Than any Sacred Text
Sometimes just a list
Of my events
Is holier than the Bill of Rights
And more intense
THE COLD
The cold seizes me
and I shiver
The wine
overthrows my tears
The night puts me to bed
and the sorrows
strengthen my resolve
Your name is burning
under a statue
Even when I was with you
I wanted to be here
The rain unhooks my belt
The wind gives a shape
to your absence
I move in and out
of the One Heart
no longer struggling
to be free
A MAGIC CURE
I get up too late
The day is lost
I don’t bless the rooster
I don’t raise my hands to the water
Then it’s dark
and I look into all the spots
on rue St-Denis
I even talk religion
to the other wastrels
who, like me, are after new women
In bed I fall asleep
in the middle of a Psalm
which I am reading
for a magic cure
– Montreal, 1975
LAYTON’S QUESTION
Always after I tell him
what I intend to do next,
Layton solemnly inquires:
Leonard, are you sure
you’re doing the wrong thing?
– after a photo by Laszlo
IF YOU KNEW
if you knew how much we loved you
you’d cover up
you wouldn’t fuck around
with the passion
that killed three hundred thousand people
at hiroshima
or scooped up rocks from the moon
and crushed them into dust
looking for you
looking for your lost encouragement
I WROTE FOR LOVE
I wrote for love.
Then I wrote for money.
With someone like me
it’s the same thing.
– 1975
LORCA LIVES
Lorca lives in New York City
He never went back to Spain
He went to Cuba for a while
But he’s back in town again
He’s tired of the gypsies
And he’s tired of the sea
He hates to play his old guitar
It only has one key
He heard that he was shot and killed
He never was, you know
He lives in New York City
He doesn’t like it though
MERCY RETURNS ME
A woman I want –
An honour I covet –
A place where I want my mind to dwell –
Then Mercy returns me
To the triad
And the crisis of the song.
THE TRADITION
Jazz on the radio
32 in the desk drawer
Brush in hand
Heart in sad confusion
He draws a woman
The sax says it better
The cold March night says it better
Everything but his heart and his hand
Says it better
Now there is a woman on the paper
Now there are colours
Now there is a shadow on her waist
He knows his own company
The surprises
Of patience and disorderly solitude
Knows the tune
According to his station
How to let the changes
He can’t play
Connect him to the ones who can
And the woman on the paper
Who will never pierce the air with her beauty
She belongs here too
She too has her place
In the basement of the vast museum
Not that he could boast about it
Even to himself
Not that he would dare to call it
Some kind of Path
He will never untangle
Or upgrade
The circumstances
That fasten him to this loneliness
Or bent down with love
Comprehend the sudden mercy
Which floods the room
And dissolves it now
In the traditional golden light
My Metal Cup
GOOD GERMANS
You took me to your family
You warned me well before
that your father is a fascist
and your mother is a whore
I was kind of disappointed
I was bored to tell the truth:
your folks they’re just Good Germans
but you, you’re Hitler Youth
So I’m going to live in China
where you get a better deal
where your killer is a poet
and your comrade is a girl
– 1973
IF I COULD HELP YOU
If I could help you, buddy, I would
I really would
I’d pray for you
I’d make muscles appear on your back
I’d take you to a bridge
that people think is beautiful
if there were the slightest chance
that you’d like it
I’d get you that motorcycle
I’d put your songs on the jukebox
if you were a singer
I’d help you step across
that crack in your life
I’d die for you on the cross again
I would do all these things for you
because I’m the Lord of your life
but you’ve gone so far from me
that I’ve decided to embrace you here
with my most elusive qualities
You always wanted to be brave and true
So breathe deeply now
and begin your great adventure
with crushing solitude
THE REMOTE
I often think about you
when I’m lying alone in
my room with my mouth
open and the remote
lost somewhere in the bed
THE MIST OF PORNOGRAPHY
when you rose out of the mist
of pornography
with your talk of marriage
and orgies
I was a mere boy
of fifty-seven
trying to make a fast buck
in the slow lane
it was ten years too late
but I finally got
the most beautiful girl
on the religious left
to go with her lips
to the sunless place
the art of song
was in my bones
the coffee died for me
I never answered
any phone calls
and I said a prayer
for whoever called
and didn’t leave a message
this was my life
in Los Angeles
when you slowly
removed your yellow sweater
and I slobbered over
your boyish haunches
and I tried to be
a husband
to your dark and motherly
intentions
I thank you
for the ponderous songs
I brought to completion
instead of ----ing you
more often
and the hours you allowed me
on a black meditation mat
intriguing with my failed
aristocratic pedigree
to overthrow vulgarity
and set America straight
with the barbed wire
and the regular beatings
of rhyme
and now that we are gone
I have a thousand years
to tell you how I rise
on everything that rises
how I became that lover
whom you wanted
who has no other life
but your beauty
who is naked and bent
under the quotas of your desire
I have a thousand years
to be your twin
the loving mirrored one
who was born with you
I’m free at last
to trick you into posing
for my Polaroid
while you inflame
my hearing aid
with your vigorous obscenities
your panic cannot hurry me here
and my panic and my falling
shoulders
our shameless lives
are the grains
scattered for an offering
before the staggering heights
of our love
and the other side of your anxiety
is a hammock of sweat
and moaning
and generations of the butterfly
mate and fall
as we undo the differences
and time comes down
like the smallest pet of G-d
to lick our fingers
as we sleep
in the tangle
of straps and bracelets
and Oh the sweetness of first nights
and twenty-third nights
and nights
after death and bitterness
sweetness of this very morning
the bees slamming into
the broken hollyhocks
and the impeccable order
of the objects on the table
the weightless irrelevance
of all our old intentions
as we undo
as we undo
every difference
DELAY
“I can hold in a great deal; I don’t speak
until the waters overflow their banks
and break through the dam.”
