to pee onstringing her out far and

anybody by surpriseloose on the frail hook:

sideways, he hunkersand, too, I notice she

2290into the urinal so farfollows his words

he looks like, to achieve,closely like one who

relief:knows what a tongue can do

Christmas Eve Morning

Christmas Eve morning

a sifting of snow

2295blurry clouds

with near-clear spans of western blue

still at nine

nothing coming through in beam from

the east

2300the hemlocks rocked and

winded yesterday

hold their old darkness back today

to have fun you have to need it

so little you don’t need any

2305you fear the graveif you won’t

so much it ischange yourself change

possible before life isthe world

done with you you

will beg for itchange the world you

2310won’t change yourself

this year’s been

so horrible even the

thought

of improving it

2315is frightening

then the sifting thins into a sheen of

micro-lights, pane crystal flints,

twinkling down like fog-fuzzy bugs through

beams of early sun,

2320derived not from clouds but a haze

that barely pales the sky

weather is continuo to the clustral or choral

the deep through-going that adds a middle

to islands, glaciers, ponds, fields, woods,

2325to rain, or snow, or wind or

the sun’s weather is

continuo

to earth and Mars and

elsewhere

2330or the galaxy’s (here we go again) shine is

continuo

within which gather and move chords,

concerts, aggregates, configurations,

tangles, thickets

2335which in turn turning feed into and move the

continuo:

clapper-hung bulls tinkling bells

balls on icy highweed

spot of marsh there

2340in the meadow

cattails and redwings

artesian source

a bog going

around saved

2345the tree-mingling mists

on the high gap’s ridge

seem not a nature

my self, too, inhabits, brushing up

against the rockface,

2350leaking from boughs

but another dimension, intention, or

working that asks neither my

compliance nor participation

buried yesterday afternoon

2355today Uncle Emory

begins his first

full day in

the grave, the

whole round of

2360the dark service,

the wageless hours

and hourless wages

but what a brilliant

finish to the snowstorm

2365(another due tonight)

so much sun I sat with the jade

plant half an hour

while sheaves of brightness

fell across its deep leaves

2370and, eighteen the high, here and

there direct light caused icicles

to form out of hung snow,

the ridge on my

metal mailbox turned into a single

2375long icicle, dog’s tail

Analysis Mines and Leaves to Heal

Analysis mines and leaves to heal

clouds, coasts along the way but comes

to recourse’s nothingness to heal itself

during the night

2380the wind pulled

up a cloud cover

patchworks

apronsmy wife says

hotpadsyou can’t learn

2385place matsmagic by magic

skirts

lunch bags

intercourse is better than no course at all

hardly able to take a frail wind

2390or thin change in altitude or

attitude, we measure riffles,

waves, ounces, vibes for power,

scrupulous tissue

axioms, postulates, theorems, hypotheses,

2395hypotenuses, conclusions, paradigms in

neat blue conic sections, curved lines, dots,

lines, and planes, cubes, prisms, cylinders,

spheres, all that good stuff

temperature goes up, snow falls:

2400break out the stars,

cold shines them: stir up a southern breeze,

here come the windchillindex

here, indeed, we’re eating dead chicken (stuffed with

stuffing) cranberry sauce, applesauce,

2405white potatoes, broccoli, salad with

dressing including one dark olive, cookies

and ice (dark olive how I luf you) cream

and cake and the snow outside coming down

Snowed Last Night a Lot but Warmed Up

Snowed last night a lot but warmed up:

2410today has been cloudy

unsnowing and up to 40 maybe 45:

icicles have dived off eaves:

the hemlocks

which keep fine clumps

2415are unsnowed

tipsy with breeze

I got a plant collection

for Christmas, jars, cups, liqueur & other glasses,

potted and planted,

2420but I’m doing tiny plants

I like my loyalty

and their precariousness

the big round yew

has five thick floes

2425indoor greenof snow on top

too central

to angle off, fall

away

the maple’s fleshy underlimbs look spooky,

2430more light bounding up from the

snow than falling from the gray near-dusk:

I shoveled

wet-bottomed snow out to

the garage, where I got the peat moss,

2435then out into the yard

where I dug soil

from John’s old sandlot

soil mixed about half with sand

that half and half with peat moss:

