And when the needle grins bloodlessly in his cheek
he will come to know how beautiful it is
to be loved by a madwoman.
And I do not gladly wait the years
for the ocean to discover and rust your face
as it has all of history's beacons
that have turned their gold and stone to water's onslaught,
I 9
for then your letters too rot with ocean's logic
and my fingernails are long enough
to tear the stitches from my throat.
W H E N T H I S A M E R I C A N W O M A N
When this American woman,
whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth,
comes thundering past my sitting-place
like a forest-burning Mongol tribe,
the city is ravished
and brittle buildings of a hundred years
splash into the street;
and my eyes are burnt
for the embroidered Chinese girls,
already old,
and so small between the thin pines
on these enormous landscapes,
that if you turn your head
they are lost for hours.
10 1
S O N G
The naked weeping girl
is thinking of my name
turning my bronze name
over and over
with the thousand fingers
of her body
anointing her shoulders
with the remembered odour
of my skin
0 I am the general
in her history
over the fields
driving the great horses
dressed in gold cloth
wind on my breastplate
sun in my belly
May soft birds
soft as a story to her eyes
protect her face
from my enemies
and vicious birds
whose sharp wings
were forged in metal oceans
guard her room
from my assassins
And night deal gently with her
high stars maintain the whiteness
of her uncovered flesh
I n
And may my bronze name
touch always her thousand fingers
grow brighter with her weeping
until I am fixed like a galaxy
and memorized
in her secret and fragile skies.
THESE HEROICS
If I had a shining head
and people turned to stare at me
in the streetcars;
and I could stretch my body
through the bright water
and keep abreast of fish and water snakes;
if I could ruin my feathers
in flight before the sun;
do you think that I would remain in this room,
reciting poems to you,
and making outrageous dreams
with the smallest movements of your mouth?
12 1
LOVERS
During the first pogrom they
Met behind the ruins of their homes
Sweet merchants trading: her love
For a history-full of poems.
And at the hot ovens they
Cunningly managed a brief
Kiss before the soldier came
To knock out her golden teeth.
And in the furnace itself
As the flames flamed higher,
He tried to kiss her burning breasts
As she burned in the fire.
Later he often wondered:
Was their barter completed?
While men around him plundered
And knew he had been cheated.
I 13
T H E W A R R I O R B O A T S
The warrior boats from Portugal
Strain at piers with ribs exposed
And seagull generations fall
Through the wood anatomy
But in the town, the town
Their passion unimpaired
The beautiful dead crewmen
Go climbing in the lanes
Boasting poems and bitten coins
Handsome bastards
What do they care
If the Empire has withered
To half a peninsula
If the Queen has the King's Adviser
For her last and seventh lover
Their maps have not changed
Thighs still are white and warm
New boundaries have not altered
The marvellous landscape of bosoms
Nor a Congress relegated the red mouth
To a foreign district
Then let the ships disintegrate
At the edge of the land
The gulls will find another place to die
Let the home ports put on mourning
14 I
And little clerks
Complete the necessary papers
But you swagger on, my enemy sailors
Go climbing in the lanes
Boasting your poems and bitten coins
Go knocking on all the windows of the town
At one place you will find my love
Asleep and waiting
And I cannot know how long
She has dreamed of all of you
Oh remove my coat gently
From her shoulders.
I 15
L E T T ER.
How you murdered your family
means nothing to me
as your mouth moves across my body
And I know your dreams
of crumbling cities and galloping horses
of the sun coming too close
and the night never ending
but these mean nothing to me
beside your body
I know that outside a war is raging
that you issue orders
that babies are smothered and generals beheaded
but blood means nothing to me
it does not disturb your flesh
tasting blood on your tongue
does not shock me
as my arms grow into your hair
Do not think I do not understand
what happens
after the troops have been massacred
and the harlots put to the sword
And I write this only to rob you
16 1
that when one morning my head
hangs dripping with the other generals
from your house gate
that all this was anticipated
and so you will know that it meant nothing to me.
