they are leaning out for love
they will lean that way forever
while Suzanne she holds the mirror.
And you want to travel with her
and you want to travel blind
and you're sure that she can find you
because she's touched her perfect body
with her mind.
2 10 1
G I V E M E B A C K M Y F I N G E R P R I N T S
Give me back my fingerprints
My fingertips are raw
If I don't get my fingerprints
I have to call the Law
I touched you once too often
& I don't know who I am
My fingerprints were missing
When I wiped away the jam
I called my fingerprints all night
But they don't seem to care
The last time that I saw them
They were leafing through your hair
I thought I'd leave this morning
So I emptied out your drawer
A hundred thousand fingerprints
Floated to the floor
You hardly stooped to pick them up
You don't count what you lose
You don't even seem to know
Whose fingerprints are whose
When I had to say goodbye
You weren't there to find
You took my fingerprints away
So I would love your mind
I don't pretend to understand
Just what you mean by that
1 2 1 1
But next time I'll inquire
Before I scratch your back
I wonder if my fingerprints
Get lonely in the crowd
There are no others like them
& that should make them proud
Now you want to marry me
& take me down the aisle
& throw confetti fingerprints
You know that's not my style
Sure I'd like to marry
But I won't face the dawn
With any girl who knew me
When my fingerprints were on
2 1 2 1
F O R E I G N G O D , R E I G N I N G
I N E A R T H L Y G L O R Y . . .
Foreign God, reigning in earthly glory between the Godless
God and this greedy telescope of mine: touch my hidden
jelly muscle, ring me with some power, I must conquer
Babylon and New York. Draw me with a valuable sign,
raise me to your height. You and I, dear Foreign God, we
both are demons who must disappear in the perpetual crawl·
ing light, the fumbling sparks printing the shape of each
tired form. We must be lost soon in the elementary Kodak
experiment, in the paltry glory beyond our glory, the chalksqueak of our most limitless delight. We are devoted yokels of the mothy parachute, the salvation of ordeal, we paid
good money for the perfect holy scab, the pilgrim kneecap,
the shoulder freakish under burden, the triumphant snowman who does not freeze. Down with your angels, Foreign God, down with us, adepts of magic: into the muddy fire
of our furthest passionate park, let us consign ourselves now,
puddles, peep-holes, dreary oceanic pomp seen through the
right end of the telescope, the minor burn, the kingsize cigarette, the alibi atomic holocaust, let us consign ourselves to the unmeasured exile outside the rules of lawlessness. 0
God, in thy foreign or godless form, in thy form of illusion
or with the ringscape of your lethal thumb, you stop direction, you crush this down, you abandon the evidence you pressed on its tongue.
I 2 1 3
I B E L I E V E Y O U H E A R D Y O U R
M A S T E R S I N G
I believe you heard your master sing
while I lay sick in bed
I believe he told you everything
I keep locked in my head
Your master took you traveling
at least that's what you said
0 love did you come back to bring
your prisoner wine and bread
You met him at some temple where
they take your clothes at the door
He was just a numberless man of a pair
who has just come back from the war
You wrap his quiet face in your hair
and he hands you the apple core
and he touches your mouth now so suddenly bare
of the kisses you had on before
He gave you a German shepherd to walk
with a collar of leather and nails
He never once made you explain or talk
about all of the little details
such as who had a worm and who had a rock
and who had you through the mails
Your love is a secret all over the block
and it never stops when he fails
He took you on his air-o-plane
which he flew without any hands
and you cruised above the ribbons of rain
that drove the crowd from the stands
2 1 4 I
Then he killed the lights on a lonely lane
where an ape with angel glands
erased the final wisps of pain
with the music of rubber bands
And now I hear your master sing
You pray for him to come
His body is a golden string
that your body is hanging from
His body is a golden string
My body is growing numb
0 love I hear your master sing
Your shirt is all undone
Will you kneel beside the bed
we polished long ago
before your master chose instead
to make my bed of snow
Your hair is wild your knuckles red
and you're speaking much too low
I can't make out what your master said
before he made you go
I think you're playing far too rough
For a lady who's been to the moon
I've lain by the window long enough
(you get used to an empty room)
Your love is some dust in an old man's cuff
who is tapping his foot to a tune
and your thighs are a ruin and you want too much
Let's say you came back too soon
I loved your master perfectly
I taught him all he knew
I 2 15
He was starving in a mystery
like a man who is sure what is true
I sent you to him with my guarantee
I could teach him something new
I taught him how you would long for me
No matter what he said no matter what you do
T H I S M O R N I N G I W A S D R E S S E D
B Y T H E W I N D
This morning I was dressed by the wind.
