closing that door.
*
My bed, my kitchen,
no more than that,
what I sleep in, eat in.
But this tiled ground where I first learned
to shape a garden to my mind
setting the tile as it pleases me . . .
I saved for this path
of pale blue veined with gold.
Now men I know bring me spare tile,
see what I do. Their children bring
sea shells from Long Beach, bottle glass.
I like the green glass best.
I find some things along the tracks,
city confetti,
the bright debris.
The people who had this house before
planted those vines, dry grapes for birds.
I sat beneath them and first saw
what I might do:
the arbour first,
and then the wide steps that lead out,
curved like the bow of a fine señor,
grandee.
And the path runs there
even and peacock-riffled; its wave edge
patterns a stilled sea,
sea as it might be
held by mind,
fluted and delicate,
pink, blue, rose —
that swims out from the garden door
and bathes the eye. . . .
You been to Yosemite? All the cars
back to back like a turtle zoo.
Hanging beyond them the huge falls,
forgotten tongue of the wilderness,
tattered banner, a dumb speech.
Meaningless falls — like the half mute child
speaks without words his dizziness
when his mates ring round him.
The hugeness — all
as barren as beach
as my own youth when
I walked along the hobbled shore
and watched the freighters,
their crimson flags
beyond the dreary trees that hung
tattered and huge
like the ghosts of the dead,
like the dreams of the cavemen
gone,
thank God, with the fears of death —
and the deep-voiced freighters have sailed out
over the slippery waters.
*
You can’t use sea sand. Builder’s sand’s
got no salt in it. Like it has
no grief in it.
I took sea sand
and spread it out
over the basin.
That’s for tears,
the woman sign.
The ship, for man. Its keel is rock.
You come out of the rock,
out of the sea, that too,
and out of woman.
Cups of tears.
You use them as a well.
The city of angels: my sister’s land,
the small white houses, the constant sun,
domesticated, plain.
Plain streets, plain lots, plain dusts that whirl
in the hot streets like stray pups,
children with sparklers, invisible fires
in the bright long day —
then the stars come out
over the wide bright sky.
They peek out like the neighbours
through venetian blinds.
“What’s the old man up to now?”
they peek, shy, from above,
to my great yard.
Grief is my church.
I tell her so.
She sees the cross
wherever two strengths meet.
That way
she sees the church all over.
Bunch of lies.
Good woman, sister of my tears,
ignorant, married by ignorance.
Her kindness staffs my evenings with odd jobs,
tiling the vestry “It’s for God”
it’s for the church.
I like the priest,
a grey old man who likes the sun.
He puts his hand against my tower,
and sees how I make it strong,
and says it’s good.
He talks; I build; the tower grows.
“You make me glad.”
My budding spires like pylons,
like ship masts,
rise like the dreams of the city of lights,
shapes for the clouds.
Mind voyaging
creates the ship he travels in,
new Eden,
new America.
Ours.
When I work late I hang
a spotlight in the galleon
and my one light
reflected in the towers’ stars
centres the city’s neon haze
as a hero
centres
night.
Each piece of it patterned repeats a joy:
the moulds, fruit bulged, bud-breasted tips,
wire baskets, hearts, the faucet rose —
no place unanswering where you look.
Flowers for you,
little Angela,
if you care to see.
*
“When the cats got into his wet cement
he ran out cursing, raked it down.
It can’t be cat marks, crazy things,
but things he thinks of for himself.
I think he’d use cat marks
if he held the cat in his hands
and put its feet down for himself,
but you know how they struggle when you hold them tight—
not that he’d mind, he’s all scratch marks from glass and wire,
but he wants to think of these things himself.”
*
When man made steel
he made a better rock than God.
And I pack it with sand man-changed
so that the weakest thing becomes
the strong: concrete.
The man-shaped spirals of these towers
say Here, Here, Here!
Our city.
These things are light. I weld them into light.
The strong shapes settle on themselves
the way I know; so just one stone
holds up a wharf, a city holds
the lowering evening on its spires.