2440then I dribbled bits

into my finestemmed glasses

and reluctant jars

poured dabs of water in

to settle the roots

2445and left them to heaven

Those in Ledge Fright Seek

Those in ledge fright seek

the complacencies of the high Way

for who

given the apple of life

2450wants a different sweetness

low marsh

where water heads or sulls

is common but

high holdings,

2455marsh lofts, prevented into height,

kept where all that can run runs,

high marsh,

sedge, weed, grass, tiny flower!

snow upside down and/or backwards spells

2460mons, the

mountainous part where snow falls

gniwolp wons

one of the wons

with herbicides, pesticides,

2465the penetration, saturation become

systemic, what for us,

the children of Mithridates’srun, the end is

poison pricknarrowing in for

a close, the saying

2470midroad and midway the Wayis gaining

change, disturbance’s daily loss,concision to

shock, grief,slash and slashing

looks illusoryslash itself off

but the world’s vanishing as we

2475stand tiptoe at the rim of

a world never to come

water runs

but the ripple

dwells

But If the Way Will

2480But if the Way will

not answer common feet,

we hack through thickets,

winding vine-nodes, and

befuddling treebranching

2485offshooting

divisions that divide us

bringing no lessening to

the investigated material

but if like the emu we

2490cannot fly we can

run fast or while we scramble up

fright’s sharp ledge we can

contemplate the skyWay,

treetopless, hightensionlineless,

2495peakless, stormcloudless

but who would be there except

as relief from here

here the pond muscles in a flash,

cracks, sprinkles, circles and

2500produces a disengaged item,

shining fish

delicious simmering

freedom, freedom

some people think it’s going

2505to stop snowing

someday

today glazed because it went up

to 45 yesterday: stuff

melted and ran, and last night went

2510down to twenty or twenty-five:

the motion slowed, piling up, slowing,

then stopped into slick hard terrain:

today not having gone above

twenty-five, crystal-drawn

2515configurations, tire figurings, dry,

crunchy, are holding tight: now, forty minutes

past sundown, the dark evergreens

fall away in a white sea, clouds

above, behind, between,

2520only a shade lighter than

the trees:

all day the sun found two blurs

to come through, each a few seconds

wide: people who have a life

2525to live don’t notice weather: the rest

of us study it like a feast, eating

the windshifts and coolings,

the details, main shows,

fringe events, chewing and wolfing:

2530who dines on clouds, drinks

the wind, gets loose mouthfuls, has

for fanfare stripped willows and

grumpy hemlocks:outriders

not regular, he should

2535address himself to the center

folds, vertical drapes, entryways

wherein to go straight: it is

one thing to tongue pussy and another

thing not to: well said, nature

2540lover: less polluted these

days than acid wind or leady sleet:

the future

“let’s come and eat”will carefully

husband and

2545Dallas at Minnesotadraw out

strands of

I hope dianthus that throughthe natural

platycodon simple engagement hesperisto weave the

with diverse lychnis materialitycontrolled

2550I calendula will be ableartificial

ageratum to wipe dusty

miller the shitty salvia

grin off my cockscomb faceI need a

constellation

2555where all lose, oneto set a

must study gain, move intofew sharp

herd-appraisal and praise, announcestones in

energy and direction,

not slouch behind

2560tempting wild animals:

the business is serious

but wipes away,

chalk on slate, the scribbling

powdery: hunger, greed, fear,

2565anger write themselves out

through and with things,

then dissolve,

the things themselves also

I carry an extra

2570pouch on the hip, around

the neck, over the shoulder

it’s awkward and burdensome,

in it a piece

of paper

2575with the heaviest

directive

find

something to save

us, if

2580not a lot, a little

(tell us, at least, there

is no equivocation between

necessity and necessity)

or if

2585you can find nothing to

save us,

cheer us up

or give us a good rubdown

or put us after a problem

2590worth pursuing

the admiration of can-do

the basic structure

out of its holster,

admired, received—this

2595enlarged and multiplied

into aspects of day

hello from one who knows nothing

(and never lets you hear

the end of it)