The sky said, close your eyes and run
this happy face into a sundrift.
The forest said, never mind, I am as old
as an emerald, walk into me gossiping.
The village said, I am perfect and intricate,
would you like to start right away?
My darling said, I am washing my hair in the water
we caught last year, it tastes of stone.
This morning I was dressed by the wind,
it was the middle of September in 1965.
2 16 1
I S T E P P E D I N T O A N A V A L A N C H E
I stepped into an avalanche
It covered up my soul
When I am not a hunchback
I sleep beneath a hill
You who wish to conquer pain
Must learn to serve me well
You strike my side by accident
As you go down for gold
The cripple that you clothe and feed
is neither starved nor cold
I do not beg for company
in the centre of the world
When I am on a pedestal
you did not raise me there
your laws do not compel me
to kneel grotesque and bare
I myself am pedestal
for the thing at which you stare
You who wish to conquer pain
must learn what makes me kind
The crumbs of love you offer me
are the crumbs I've left behind
Your pain is no credential
It is the shadow of my wound
I have begun to claim you
I who have no greed
I have begun to long for you
I who have no need
I 217
The avalanche you're knocking at
is uninhabited
Do not dress in rags for me
I know you are not poor
Don't love me so fiercely
when you know you are not sure
It is your world beloved
It is your flesh I wear
2 18 1
V / New Poems
T H I S I S F O R Y O U
This is for you
it is my full heart
it is the book I meant to read you
when we were old
Now I am a shadow
I am restless as an empire
You are the woman
who released me
I saw you watching the moon
you did not hesitate
to love me with it
I saw you honouring the windflowers
caught in the rocks
you loved me with them
On the smooth sand
between pebbles and shoreline
you welcomed me into the circle
more than a guest
All this happened
in the truth of time
in the truth of flesh
I saw you with a child
you brought me to his perfume
and his visions
without demand of blood
On so many wooden tables
adorned with food and candles
a thousand sacraments
which you carried in your basket
I visited my clay
I visited my birth
until I became small enough
1 221
and frightened enough
to be born again
I wanted you for your beauty
you gave me more than yourself
you shared your beauty
this I only learned tonight
as I recall the mirrors
you walked away from
after you had given them
whatever they claimed
for my initiation
Now I am a shadow
I long for the boundaries
of my wandering
and I move
with the energy of your prayer
and I move
in the direction of your prayer
for you are kneeling
like a bouquet
in a cave of bone
behind my forehead
and I move toward a love
you have dreamed for me
222 1
Y O U D O N O T H A V E T O L O V E M E
You do not have to love me
just because
you are all the women
I have ever wanted
I was born to follow you
every night
while I am still
the many men who love you
I meet you at a table
I take your fist between my hands
in a solemn taxi
I wake up alone
my hand on your absence
in Hotel Discipline
I wrote all these songs for you
I burned red and black candles
shaped like a man and a woman
I married the smoke
of two pyramids of sandalwood
I prayed for you
I prayed that you would love me
and that you would not love me
I 223
I T ' S J U S T A C I T Y , D A R L I N G
It's just a city, darling,
everyone calls New York.
Wherever it is we meet
I can't go very far from.
I can't connect you with
anything but myself.
Half of the wharf is bleeding.
I'd give up anything to love you
and I don't even know what the list is
but one look into it
demoralizes me like a lecture.
If we are training each other for another love
what is it?