So from the distant canyons light
slides down these slopes and settles on
these dusty streets, these valley diamonds,
our Watts white-gardened, morning-souled:
Spanish and Nigger and Chinaman,
Indian, White — all Angels of light,
the rainbow stars
of the liberty crown!
This lovely town
shines in its own light of ourselves.
We are its Man.
We are its Man.
*
I hear the cold dew falling from the house.
Creaking, the trough receives it.
All the leaves bend under it, silently, silently.
But where the stiff fronds of my towers
curl toward the sun
the rainbows gather, a fog of light —
like the wish that clings in the spiny trees
that only the wind knows the music of.
Man spires. This the shape we grow in,
climbing by thorns, by plain things.
I bend this steel by the streetcar tracks
and bring it home,
rung for my ladder.
Break me old jug and my spirit spills,
but not this thing my spirit makes
stronger than body,
strong as mind —
because it’s made as the mind is made.
Building upon itself it points.
Leaning against the wind, that tower,
and that one up,
and that one pointing just for her,
star that is Stella just over the
tip —
but that’s all nonsense.
They’re the ship;
the masts point as I make them go,
because I can do it.
*
“He liked to work with his hands
and I guess we liked to see what he was doing.
It was real interesting to watch him.
We used to bring him things,
all sorts of stuff.”
*
Bracing my feet against the rings,
packing the wire spokes in cement,
the bent bars firming the steel ship’s spire,
I work within my tower as sea beasts
build at the entrance of their shells,
castle of soul
that the snail grows out of,
hiding the old dreams with the new,
the spiral cone with the old names
coiled and invisible within, so that I too
perfectly live what I live in,
branching to daylight, packing the sky
to my fingertips:
concrete, iron, wire, tile, glass —
when they climbed the tower
my tiles still lined
the inmost circles,
shined, perfect, and sealed
as high as there
was tower to coral.
Even then
they knew I planned a top knot,
varied it, planned and replanned —
a steeple tip.
Not star or cross, but a human thing.
To see how it looked once tried a boot.
A bird, dawn rooster, perched on it,
once,
and then a fist.
But now I leave it bare.
The top knot is the last knot of the mind,
always to be rebraided, left
like the hole in the weaver’s sheet,
the unfinished tag —
for the soul to go out in.
*
A memory:
When I steered the boat through the whirlpool rocks
I felt the light
as if I was held by a thread of wire
that pierced down, held me steady,
held me up.
The thrumming wire held through my side
till even the seas were streaming,
the whole seas streaming
with strong
light. . . .
but then the fogs regathered by the point,
a darkness leaned across the bay,
a heavy sea thing swam along the side,
swollen with sea child, nudged the oars,
grunted, and slid down to the dark,
its steaming sides
warted with sea lice,
scaly things
that lived and fed on it.
II
Home here.
Around me in the sun
the tidy houses of plain folk,
the comic Catholic pictures that they love,
a blond young man (pincushion heart, gold lace)
geraniums each sill:
a bounteous velvet heart, a cushion, a pie —
a plain red thing —
for every valley, this valley,
this plain
shall be made high!
These heroes these streets these houses this house
this back lane —
and over the plain sky
round and soft the solid sun
stands like a neighbour.
A city of angels, our city, shines —
its corners thronged with cherubim:
black, pin-legged, with sun smiles.
Angela, eight, and Carlos, nine, Dee Ray, eleven,
and Willie Joe
who ought to be twelve, but isn’t.
“He’s not stupid. He’s slow. He’s not stupid.”
Angela,
come,
bring your friends along!
but she runs on,
hide-a-seek,
and he stands,
waiting alone for the other kids,
daft angel, never able to hide,
holding his treat.
The pigeons swooped
and took his chips,
knowing they could,
and he cried for them.
“You’re a good kid to share with them birds.
They hungry you know.”
They robbed him blind.
Surely they did.
Chili dogs, chips — the scraps of the street —
and the wild birds grow stronger
and greedier,
scraping
the limp,
white
street.