The Sun Climbs Daily Higher

2600The sun climbs daily higher

into a longer arc:

lows ride

thaws in from

the south for a day or so

2605but the

long summer dissolve and making

this daily increment unfolds and cinches

that Ithat’s what II have to do some

take ittake it itlight writing

2610is whattakesso I can do some

it takeslight reading

taking thought

poets add

obscurity

2615to the

inexplicable

for critics

who can’t

get their

2620tools sharp on

the obvious

A Seventeen Morning &

A seventeen morning &

the maple, lit below,

looks as if it’s

2625in pearl fire

the high-luminous snow

catching every branch

I may change rooms

because I can’t see

2630the main subject

from here

I can’t continue

to proceed indirectly:

in the other room I wd

2635be able

to see a frowzy jay light in

it (my subject)

or watch a winter wind

whistle it

2640or behold the coming & going

of snow leaves,

nature-witnessing,

attention-getting poetry

all the fit that’s news to print

2645what’s a sphere: (you ask)

a nucleus

prowled by circumferences:

a moon or sun

or asteroid, orange, tangelo,

2650grapefruit, or

two selves or sexes

clustral: a mere

bead, seed, marble, an

irreducibility gathered

2655about itself, or a

radial awareness, more

blocked off on one side than

the other but about

as fluid and penetrating in

2660rock as air: awe or ire:

clearly the question is what

one does from there: the

spiral drills a more

majestic form, centralizing

2665spheres, binaries, clumps,

arms and windings into

vast discs turning but more

open to variety on the

edge than spheres, a malleability

2670outward to diversity:

moving to sweet heaps as of

rocks or garbage in spill:

every lawn,

sandy path effects, influences

2675the weather: every bush’s

held-air temple,

cooler or warmer or more or

less humid: every fringe

of bank grass alters the

2680wind’s rill,

spill, the way

thunderstorms roil white-ice

high with stricken

majesty: I

2685know how things go one

way and then the other

without separation, tenacity

continuous throughout

the measure: I

2690know how the big wind falls,

the winds of hollows,

thickets, ponds

adding or subtracting huff

or lag, easing or blocking,

2695lofting or snatching down:

clear progressions and puzzling

intermixtures: so much

stability or quiet change in

fantasies of motion: wind vane,

2700rain gage, barometer . . .

1look at2look at

the peoplethe people

in thein the

graveyardgraveyard

2705theythe

don’t seem tosweet north wind

mind

3look at4look at

the peoplethe people

2710in thein the

graveyardgraveyard

unfailinga cardinal

attractionsingly singing

5look at6look at

2715the peoplethe people

in thein the

graveyardgraveyard

memorydisturb the

slipspeace

27207look at8look at

the peoplethe people

in thein the

graveyardgraveyard

stone recallswhen dawn comes

2725lastno one stirs

9look at10look at

the peoplethe people

in thein the

graveyardgraveyard

2730shadequiet

treescelebration

fucking forefront

rump humper

bang spangler

2735wart wrestler

butt fuckershoot the breeze

people who worry about

belly wormerthings have something

crawdadhopperto worry about

2740spider spitter

I have behind enough but

kitty corneredsuffer from foreshortening

cattywompus

cattybiarsoned

2745diagram of eclipse

paradigm of ruin

figure of flood

bustnut of wind

sketches, fit-ups for

2750the cataclysm

name and number (my culture agriculture)

sense decays when it moves too

far toward statement, concept,

abstraction, or theory where

2755generalization, synopsis, or

summary has taken on wide

prevalence but left

behind, or digested away, any

experience of example,

2760concretion, or sensuous

actuality; or, toward the

coincidental, the single

example, event, or thing

without context or placing,

2765the isolated particular:

poetry operates, not to deny

the abstraction or the

particular and not to diminish

the distance between them but

2770to hold in relation the

widest play between them

shooting irontoday, fair, saw the sun

don’t riot bade lionsall the way down

flowers flowtill, arc lost, it

2775flower bowlstouching scattered up

and down the ridge,

bulbs and spherules glowing

coals crumbling and I think

it was 4:30 before the

2780operation ended: this adds

a minute or two

to the hold of light

The First Morning in a Few

The first morning in a few

the windows haven’t been

2785ice-befrizzled, bestreaked,

befoliaged, or befrilled,

the numerous fronds & species: today

is mostly plain

pane invisibility: but at 33

2790and snowing, sleeting, and

raining, a few driblets stick

to the panes still ice, clear

as ice or water, a bomb gone

off at LaGuardia

2795and 11 people killed:

the snow scanty, slow,

big-flaked, I went out

into a reality

audible with unsuspected

2800sleet:

round and square

dancing and

dancing undetermined

square or round

2805I care not a fig

for a fag in a fog

fog in a fug

fug in a fig

fug a jug

2810(jig a fig)

sphincter of Oddi in

your face!