I only have a hunch
in what I've become expert.
Half of the wharf is bleeding,
it's the half where we always sleep.
224 I
E D M O N T O N , A L B E R T A ,
D E C E M B E R 1 9 6 6 , 4 A . M .
Edmonton, Alberta, December 1966, 4 a.m.
When did I stop writing you?
The sandalwood is on fire in this small hotel on Jasper
Street.
You've entered the room a hundred times
disguises of sari and armour and jeans,
and you sit beside me for hours
like a woman alone in a happy room.
I've sung to a thousand people
and I've written a small new song
I believe I will trust myself with the care of my soul.
I hope you have money for the winter.
I'll send you some as soon as I'm paid.
Grass and honey, the singing radiator,
the shadow of bridges on the ice
of the North Saskatchewan River,
the cold blue hospital of the sky-
it all keeps us such sweet company.
I 225
T H E B R O O M I S A N A R M Y O F S T R A W
The broom is an army of straw
or an automatic guitar,
The dust absorbs a changing chord
that the yawning dog can hear,
My truces have retired me
and the truces are at war.
Is this the house, Beloved,
is this the window sill where
I meet you face to face?
Are these the rooms, are these the walls,
is this the house that opens on the world?
Have you been loved in this disguise
too many times, ring of powder left behind
by teachers polishing their ecstasy?
Beloved of empty spaces
there is dew on the mirror:
can it nourish the bodies in the avalanche
the silver could not exhume?
Beloved of war,
am I obedient to a tune?
Beloved of my injustice,
is there anything to be won?
Summon me as I summon from this house
the mysteries of death and use.
Forgive me the claims I embrace.
Forgive me the claims I renounce.
226 1
I M E T Y O U
I met you
just after death
had become truly sweet
There you were
24 years old
Joan of Arc
I came after you
with all my art
with everything
you know I am a god
who needs to use your body
who needs to use your body
to sing about beauty
in a way no one
has ever sung before
you are mine
you are one of my last women
1 227
C A L M , A L O N E ,
T H E C E D A R G U I T A R
Calm, alone, the cedar gu
itar
tuned into a sunlight drone,
I'm here with sandalwood
and Patricia's clove pomander.
Thin snow carpets
on the roofs of Edmonton cars
prophesy the wilderness to come.
Downstairs in Swan's Cafe
the Indian girls are hunting
with their English names.
In Terry's Diner the counter man
plunges his tattoo in soapy water.
Don't fall asleep until your plan
includes every angry nomad.
The juke-box sings of service everywhere
while I work to renew the style
which models the apostles
on these friends whom I have known.
22B 1
Y O U L I V E L I K E A G O D
You live like a god
somewhere behind the names
I have for you,
your body made of nets
my shadow's tangled in,
your voice perfect and imperfect
like oracle petals
in a herd of daisies.
You honour your own god
with mist and avalanche
but all I have
is your religion of no promises
and monuments falling
like stars on a field
where you said you never slept.
Shaping your fingernails
with a razorblade
and reading the work
like a Book of Proverbs
no man will ever write for you,
a discarded membrane
of the voice you use
to wrap your silence in
drifts down the gravity between us,
and some machinery
of our daily life
prints an ordinary question in i t
like the Lord's Prayer raised
on a rollered penny.
Even before I begin to answer you
I know you won't be listening.
We're together in a room,
I 229
it's an evening in October,
no one is writing our history.
Whoever holds us here in the midst of a Law,
I hear him now
I hear him breathing
as he embroiders gorgeously our simple chains.
A R E N ' T Y O U T I R E D
Aren't you tired
of your beauty tonight
How can you carry your burden
under the stars
Just your hair
just your lips
enough to crush you
Can you see where I'm running
the heavy New York Times
with your picture in it
somewhere in it
somewhere in it
under my arm
S H E S I N G S S O N I C E
She sings so nice
there's no desire in her voice
She sings alone
to tell us all
that we have not been found
T H E R E A S O N I W R I T E
The reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are
When I'm with you
I want to be the kind of hero
Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Page 13