crows which enter the blood
and draw their beaks
through bloody strands, we
—
Did not serpent,
did not suspect
we were being
nudged clean
vincent
Vincent,
it’s where the beading
stops and
—
Vincent,
it’s where the beading
stops
—
Vincent,
it’s where the beading stops
and the blood drains into a bowl
—
Vincent,
only our loves
come to drink
—
Vincent,
the yellows and reds
are crystal
—
Vincent,
the yellows and blues
drift through the horn of the head
—
Vincent,
the sun’s sagging eye
drops toys on us
of listening and patient work
I hold
the work
I
was nursed I
was shuttled
I lost my name
I could not see
I could not see debt
I could not see love
I could not see sickness
or health or ruin
I could not see
O draft of lilies
I am delivered
I and grace
I
am ashamed
I am humbled
I ruin and I
reprieve
I witness love
how could i have clipped so near
Rhododendrons craft
a coat of many colors
for sun the color
of rhododendrons
—
The pile of rhododendrons
we eat when the stomach
is rhododendron glass, hunger
—
Is curved
like a barnacle,
grips
—
The past and its silk
of ruins, no
rhododendron silk,
—
No pier
on which
love stands
overlooking
—
A rhododendron-glass sea—how
could I have clipped so near
to ruin
—
How could love have stood
so fast, I
know debt
but that is not need, no
rhododendron-colored bills
—
To elaborate our foreignness,
to elaborate forgiveness
they remember my name
Under the rain that pulls the gods by their baby-black
hair.—They remember my name, I
remember my name. How
—
Did a name stoop so forcefully
under coal-black shores, crayon-black
shores—we chart through mud,
—
We plod, we
cut through earth,
we are born
—
Through earth,
and bitter crops stoop
to bear the burden lightly, love
—
A black crayon scrawls the light
what tree does give
What tree does give
of its burden in plates even
sliding all of a sun all all all of a sun
all of a sudden from the truck bed
to the asphalt in sheets of glassy so-
und sound sound?
—
Everything crashes, every-
thing’s a mane beneath which flesh
flexes, and what’s your burden have
you lost your hair what’s your sour
what makes your stomach a withery
pit? Tell me
—
Truly and I’ll release you—I want no
simple days; rather, I want forms cut
like hours to each precise transient hue.
Never ever land eat sand burn in the skillet
—
Grease and lard grease and lard
the day is hard
—
Is a black lava bed covered with flamingos
that rise in unison
we are elsewhere
Let them
be torn
by
—
Dogs, by buds,
by odes
to joy
—
This is no surety
but to glide the rift,
we feel grateful
—
For sanity
for the press
of talk
for care
—
It comes
like a miracle, we
—
Feel grateful
For reprieve
reprieve
reprieve
—
The day
is wrapped
in silver paper
—
We
are elsewhere
in shadow
in the bleeding
sinuses of ruins, the day’s
reprieve
is finely spotted
—
She lyre she can attest
she lyre but lets
the wheel
claw out
—
We stand
as tall as wheat,
as wheel’s thin strands
of lights, we break
from spoked centers
who makes a chorus of you here
Really I am leaving you the point
point which is hard meat, bone, stone
and the flint that brings the forehead bone
to flame, we
—
Work hard, we are tools, we
are relevant singulars scraping stone, shuttling
ash, say
—
You’d rather have a song from us, scraping ash, I
prefer the dashboard wet with evening and our
bodies turning, bodies turned—like the poem,
master, windowpane window pane window p-
a-n-e
—
Quietly to our succor, window, quietly to our succor
“danger lurks around every corner”
daylight lurks around every corner, a man
in block-velour suit, a ziggurat, head stretched
to the tops of the buildings
—
Who makes a chorus of you here,
let’s bring him colorful fruits and flowers,
every stanching of colorful flowers to fill the wells
and wounds, garlands of fruit-colored silvery flowers
for necks and heads and thighs and arms and wrists, help
us purveyors of mystery bring beauty to the brown dust form
of day, let us
—
Feast a while, for we have the time
tasso
In the madhouse of St. Anna,
we cover the knees with blood beads
where the depth of our pleading for Silvias
is like black leaves drawn up
in endless buckets from a well
—
Children bring their buckets to the shore,
green and yellow, green and yellow as in
the madhouse of St. Anna we boil sand
dollars and watch ladders and jets stretch
into the thrashings of tree tops
—
Nothing you could have done would have borne
you right. For twenty years, misery and sickness
slipped their mask between your shoulder blades
and burdened
you with contours and with eyes
fixed rigidly toward the earth
—
Bring your carriage to Sant’Onofrio where dark
jets will issue from you, will stiffen to blinding pillars
and the dogs will sport beneath you and the winds
tangle beneath you and the fountains
laugh beneath you
fêtes
Green barges
fill the night
and green clouds
—
Fill the night
and the lime trees
fatten with night
—
On the barges,
the night’s drawn up
into chandeliers—
—
The mosquitos, cool
and smooth and cut
from coal, illuminate
—
Feasting.
The skin is naked
as a die;
—
The drone
of mosquitos rolls
from our talk;
—
Green dresses
issue a pink mist
and mouths roll over
—
Bars of coal, a smooth
speech of the dead.