it was supposed to be warm today

up to 40 or 45

2815but it wasn’t and more sleet

fell than ice melted

now we have six new inches of

snow

This Is

This is

2820the great

man’s skull:

we saved

it from

the fire

2825so you

might see

the light

in it

any part of the day you

2830move out of the accuracy

of honor you waste

for honor, in no need of

sanction, moves in its own

self-evidence, necessity:

2835if we prove

unworthy of tenure

on earth earth will

give us notice

the force of necessity

2840merely operates

(but lay a log across

the flow, you have

a bridge)

poison earth, eat poison

2845I get so much good out of my

neighbors: they don’t

speak or visit

but they come

home from a trip

2850and put on the lights or I

look out the window on a cold

night and see one or two

of their windows lit and get

neighborly feelings

Quilted Spreads

2855Quilted spreads

pigeons every morning prowl

and rove

the hills at

fifty

2860miles an hour:

out walking, prowling, I

hear them coming

a soft, intense muscling

then the visual speed,

2865cushioned rigor

constitutional

quarter to ten and the sun’s

nothing, more in the south

than east,

2870leftover moon

are you looking for a minute,

second in the welter,

grain of what-for, nit of

news, bind of delight

2875just this way

may a fart pule brown billows

about your earlobes

may your teeth acquire anal

longings and fly home

2880may your rump-grooving nose

plunge into the shot pot

towels pillows & bath rugs

polyester fiberfill

jumbo welt

2885hand-knotted fringe trim

CALL US FOR YOUR

NEW YEA SEVE GALA

an increased middle region

answers polarities

2890the pode which be

de (pod) foot and antipode

which gwine ter natcherly be

de head, baby do,

some lard, though, hung and

2895swung about the organs,

subcutaneous rugs, blankets,

drapes, curtains, stuffed

liver, swoll’n gut,

(with a railyard of fuming,

2900fussing, foaming, and verting)

these enlargements, equatorial

intensifications, of

content between the mouth

and so forth:

2905forget the colorless, clear,

frigid, polar life:

come to

where thepuddentang

zonky wohwoh

2910pleasure is

will one waft whither wind

winds forever

the current moves with

necessity’s inner accuracy

2915but mind what will it do

it will not accord

as if a native element

indistinguishable: it will

not have currency

2920but come into a state of

its own

terrain decision settles

choice disposes

some influence as to what will

2925and will not be

for example choice though

will need to choose what

cannot be unchosen what is

like stone grain

2930constitutional

for example loneliness

one need not look forever

out of windows or into

adjoining offices

2935or mailboxes

for the thing that will

not come, the face from

wax-museum memory

no

2940one may say loneliness if

with me

it is myself

it will not remove

it is mine

2945I hold it to myself

I will not let go of it

it is clothes on a certain

person it is a sharp watch on

a hemlock jay

2950it is the long tunnel of

memory personalized with

murals and hangings

it is where I must

hacking go

2955there will be some terror

I accept

it is mine

it comes

and when it goes

2960leaves furious fragrances

one will dispose

the disposable

I will not for example love

a new person

2965not with that force’s full

focus

I will love sweeps, banks,

and glances

and lengthy spaciousness but

2970I will not

grant an extended reach

or stir to fill a need

the decision is a new knowledge,

the matter shaped and settled

2975monthly payment

the last day of seventy-five

some sun this morning mostly

gray this afternoon

fairly warm some melting

2980say thirty-five

having missed the calisthenics

of maturity

I practice early and late

to catch up with what is

2985gone

I am not wise

please forgive me for writing

even so

correct me with your own

2990deep acceptances of

condition and self

I call attention

I enliven when I can

to open press here

2995string out the old

string in the new

happy new year

Dung Ball, Round Graveyard

Dung ball, round graveyard,

wax ball, this sphere, nest

3000cell-laced with permanent eggs,

these dead moving loose

in vines through branches,

this orange body and apple body

devoured, our mouths

3005the substance of millings:

the sabertooth’s big-game furnace

burned forty million years:

elephants, rhinoceroses stoked

it: look in his skull, cool,

3010polished:

the hominid ancestor dreamed

him through entanglements of fire,

the polishes of volition: the

more recent, the thinker, the banquet,

3015observed him go closely by:

have you heard

the mockingbird:those who

have nothing

markhave nothing

3020the woodlark:to lose

words, a sculpture, let us

see wind:

the cart after a time

goes not on as a cart

3025rock the boat in a calm sea: people

in storm wildernesses hold on,

balance against, empty out,

a mindlessness resembling the

conservative: the revolutionary

3030is stable in it and

cannot bear it:

the upland bog!

a flat clearing

means pond-water snowed under,

3035and brown-shambled fringe

broken high from

by right cattails

smart and clean as pricks

bog

3040clearing

prick freud

ruined everything

tops in scoring and rebounding:

violence, suspense, and non-stop action:

3045strikes, spares, and splits:

fireplace specialist:

carpentry, masonry, plumbing,

painting, roofing, wiring, heating:

it looks like today

3050though it commenced

thea year isn’t going

to amount to much

firstgray skies

meal-like gritty

3055comessnow enough

to make running whirls and curls

righton the highway: we

just went to FAYS:

afterbought a plant:the death of god

3060sort of jointythe god of death

thecactus put it in

a big glass jarcleared off late

lasthad pretty goodthe flat light

roots reckoncomes underwood

3065ifthey’ll root alllike a fire

rightright the others I

beforegot last week did

the

servedthe content of the obsession

3070changes but the form returns

lay across the multiple

polymorphous

defining inventions

that limit and

3075accentuate so as to say

we, too, exist

I’m one fourth as

old as the country

I See Downhill a Patch

I see downhill a patch

3080mixed in the tops of two or

three cedars—the lake,

a mile’s breadth hardly wider

than cedars’ tips

when we dam sluices

3085in river gaps

we don’t violate

the accuracy of flow

but build a temple

to flowing nature,

3090housing for the river god,

our structure interpreting river nature

time outtime up

in timedown time

outage

3095yesterday the west cleared by

sunset and the sun

went down

a bright spot in an exact place

but as it went deeper

3100glow widened up and down

the ridge

until half an hour later

the storm had broadened

and caught up the earth

3105in a rising fire

but it was only nothing

because here we are today

(one who makes much

of little

3110makes much of little

aches and pains,

trivial inconveniences,

slight delays, and is

a pain

3115to work with or

be around)

in a full radiance

morning having broken from

the very skin of sunrise

3120bright and

unrelenting and here just

past now

the windows beam,

the floor scattered with

3125the fallen lumber of light:

thousands in wars have lost

their hands and/or feet—

specially in recent wars

where things picked up or

3130stepped on

have exploded

(if you can bear to feel it

you will never cause it)

Big Old Thang

3135She stuffed vulvas in the

cracks, hammered the main

labiums together with

vaginas and stapled

the clitorises up till it was

3140to the point he

couldn’t get a thing in there.

this is your spotty reporter

folks

putting one on

3145first day after the first

look like it all gone down

(criticize in general

praise in particular)

The Stomach Is Quite

The stomach is quite

3150a development

on the esophagus and

if cross-country is

efficient

the small intestines

3155represent a winding

parlousness

so I don’t think

we will be

concerned if the

3160continuo’s overwhelmed

underground

by appallingly

pretentious blocks of

paydirt

3165it goes on trinkling under

there, eventually reappearing

enunciating

Big, BIG savings on all

units

3170low mileage

fully equipped

mint condition

houseflies are spongers

My Neighbor Shakes Feed along

My neighbor shakes feed along

3175the spruce thicket fringe and

keeps the pheasant plopping on

down, their central heating,

main ramp to life’s roots:

lucky for the pheasant they

3180have a big ass and long

tail to sustain them above the

snow when their legs blop through

you have to feel pretty

good to have a good time:

3185the aspirant spiral: you remember

the aspirant spiral

the limbs’ topside catches the

eye today

high-lit with downsnow

3190brighter than snow’s

underglow

thescads

ordinaryarpeggios

realmobbligatos

3195of& cadenzas

theof detail

ready-to-wear

(though the pentameter’s heaved we’re

splinter assertions of the great iamb)

