but I should stop
while I’m still ahead
and make my way
to my own crooked bed;
so here’s to the end,
the final things,
and here’s to forever
and what that brings,
and here’s to a cup of
coffee in the winter
and here’s to the needle,
and here’s to the splinter.
And here’s to the pear tree
I couldn’t live without,
and here’s to its death
I wrote about
from 1966
to 1972,
a kind of root
from which I grew,
and here’s to the fruit—
I like that too,
bruised and juicy
through and through,
and here’s to the core
oh most of all
and how I chewed it
from Mall to Mall
and how I raddled
the stem in my teeth
as if it were wind
against a red leaf;
and here’s to the wind
and here’s to your eyes
and here’s to their honey,
dark as the skies
and here’s to the silk roof
over your head
and here’s to the pillows
and here’s to the bed
and here’s to your plaid robe,
and here’s to your breast,
and here’s to your new coat
and here’s to your vest
and your fine mind and its desire,
as wild and crazy as the fire
we saw burning going home in the dark,
driving by and wanting to park,
but stopped by sirens and flashing lights—
wild nights, wild nights,
a pine tree in the other lane,
cones exploding in my brain.
Asphodel
He was dead so he was only a puff
of smoke at the most and I had to labor to see him
or just to hear and when we spoke it was as
if we were waiting in the rain together
or in a shelter on 96th Street or by the
side of a train in Washington, D.C., say,
changing engines and patting each other’s stomachs
by way of intimacy, and he said what he
wanted most of all, when it came to trains,
was merely to stand on the platform looking out
the dirty window at the water beyond
the row of houses or the stand of trees
for it was distance he loved now and the smell of
the ocean, even more than coffee, but it was
only concoction for he didn’t have the senses
anymore, and I forgot to say that
he was a veteran and he wore a green cap
that had KOREA VETERAN printed on the face
with three bright battle ribbons below the lettering,
and I forgot to say his ears were large,
the way it sometimes happens in older men,
though he was dead, and he was on the train with
his wife who had red hair of sorts and a dress
that spread out like a tassel of silk, and war
was what we talked about and what the flowers
were the way a poppy was the emblem
of World War I and we both laughed at how
there were no flowers for Korea nor any
poems for that matter though he was sad and although
he wore the hat he said it was a stupid
useless war, unlike Achilles Odysseus
talked to in Hell, who loved his war and treasured
the noses he severed and the livers he ruptured,
and picture them selling their asphodel in front of
a supermarket or a neighborhood bank
and picture us waiting until our ears were long
just to hate just one of their dumb butcheries.
What Then?
You know I know there is just enough light
between the boards and that the tree creaked and
the branches scraped against the roof, and all I
can think about is whether my shoes will be covered
with dust when all is said and done or whether
the cake will cover it and cracked and brittle
they rise once again as all shoes rise
both high and dry if even the tongue is split,
and what was called a leather top was loose
from its moorings; you know the pain the shoe
itself swelling can cause here, how can we rid
the world of swelling, that was my first grievance,
or muck to start with, muck was the problem, no one
I know should die but what do my two black shoes
know, let’s say a creature will blow them dry
by beating his wings or let’s say we’ll walk next time
say north instead of south, oh nearer my face
to thee and nearer your face to me, what then?
One Poet
As if one poet then who was in his sixties
I wanted to tell him that I read his book
and how I lingered on one page and couldn’t
go to the next, I had to read it again,
and later I kissed it, but I couldn’t tell him that
nor did I ever write, since I lost his
letter, I remember putting it in
my inside pocket with the colored pens
and how it must have slipped out as I ran
down the four steps and over the forsythia
looking for my keys; and at the annual
ceremonies somewhere close I think to
Gramercy Park he barked at me not knowing
how much I loved his work nor did he see
out of the dusty window left of the cloakroom
how a dog had severed the head of a pigeon
and how its bloody feathers lay on the sidewalk
and blood was on the dog’s round face and how
oddly he growled and how he licked his lips.