I 17
P A G A N S
With all Greek heroes
swarming around my shoulders,
I perverted the Golem formula
and fashioned you from grass,
using oaths of cruel children
for my father's chant.
0 pass by, I challenged you
and gods in their approval
rustled my hair with marble hands,
and you approached slowly
with all the pain of a thousand-year statue
breaking into life.
I thought you perished
at our first touch
(for in my hand I held a fragment
of a French cathedral
and in the air a man spoke to birds
and everywhere
the dangerous smell of old Italian flesh) .
But yesterday while children
slew each other in a dozen games,
I heard you wandering through grass
and watched you glare (0 Dante)
where I had stood.
I know how our coarse grass
mutilates your feet,
how the city traffic
echoes all his sonnets
!8 I
and how you lea
n for hours
at the cemetery gates.
Dear friend, I have searched all night
through each burnt paper,
but I fear I will never find
the formula to let you die.
I 1 9
SONG
My lover Peterson
He named me Goldenmouth
I changed him to a bird
And he migrated south
My lover Frederick
Wrote sonnets to my breast
I changed him to a horse
And he galloped west
My lover Levite
He named me Biuerfeast
I changed him to a serpent
And he wriggled east
My lover I forget
He named me Death
I changed him to a catfish
And he swam north
My lover I imagine
He cannot form a name
I'll nestle in his fur
And never be to blame.
20 1
P R A Y E R F O R S U N S E T
The sun is tangled
in black branches,
raving like Absalom
between sky and water,
struggling through the dark terebinth
to commit its daily suicide.
Now, slowly, the sea consumes it,
leaving a glistening wound
on the water,
a red scar on the horizon;
In darkness
I set out for home,
terrified by the clash of wind on grass,
and the victory cry of weeds and water.
Is there no Joab for tomorrow night,
with three darts
and a great heap of stones?
1 2 1
B A L L A D
He pulled a flower
out o£ the moss
and struggled past soldiers
to stand a t the cross.
He dipped the flower
into a wound
and hoped that a garden
would grow in his hand.
The hanging man shivered
at this gentle thrust
and ripped his flesh
from the flower's touch,
and said in a voice
they had not heard,
"Will petals find roots
in the wounds where I bleed?
"Will minstrels learn songs
from a tongue which is torn
and sick be made whole
through rents in my skin?"
The people knew something
like a god had spoken
and stared with fear
at the nails they had driven.
And they fell on the man
with spear and knife
22 1
to honour the voice
with a sacrifice.
0 the hanging man
had words for the crowd
but he was tired
and the prayers were loud.
He thought of islands
alone in the sea
and sea water bathing
dark roots of each tree;
of tidal waves lunging
over the land,
over these crosses
these hills and this man.
He thought of towns
and fields of wheat,
of men and this man
but he could not speak.
0 they hid two bodies
behind a stone;
day became night
and the crowd went home.
And men from Golgotha
assure me that still
gardeners in vain
pour blood in that soil.
1 23
S A I N T C A T H E R I N E S T R E E T
Towering black nuns frighten us
as they come lumbering down the tramway aisle
amulets and talismans caught in careful fingers
promising plagues for an imprudent glance
So we bow our places away
the price of an indulgence
How may we be saints and live in golden coffins
Who will leave on our stone shelves
pathetic notes for intervention
How may we be calm marble gods at ocean altars
Who will murder us for some high reason
There are no ordeals
Fire and water have passed from the wizards' hands
We cannot torture or be tortured
Our eyes are worthless to an inquisitor's heel
No prince will waste hot lead
or build a spiked casket for us
Once with a flaming belly she danced upon a green road
Move your hand slowly through a cobweb
and make drifting strings for puppets
Now the tambourines are dull
at her lifted skirt boys study cigarette stubs
no one is jealous of her body
We would bathe in a free river
but the lepers in some spiteful gesture
have suicided in the water
24 I
and all the swollen quiet bodies crowd the other
prey for a fearless thief or beggar
How can we love and pray
when at our lovers' arms
we hear the damp bells of them
who once took bitter alms
but now float quietly away
Will no one carve from our bodies a white cross
for a wind-tom mountain
or was that forsaken man's pain
enough to end all passion
Are those dry faces and hands we see
all the flesh there is of nuns
Are they really clever non-excreting tapestries
prepared by skillful eunuchs
for our trembling friends
I 25
B A L L A D
My lady was found mutilated
in a Mountain Street boarding house.