Nature As Waterfalls

3200Nature as waterfalls,

lives, or generations

spills fast,

not fashion-fast

nature as ridge is deep

3205stay:

these the oldest

mountains in the

world,

authority fills the

3210clearings

under cedar

thickets

or writes precisely as the ridge

across the blue dusk coelum

3215authority’s springs and

white-scaping falls, the responsive

rounding off of hills,

creek- and riverways

are a spelling out no

3220character muddles but

characters, the wind’s many

motions, inscribe,

a telling not of one

thing to another, pen

3225to paper, chalk to slate,

skyscraper to groundbase,

microinscription to fossil

but undivided telling:

this writing

3230makes bowls

and fills seas: man older

than the megalith faced

unstoried stone, deep

priority, as this about here,

3235now after a hundred years its

millions hardly broken into:

here in America the

fashion, the scale or

intellectual sheet, sorts

3240against a chasm without time

and one the other criticizes

to digest but, the reach not

commensurate, the maw

can’t feed: this not an

3245evening land but a

morning too early to make anything out:

the ridge fills our moment

and, time’s fill, fills time:

there’s no news like snow news:

3250the tongue stuck out,

tongue tip, sticky:

then teeth, mouth, the

shaping back and the business

of swallowing: the

3255slender esophagus, bottomed

with a valve, followed by a

great opening out, containing

another valve, then subsidiary organs,

duodenal and pancreatic, and

3260interpenetrated systems,

blood and air, followed by

a meandering of

guts that roil and shift,

then the water system and

3265larger hunks of gut (nice, necessary,

so precisely made) finally

the mechanisms of holding

and releasing

man is a motion through

3270variations on a tube

Larry Brown

those who fret to generate

intensity don’t understand

those who thrash in lakes

3275of fire for the cool banks

vice versa

The Wind Picks Up Slick

The wind picks up slick

bounding upslope

on the slippery freeze

3280“build your own worksop bench”

insulation services

tile and formica contractor

welding

upholstery service

3285bath remodeling

gutter installation

heating and air conditioning

concrete construction

ceiling installations

3290fireplace and chimney service

the indigestible

unaired into meaning

area rugs

saxony plush broadloom

3295speaker systems

Ed White

Steelers & Cowboys

grain off the old pebble

pebble off the old stone

3300stone off the old rock

rock off the old boulder

boulder off the old range

range off the old divide

divide off the old tectonic

3305jerk off the old jerk

arrrive

Cold Didn’t Keep the Stuff

Cold didn’t keep the stuff

kissed back last

fall & forsythia &

3310pear florets couldn’t

sleep, woke up blooming

in winter’s skirts

spring’ll spring blossom-light

know your onions

3315a sprung spring can’t

unspring and spring again

till devices and

rondures have clicked

through and gone round

3320ramrod concept

you would think it

easier for happiness to

happen than for

unhappiness to unhappen

3325words’ windy feed

in perilous times one needs

for diversion

clipped, unsustained

lyrics with no

3330drama (stifled cries)

vehicles to stir reality

a touch away,

to hold the unnamed nameless

back,

3335till when times ease one may

creep into focus on sharp

rims, the alleyways of

the long arisings

water

3340squall largelyto

shapelessplants

the flakesis

repeat the crystalair

to

3345balloons

adultery

infantry

accomplish a designation

dense for though

3350we would understandget

the world we wouldthis

not have it stop

or disappear

our doorstep mouse

3355travels little

this time ofa snow

year, waits for a drymole

snow and tunnels

under the surface,

3360a furrow burrow which

collapses behind into

permanent waves and windings,

exact histories

till high wind blows

3365or the sun looks

defining terms was Socrates’s

way of not knowing himself

if one’s hopes

cease to rise

3370so will one’s peccadillo

I think I may not write much

today

I didn’t write much before

breakfast

3375and during breakfast I was

busy eating

and right after breakfast

I had to go, the setting good

for getting things out but

3380short on things to write

them down with or on,

memory my shortest instrument:

I drove John to school, so

cold and windy,

3385and it took me twenty minutes

to get my pollution control

equipment overload to let up

on the choke and smoke

so I wrote practically nothing

3390during that time maybe a note

on a matchbook or map or

gasoline ticket (whatever,

I lost it)

so by mid-morning the time

3395up to then was a perfect loss

as far as writing goes

so since I had the car

already warm I went over

to the University, picked

3400up a few things,

arranged them, and, nothing

doing, came on back

and by the time I got the

coffee heated up began

3405to think of lunch

so Phyllis and I had a

great lunch composed of

soup with turkey strippings

in it, I mean we added the

3410turkey, it was delicious, a

delicacy, and I didn’t write

a word the whole time, then

after lunch I rushed off to

be in on this thesis-defense

3415having to do with David Jones

and that lasted you wouldn’t

believe how long

and I didn’t get anything down

on paper

3420to speak of

but after that, late in the

day, the sun having broken out

clean into a perfectly clear

sky, I just came home and hung

3425in there, meditating on that

happy brightness

and as anyone knows you cannot

meditate properly if you

interrupt yourself to write

3430what you’re thinking down

so even though we have

a quarterhour left to

sundown I don’t think I’ll get

much done today

3435toodleoo

Teeth Out

Teeth outogu

toenails inlugl

dyy

when you’re

3440up you’re

out of thisle mismo

world and whendifference

you’re downchickweedo

you’re outgone

3445to

goodness

poetry is the life of criticism

When I Think of “the Poet

When I think of “the Poet

paramount”

3450how nature narrowed

through him without

loss of breadth

through one past the aspiration

of envy,

3455free of the fidgetings,

picky dispositions, effects

of lesser men (giants

themselves)

one in no need of praise

3460for why thank

a tree whose leaves inscribe

the sun’s doings,

one better left unpraised

where praise falls away

3465from its objectmy premature

sex life

entangling poetcame before

untangling criticmy mature

sex life

3470weeds don’t read books

(or write them) so I sing

of weeds and they

don’t turn red or pale

with embarrassment orif That

3475gratitude or turn meWhich Is

singing pale or redspoke it

wd say

big rigsThat Which

big digstookusIs speaking

3480bosoms

few & far between

when duh

when thegoing git

“voice”tough duh

3485(thetough git

assimilator)gone man

is too

strong it consumes the

particulars (words,

3490images, tones, meanings)

a clearing

in bulrushes as if an

elephant had paraded

through, more opaque

3495than voice

but no pushier

shoving every drift with oar

my poetry has(some weeds

fallen off athat stand

3500little, it hasthrough winter

slackenedcollect

from standingsnowblossoms

right up inbigger

therethan their summer

3505and doing it,blooms)

it has weakened away,

it’s soft

a hollow

log’s as((.))

3510good a. .

place as

any for

a long holeSigmund took our

head out of

3515the clouds and

gumhung it between

surgeryourlegs

hello

in

3520there

a lot of sunshine today now falling in

gold vertical striping against

the garage and breaking to

fall on up the roof

3525a glorious coldness

and brightness antibacterial as saliva or vulture shit

You Can’t Get It Right

You can’t get it right:

if it doesn’t slide off thefrom side

track on one sideto slide

3530it will on the other or

find an unsuspected

side to slide off: it will not

go right down the slender middle

long:

3535stabilize political

matters by turning them

over to permanent agencies

and how do you

protect yourself against

3540the stability:

return the matters to politicians and,

every election re-stirring the ambience,

you lose continuity

things, tilt acquired,he has her

3545achieve acceleration:all sewed up

the tongue, powerful,

moving organ, will in the

dark find bliss’s button,

describe its contours,

3550buffet gently and swirl it,

and then swarm warmth (and

grease) into other areas

equally touchy and astonishing

suffusingly

3555we are to several

organisms, micro

and macro, in their

billions,

as islands, archipelagoes,

3560isthmuses, regions, elevations,

continents, seas: the mouth’s

pit folks, so many kinds, the

friendly anaerobe

(honey, see your bacteriologist

3565twice a night)