The barges and their
—
Chandeliers lift
into the leaves
of lime trees,
—
Into strands
of starlight
you are not here
You are not here.
The eyes dilate
and coasts harden to green-
blue waters and
boardwalks
boardwalks
boardwalks
—
I make a mansion
of this house. Some simple
dying happens in the rooms.
A horn flowers on the couch
—
Left for a time
where the earth bears us up—
O hardened season
where the earth bears us up.
O cities of forms and cares,
the distances bear us up
—
When in some season
we worked and struggled back,
diamonds and cravats
and sharper angles split the blood
—
Here was the time to be
ravenous. A farther horizon
ate the blood in great drips
—
The blood comes with love
in spoonfuls. It is impossible
to speak
we challenge
We challenge
the skins of the air
to lay their coffins
of summer light—
—
None of us here
with braided
A-frames of summer light
and coal at our tongues
can stretch to speak
—
The plain foreground
is summer. Summer
is dead and thunder.
Summer is a cleft and
distant. They
—
Sheared my shoulders.
They trimmed
my heart. I no longer
know I
—
No longer know
I
—
No longer know
—
I remember she
is there and we
stand the light
—
The elevator, hanging
a single bare
bulb
—
The time wilts.
The folds rot.
The folds fall
and bleed for
all accounts, en-
counters
where you hunt, your blood goes cold
Your loves take on
a harrowing significance,
bright stars of blood
born in bathtubs of ice
—
Let there be bowls
of rice tonight and steam
for naked shoulders; huddle
up among friends, close the door
—
The distance
rattles its horns
and the wheat stands shrill
—
We have the song
from the lady we have
only so much only so much
we have only so much
softly the day stands
Jackson
Pollock
called me
on the sea-
shell foam
and told me
Blue Poles
sold for two
million
—
Where the two million
blue sand dollars
pad the sky,
the clouds crease,
waves flex,
and stars
darken
—
May the dead
harden into
cold candy
—
Softly
the sea sees
me
Softly
the day stands
and strays
—
Mary the dread
hardens into
cold candles—
Seawater folding
in the cuffs,
gold folding
at the drain
—
A serpent
coldly at the drain
and a grainy disc
of sun
—
A weight
of blue sky
and a black slit
of melon
i want to die better
My god, I want
to die better
than I can
and want to carry
names
—
I was taught to believe
that I could eat the ground
and was a singer
and the seeds they pour
like humanness
and the song
it forgets
—
They are not songs
they are going
to kill me I have
a pigeon’s feather
in my tongue I
have a print of pigeon’s
foot in my brain
—
I was lost
but the summer rolled
me in its wave
I
—
Love her
—
The song goes
cold, braided
Baudelaire bubbles
off the beach in
—
Montauk,
his bobbing head, we
blow smoke in his direction
—allay allay allay—
which chatters beauty
Let them be known
to be found,
glacial ear
of corn breaking
from a white sleeve
—
The brain is tough
and leaves today
on a ship that’s off
to sink; ex-
cellence!
—
And to sink is off—
pink billiards,
crocodile mouths,
and cakes
—
Stand
where the water’s
black as tar,
where the stars
twist to cadences,
where rhythm sets us
in a straw
vest
—
The night
is cherry syrup
and suffocating orcas,
a cosmos of limbs, bright
and brittle, bright
hysterias of eyes, let
—
> Your altitudes collapse
and shores restore
to the face, which
chatters beauty
every horned wayfarer
Every horned wayfarer,
every ankh, every
shoulder blade
stretching out
beyond
—
Itself, horizon.
And again the day
is thinning
—
Blond
and knows
—
Itself,
droplets; and
knows itself,
the mirrors spread
unevenly; and
knows the silk
is spread
—
To the mouth’s
rotted
corners. He set
a chair
to take in
sea sea sea,
a mighty peeling mottle
of clouds’
distant roughening,
silence and
—
Stony
surface. Let us
look. The room
is full of light. The
answer:
let it take us
thanatos
I had known and understood
the time was near.
The blackboard
cracked. Thunder
fell
—
In red,
and naked faces
roamed the walk.
The sun came through.
Rimbaud’s leg again;
he begged. But worms
turned up through the grass,
and purple
—
Flowers. Not
again. Tra-
gedy, and wells.
Wells, wells, wells. Fresh
water, cold, and that wet
wood. Under
—
The umbrella trees
with black wine black
plums black folds, body’s
sweater, loose skin, snake
skin, skim the top, black-
er, of our center, ever
colder, suck
—
Suck suck
we draw
it up, draw
the cold, the cold
is ours, we stay the cold,
the cold is
—
Ours, the clod
is ours, the bloc is ours, the
black is ours, the cake is ours,
the star is ours, the lake
is ours, the streak is ours,
the streak of cold, the lock,
the streak of cold, held
cold, held stark, in-
ward
again
Thirty-four, and
death has me eating
out of
—
A vanilla-paper
envelope
—
All the
horrors
of the Mirror, all
of the Have-Not
and Will-Agains
—
But time she spins
with me and each
she stands with me
each there each
each and shall we
—
Really
be gone
—
But for today
Scarecrow Page 3