Wordsworth
More than anything else it was
the smell of dead birds that overpowered
you as you walked into that woods
and everything else was sheer bullshit
including the violets you picked in the openings
and tied in small bouquets holding
your nose withal as if you truly
had someone to give a posy to, and there
was either a wolf or there wasn’t, it doesn’t matter
now, for it was second or third growth,
and it was more scrag than not and anyhow
it’s house to house now ugly fucking streets
where once da da da da and you were beautiful
innocent young though you were fat and clumsy
too but you were you and you treasured the blue nosegay.
Lorca
The fact that no one had ever seen Lorca run
had only to do with the legend of his clumsiness
for one foot was shorter than the other and he was
terrified to cross the street by himself,
though dogs barking in the mountains above him
brought him back to his senses and caused him
when he was alone to try leaping and skipping
the way you did; and he tried the hop, skip, and jump
he learned from the 1932 Olympics
and loaded the left side of his mouth with green tobacco
when he was only eleven for he took comfort
in every form of degradation; and it was
in John Jay Hall in 1949
that Geraldo from Pittsburgh made a personal connection
for they were both housed in room 1231
twenty
years apart not counting the months,
and only one of them heard Eisenhower give his maiden speech
outside the courtyard entrance, and there were bitter
oranges enough for them both, and you can imagine
one of our poets in the hands of our own bastards,
but what is the use of comparing, only the hats
are different—though I’m not too sure—the roses
maybe they stuffed in our mouths—the Granadas.
Death by Wind
As for those who face their death by wind
and call it by the weird name of forgiveness
they alone have the right to marry birds,
and those who stopped themselves from falling down
by holding the wall up or the sink in place
they can go without much shame for they
have lived enough and they can go click, click
if they want to, they can go tok, tok
and they can marry anything, even hummingbirds.
Rose in Your Teeth
Rose in your teeth, my darling, rose in your teeth,
and blood on your hands and shoes on your feet,
and barefoot in mud and how the shoes went floating
on bodies of water, I sold them at Baker’s and Burt’s
and carried the boxes on high; and there were women
galore who sat there in rows in their chairs on their thrones
in stockings of silk, and we rolled by on wagons of wood
and counted till midnight in codes and by numbers and letters,
and I did the forms though once I led the charge
and I was the priest for two or three hours; and there were
forgotten styles in colors you couldn’t imagine
and heels of the past and folded tongues and such,
and I was hungry at one in the morning and ate
forgotten foods, and can’t you tell how I
was a woman then and ransacked the upper shelves
and how I ran for the money and remembered
twelve to fourteen numbers and I knew
the stock and detested the manager and kept
my own tallies and ate my sandwich from a bag
during the later days of the war and just after,
when there were murder gardens everywhere.
Save the Last Dance for Me
When it comes to girls the Chihuahua
on Ninth Street going down to
Washington on the left side
below the Hong Kong Fruit,
he knows where he’s going, between their
beautiful legs, his eyes
bulge a little, his heart,
because he is small, surges,
explodes too much, he is
erotic, his red tongue
is larger than a squirrel’s, but
not too much, nor does he
walk on a wire with fresh
ricotta in his mouth nor
an apple they sell for a quarter,
a bit of rot on one side but
sweet underneath the skin, more
McIntosh than not, he
loves Velveeta, he knows
the price of bananas, he whines
when there is a death; there was one
drowning in a sewer,
his owner gave me five dollars
for lifting the lid with a hammer
and going down into the muck
when I was twelve, it was
my first act of mercy
and she gave me a towel
that matched the Chihuahua’s towel
and ah he trembled containing
such knowledge and such affection
and licked my face and forced me
to shut my eyes, it was
so much love, his whole
body was shaking and I,
I learned from him and I
learned something once from a bird
but I don’t know his name
though everyone I tell it to
asks me what his name was
and it is shameful, what
was he, a dog? The Klan
was flourishing all the while
we dreamed of hydroelectric
so we were caught in between
one pole and another and
we were Hegelian or just
Manichaean, we kept
the hammer on top of the manhole
so we could lift it to get
our softballs and tennis balls
though he who weighed a pound
could easily fall into
the opening, such was our life
and such were our lives the last
few years before the war when
there were four flavors of ice cream
and four flavors only; I’ll call him
Fatty; I’ll call him Peter;
Jesús, I’ll call him, but only
in Spanish, with the “h” sound,
as it is in Mexico;
Jesús, kiss me again,
Jesús, you saved me,
Jesús, I can’t forget you;
and what was her name who gave me
the towel? and who was I?