yes

vultures (and other

scavengers) will

eat up the ruptures, lesions, gashes,

3570dissolving sores of dead

animals

and gut-cleanse the disease till

shit’s reductive bit, which may

stink, is (as the world

3575is made) purelike so

so like

poets probe and punish out

dark eruptions or

invasions of the

3580public mind and deposit in clear

anthologies

lean germicidal turd of the just

word restored

the poet wantsthe poet, torn by

3585to govern, sway;maximum knowledge,

he wantsmakes the best

a difficultpossible decision,

dialectical test,tradeoff in recent

particulars formingtimes—governs,

3590into motions andimitating the

parties: he wantsreal thing & the

contention, compromise,enterprise of each

sneak plays, judgments,of us to himself

surprises wherein he

3595whatever the body knows

or teaches,

the known, found through the

body, can exist other than in

the body, the dancer, for

3600example, the single body

never out of itself, writes

a story entangled, interlocking,

unfolded on the stage which

lasts in the head when

3605the dancer has gone, a rondure,

a tendency and completion,

whose composure memory finds

and forms and imagination

redisposes and revisits at will

3610if you could write much

superlatively beautiful

like reaches of

snow in the Rockies no

one visits

3615imagine high-lying

writing unread wasted on

ridges and peaks

separate as word is from

thing, the motions of the language

3620system correspond to

the motions of the world system

rather closely one, taking first one

and then, to the extent

possible, the other side into account,

3625thinks

the woodlark,

the lilt and liquid

upward-breaking spiral,

sound’s artesian spring (the

3630dogs get excited in the thicket

rushing up the pheasant, making

plain hens fly off

chirping) but

I love the mockingbird, childhood’s

3635bird, most, and

weather changes or winter feed

has brought him to live here

where till this year I had

not seen him and now

3640with everything down white

(and mockingbird quite silent)

I see him flash across the

snow

into the big round yew or

3645cedar bush

whatever it is

and pick the leftover

shriveled or half-shriveled

red cedar or yew berries

3650and he seems fat enough

dealing with the cold long

nights (I put out a cage of

suet but he will not light on it)

I wonder when in spring

3655musing he’ll

dropping burst the first note,

sweep a cluster of shatters into song,

and then fire the air with

a fire-line glinting unwinding

3660(the days lengthen, this morning’s

rim-sky rosy at seven:

last evening

the great orb tucked in

a last slice at 20 to 5!)

3665the crow I think

has smelled my suet

but surely he

won’t come to it

hanging on a nail near the

3670ceiling of the backporch

press the incidental

to assume the general

(any particular general)

most people don’t like to think

3675of the stuff in their livingroom

as sitting there, chairs,

lamps, end tables, vases, tables:

they think they ought to have a focal

point, so they get something big &

3680noticeable, like a philodendron,

and plunk it down where nobody

can miss it

and that is not what a focal point is

I declare the crows have

3685come right in to hanging

around in the maple tree

and I jest bet you five

dollars since it’s over

thirty today they got the

3690scent of that suet and

they jest a waitin’ that’s

what they doin’ they jest

a waitin’ sooner or later

they gonna plunk right

3695there on the porch and

start a grabbin’ and a

tearin’ well I thought this

year I was goin’ to make up

my mind to do somethin’

3700good fer nature but that

warn’t the nature I meant to

do any good fer that’s a

fact and I don’t keer who

knows it them crows is a

3705eating up what little bit

of stuff people has and if

they ain’t something done

about it I’ll tell you they

won’t be a thang left around

3710here that them crows ain’t

fooled with I bet

you five dollars on that

see see see you can

see it for a pennis

3715come comewill teen wind

(unlikely)slice the yellow

come, comepeaks off acne

(more likely)

I have not been out to stand

3720near or touch the elm

recently so though I see it

occasionally through the other

room’s window

I lack heavy information that

3725it remains substantial and yet

by faith I have no doubt

if I went out there

to hang myself on it

it would do well enough

The Perfect Journey Is

3730The perfect journey is

no need to go

another nothingly clear day and

I went

to walk between the pine

3735colonnades

up the road on the hill and there

hill-high in dry cold

I saw the weaves of glitterment

airborne, so fine,

3740the breeze sifting

figurations from the snow

reservoirs of the boughs

Snow of the

Snow of the

right consistency,

3745temperature, and

velocity will

fall in a lee

slope

building out over

3750space a

promontory of

considerable

reach in

downward curvature:

3755and snow

will do this

not once

but wherever possible,

a similarity of effect

3760extended

to diversity’s

exact numeration

. . .

here a month of snow,

3765more January than

February, intervenes

during which

I wrote

nothing: it is

3770the winter-deep, the

annual sink:

leave it unwritten,

as snow unwrites

the landscape

3775. . .