An ugly thought
came into my head
at the sight of the birds
robbing the child who fed them —
as if flames had dropped,
seized him, shaken him down,
as if a spirit descended. Yes,
the spirit comes and goes
itself unasked, unlooked for,
and we cry
when it takes our treats and leaves us
blind, stoned, hungry, dumb —
this tawdry world
unangeled.
Come again,
sun to this poor child, black
Dee Ray.
He comes,
the lordly boy.
“Come on, Come on.”
He herds the weak
ahead of him.
Strong kid.
No birds rob him.
*
A bad dream; sex, and the woman dying.
The back of a monstrous bear
grew out of her womb. Its arms gaped wide
and it lapped the children from the yard
sucking them up like spaghetti wires,
the red sauce dripping on its fur.
A crow cawed out and settled on its head,
black hat, that grew, that towered —
a black pole —
chuffa, chuffa, chuffa, chuffa —
the Big Red Cars
passing the house awoke me.
The thing still hung,
omen of evil,
somewhere.
*
“Milk powder.” “Here.”
“Did you get your cheque?”
“When you get like that you must phone me up,
any time, let me know.”
The new priest passes,
blind to me.
“Did you get your cheque?”
Floor-sweepings. Welfare.
All laid off.
Laid off myself. No good.
They can’t start something,
might get called.
Cuts a man down.
But man should work!
His boss, his time, his liberty!
My work these towers, my hymn to Man.
The poor that need
can’t pay for it.
How could I
pay for it?
Life.
My life.
These towers say
that man is larger than these streets, this city,
say,
our town is of ourselves,
is ours.
THIS IS MY LETTER TO YOU
*
The streetcars edge one side, roads on two others,
the store street, church, bowling alley,
the house street, mine at the end
with the vacant lot.
They’ll build it up some time
I get some good stuff from that dump.
My place, I’ve got it walled in now:
you walk in
and when you’re in it all you see
is garden, hung around you, back and forth.
Each loop repeats itself, its shapes
gathered and grown from the trashed streets,
a carpet of colours that man picks up
and fastens, gluing the bright world back
that fell apart when the blue sky fell,
making the brittle paradise
stronger and stronger.
A blind man could feel round this wall
and never know the top of it — how the mounds arch
and sink like waves stilled for the mind,
how this dry ground beyond the beach ten miles
restores the swells, sand into glass,
the still-stood ocean, permanent,
enclosure higher than the hand
can reach.
I measure by
hand’s reach,
eye’s line,
mind’s shapeliness.
This is a cactus garden. That’s the point.
All these spines: the mind’s hard. Hurts. Is gay.
Aluminum, steel, concrete — the garden of the mind.
What you call flowers is the mind.
Its fingers, its eyes — all these are eyes,
looped like a rose, fringed like a daisy,
are eyes like hearts, like hearts are eyes —
and they’re all looking into it.
See,
and be gay.
We look with mind into the mind
and bright lights answer it, they shine
on the surface of things, the surface of mind,
and we look up. The hero stands,
grows to the sunlight till it streams
fresher from off his back first-most
so shine
falls from the sun and hero both at once.
See how he stands
strong in the earth
and leans in on himself.
He gets his strength,
is ribbed, is spined —
“I thought that was the ship”
He is the ship, is steady as she goes;
alone he is, and glorious.
See how the sunlight splinters at his ears!
*
At night, and by myself —
this walled-in place
is island-
like, in city nights
a gentle voice from an open room
is
island.
*
Stella,
I left your bed behind,
sold it, I guess.
I don’t know.
I use a cot,
sleeping only to wake for work.
I don’t remember you Stella.
Like something I read of in a book
or thought of by myself when I was young.
All the things we never did —
I remember them
surely as things we did,
better perhaps,
because they weren’t real.
Thirty years dead.
Yet when I fetch you back by force
I fetch you back
with a dying face:
the heavy animals of pain
shuddering down on you like paws,
kneading you out —
your pain, your pain —
all that I touched, made love to —
dying there first:
beaked nose, bead eyes, gaped jaws —
dying.
III
The children climbed in the glass spined trees,
spired cactus blooms — they swung
like Ferris wheels, carnie wheels, brilliant birds —
The Witch of the Inner Wood Page 5