and what is love doing in
a sewer, and how is disgrace
blurred now, or buried?
from In Beauty Bright
February 22
Reading a Japanese novel during the one day of
sunshine following a week of rain, my daughter-in-law
going to the post office for the new stamps
and on her way home though it was winter and
bitter weather was on the way she found a
buttercup which meant, she said, the Arctic
ice cap was melting and it was getting warmer
except we couldn’t resist it and we walked
back through the streaks of ice and the mud for buttercups
are varnished, and we adore them, though we mostly
live in fear and, for that matter, we crawled
back and on the way I smashed the knuckles
of my left hand on the blue stone wall
for Ronald Reagan and Donald Duck had made it
but neither had Scott Nearing or Emma Goldman,
talk about nincompoops, talk about birthdays.
Stoop
While on a stoop and eating boiled beef
and while my hands are dripping with horseradish
and while a crescent moon reflects itself
in one of the windows on Sixth Avenue
near what used to be the great Balducci’s
across from the women’s prison and the library,
though truth the sky is blue so it is probably
April and it’s probably twenty, thirty
years ago, and I was studying women’s
shoes before the long point killed the two
end toes the same time I was killing time
before the meeting at the Waverly
inside a window as I recall for I had a
burden then and I was given to meetings
like that though even then I knew what it was
like to be free of burdens for I was part
mule, wasn’t I, therefore I knew what freedom
was and I am mule to this day and carry a
weight, and I will to the grave—you will see me
put it into the hole first, it is so cumbersome,
with ears the color of the sun and compromised
by wings, which I am too, and there’s one mule
I knew in the late thirties whose name was Molly,
alas, not Sal, and she wasn’t stupid and she was
hardly stubborn and she loved apple trees
and she was wise and loving, above rubies.
Aliens
How on the river the loosestrife has taken over,
and how at the wedding there were spaghetti straps
and one or two
swollen bellies, and the judge who
married them was wearing red sneakers and he was
altogether a little pompous, and how the
Guatemalans have moved into the borough
and they are picked up in front of the Flower Mart
sitting by the ice machine and there the
bargaining takes place and both sides love
light maybe because of the glittering
between the trees and locked inside the droplets,
and what the swollen river is up to and how
New York City is stealing the water and what,
with the weather events, there could be a failure
of one or more of New York’s three earthen dams
or there could be a collapse of the steel tunnel
feeding the city, and what the language is
they argue with and whether it’s under the table
the way they get paid or there are watermarked checks
with complicated deductions, and what the birds are
that eat the garbage and if a plastic milk box
turned upside down is not a good enough table
for coffee and doughnuts especially if the sugar
goes neatly through the holes and red plastic
makes music too and boots take the place of sneakers.
Dumb
Fleabane again and I have another year
to take up its redness and what the wayside is like
with or without it and I have another year
to charge across the wooden bridge and shake it
again and take on the animals and fight
the stupid bikes and the bikers who ride across
with their legs spread out instead of walking their bikes
so we didn’t have to be pushed against the rails,
they are so dumb and their bikes have so many dumb
and useless gears like a dumb idiot box
with two thousand stations, only dumb ancient
boxing and ancient movies worth anything,
Jack Johnson or Marciano, even
Orson Welles too much, give me the unself-
conscious, Karl Malden or Jean Harlow,
for this is an old flower, it hates whatever
it wants to, it grows where it wants and it
loves goats because of their flattened eyes.
Gracehoper
In the way Ovid lectured a green grasshopper
and all the grasshopper did was spit up tobacco,
in the way he begged for food for he was the first
Blessed as We Were Page 8