Thus I was able to delay this book well beyond
the end of the 20th century.
MONTREAL AFTERNOON
Henry and I
cover our heads
and write a few poems
The prayer book is open
The radio is playing
Henry says: They’re not
playing that right,
it should be faster.
The kitchen door is open
It’s raining
Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your/father
It was a hunting accident
Rabbi Zerkin is speeding
toward us
through the wet city
with the woollen prayer-shawls
that he promised us
on the telephone
Henry says: In the year
sixteen hundred thousand
two hundred and twenty-nine
you will begin a commentary
on the Chumash
and in the year fourteen thousand
four hundred and forty-three
I will begin a commentary
on the Chumash
I’ll call mine Tzim Tzimay Ha Yerak
which means
The Contracted Greens of the Greenery;
then we will write a book together
called Acorns and Other Leaves
or
The Green Hills of Sunshine
We smoke Players Medium
drink cups of hot water
waiting for Rabbi Zerkin
Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your father
It was a hunting accident
But he’ll be back
So will Queen Elizabeth the First
READING TO THE PRIME MINISTER
NEED THE SPEED
need the speed
need the wine
need the pleasure
in my spine
need your hand
to pull me out
need your juices
on my snout
need to see
I never saw
your need for me
your longing raw
need to hear
I never heard
against my ear
your dirty word
need to have
you summon me
like moon above
the gathered sea
need to know
I never knew
the tidal tow-
ing come from you
need to feel
I never felt
your magnet pull-
ing at my self
now it fades
now it’s gone
hormonal rage
unquiet song
HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED
I stopped looking for you
I stopped waiting for you
I stopped dying for you
and I started dying for myself
I aged rapidly
I became fat in the face
and soft in the gut
and I forgot that I’d ever loved you
I was old
I had no focus, no mission
I wandered around eating and buying
bigger and bigger clothes
and I forgot why I hated
every long moment that was mine to fill
Why did you come back to me tonight
I can’t even get off this chair
Tears run down my cheeks
I am in love again
I can live like this
VOICE DICTATING IN A PLANE OVER EUROPE
Leonardos,
I am no longer lonely.
I will accept your friendship now
if you can say
something true about me.
That is correct,
I had a red cardigan sweater
which I used to wear
in the evenings.
The years have brought us together.
Straighten your seat back.
You are landing in Vienna
where I killed myself
in nineteen sixty-two.
THE GREAT EVENT
It’s going to happen very soon. The great event that will end the horror. That will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun goes down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will reverse the effects of the world’s mad plunge into suffering for the last 200 million years. What a lovely night that will be. What a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and the retired nightingales pick up their dusty tails, and assert the majesty of creation!
THE PARIS SKY
The Paris sky
is blue and bright
I want to fly
with all my might
Her legs are long
her heart is high
The chains are strong
but so am I
THE STORY THUS FAR
Things blew all over the place on the day that I was born. It was windy. Dried leaves crashed against the walls of the Homeopathic Hospital. I was alive. I was alive in the horror.
The Givers huddled over me like a football team. They started to give me things and then to take them away. The things that didn’t fit they chucked back into the Funnel of the Void. The gifts were many and many were the warnings that went with them.
We are giving you a great heart but if you drink wine you will begin to hate the world. The moon is your sister but if you take sleeping pills you will find yourself in the company of unhappy women. Every time you grab at love you will lose a snowflake of your memory.
My mother was lying not far away and I heard her cry, “He isn’t mine!” My noble parent cried to my ears alone from her bed of blood and wa
ter. I heard her say it and I thanked her for the truth with a shriek of joy. I was not born into a family. I was fully protected.
The hammers fell on infants everywhere but I was saved on a river in the beautiful autumn land of Egypt.
THE SWEETEST LITTLE SONG
You go your way
I’ll go your way too
THING
I am this thing that needs to sing
I love to sing
to my beloved’s other thing
and to my own dear sweet G-d
I love to sing to Him and her
and to my baby’s lower fur
which is so holy
that I want to crawl on my knees
off a high cliff
and sail around singing
in the wind
which is so friendly
to my feathery spirit
I am this thing
that wants to sing
when I am up against the spit
and scorn of judges
O G-D I want to sing
I Am
THIS THING THAT NEEDS TO SING
STANZAS FOR H.M.
O perfect gentleman, and champion
of the Royal Throne; O unbroken stone
of Sinai’s heart; O Hero of Verdun;
our greatest poet until now unknown,
whose banner over death has always flown
in wilds of poverty and solitude;
I thank you for the years you spent alone
with nothing to hang on to but a mood
of glory, searching words that Love could not elude
(We lost you for a while. The doctors tried
their hopeful science on a chosen soul,
but this chosen soul was sitting by the side
of G-d, and touched by Him, hale and whole,
though broken in men’s eyes, in His control.)
Book of Longing Page 5