My lady was a tall slender love,
like one of Tennyson's girls,
and you always imagined her erect on a thoroughbred
in someone's private forest.
But there she was,
naked on an old bed, knife slashes
across her breasts, legs badly cut up:
Dead two days.
They promised me an early conviction.
We will eavesdrop on the adolescents
examining pocket-book covers in drugstores.
We will note the broadest smiles at torture scenes
in movie houses.
We will watch the old men in Dominion Square
follow with their eyes
the secretaries from the Sun Life at five-thirty
Perhaps the tabloids alarmed him.
Whoever he was the young man came alone
to see the frightened blonde have her blouse
ripped away by anonymous hands;
the person guarded his mouth
who saw the poker blacken the eyes
of the Roman prisoner;
the old man pretended to wind his pocket-watch
The man was never discovered.
There are so many cities!
so many knew of my lady and her beauty.
26 1
Perhaps he came fmm Toronto, a half-crazed man
looking for some Sunday love;
or a vicious poet stranded too long in Winnipeg;
or a Nova Scotian fleeing from the rocks and preachers
Everyone knew my lady
fmm the movies and art-galleries,
Body from Goldwyn. Botticelli had drawn her long limbs_
Rossetti the full mouth.
Ingres had coloured her skin.
She should not have walked so bravely
through the streets.
After all, that was the Marian year, the year
the rabbis emerged fmm their desert exile, the year
the people were inflam
ed by tooth-paste ads
We buried her in Spring-time.
The sparrows in the air
wept that we should hide with earth
the face of one so fair.
The flowers they were roses
and such sweet fragrance gave
that all my friends were lovers
and we danced upon her grave_
I 27
S U M M E R N I G H T
The moon dangling wet like a half-plucked eye
was bright for my friends bred in close avenues
of stone, and let us see too much.
The vast treeless field and huge wounded sky,
opposing each other like continents,
made us and our smoking fire quite irrelevant
between their eternal attitudes.
We knew we were intruders. Worse. Intruders
unnoticed and undespised.
Through orchards of black weeds
with a sigh the river urged its silver flesh.
From their damp nests bull-frogs croaked
warnings, but to each other.
And occasional birds, in a private grudge,
flew noiselessly at the moon.
What could we do? We ran naked into the river,
but our flesh insulted the thick slow water.
We tried to sit naked on the stones,
but they were cold and we soon dressed.
One squeezed a little human music from his box:
mostly it was lost in the grass
where one struggled in an ignorant embrace.
One argued with the slight old hills
and the goose-fleshed naked girls, I will not be old.
One, for his protest, registered a sexual groan.
And the girl in my arms
broke suddenly away, and shouted for us all,
Help! Help! I am alone. But then all subtlety was gone
and it was stupid to be obvious before the field and sky,
experts in simplicity. So we fled on the highways,
in our armoured cars, back to air-conditioned homes.
T H E F L I E R
Do not arrange your bright flesh in the sun
Or shine your limbs, my love, toward this height
Where basket men and the lame must run, must run
And grasp at angels in their lovely flight
With stumps and hooks and artificial skin.
0 there is nothing in your body's light
To grow us wings or teach the discipline
Which starvers know to calm the appetite.
Understand we might be content to beg
The clinic of your thighs against the night
Were there no scars of braces on his leg
Who sings and wrestles with them in our sight,
Then climbs the sky, a lover in their band.
Tell him your warmth, show him your gleaming hand.
1 29
P O E M
I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb stairs
Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Page 2