and you step out of the way with respect,
with high respect, and surprise near to shock
as you say,
Dear God, he’s big,
big like stupendous is big,
heavy and elephantine and funny,
immense and slow and easy.
I’m asking, is love an elephant?
Or could it be love is a snake—like a rattlesnake,
like a creeping winding slithering rattlesnake
with fangs—poison fangs they tell me,
and when the bite of it gets you
then you run crying for help
if you don’t fall cold and dead on the way.
Can love be a snake?
Or would you say love is a flamingo, with pink
feathers—
a soft sunset pink, a sweet gleaming naked
pink—
and with enough long pink feathers
you could make the fan for a fan dance
and hear a girl telling her lover,
Speak, my chosen one,
and give me your wish
as to what manner of fan dance
you would have from me
in the cool of evening
or the black velvet sheen of midnight.
Could it be love is a flamingo?
Or is love a big red apple, and you don’t know
whether to bite into it—and you knock on wood
and call off your luck numbers and hold your
breath—
and you put your teeth into it and get a
mouthful,
tasting all there is to it,
and whether it’s sweet and wild
or a dry mush you want to spit out,
it’s something else than you expected.
I’m asking, sir, is love a big red apple?
Or maybe love is goofer dust, I hadn’t thought
about that—
for you go to the goofer tree at midnight
and gather the leaves and crush them into fine
dust,
very fine dust, sir, and when your man sleeps
you sprinkle it in his shoes and he’s helpless
and from then on he can’t get away from you,
he’s snared and tangled and can’t keep from
loving you.
Could goofer dust be the answer?
And I’ve heard some say love is a spy and a
sneak,
a blatherer, a gabby mouth,
tattling and tittering as it tattles,
and you believe it and take it to your heart
and nurse it like good news,
like heaven-sent news meant for you
and you only—precious little you.
Have you heard love comes creeping and cheating
like that?
***
***
And are they after beguiling and befoozling us
when they tell us love is a rose, a red red rose,
the mystery of leaves folded over and under
and you can take it to pieces and throw it away
petal by petal into the wind blowing it away
or you can wear it for a soft spot of crimson
in your hair, at your breast,
and you can waltz and tango wearing your sweet
crimson rose
and take it home and lay it on a window sill and see it
wither brown, curl black, and shrivel
until one day you’re not careful
and it crackles into dust in your hand
and the wind whisks it whither you know not,
whither you care not,
for it is just one more flame of a rose
that came with its red blush and crimson bloom
and did the best it could with what it had
and nobody wins, nobody loses,
and what’s one more rose
when on any street corner
in bright summer mornings
you see them with bunches of roses,
their hands out toward you calling,
Roses today, fresh roses,
fresh-cut roses today
a rose for you sir,
the ladies like roses,
now is the time,
fresh roses sir.
And I’m waiting—for days and weeks and months
I’ve been waiting to see some flower seller,
one of those hawkers of roses,
I’ve been waiting to hear one of them calling,
A cabbage with every rose,
a good sweet cabbage with every rose,
a head of cabbage for soup or slaw or stew,
cabbage with the leaves folded over
and under like a miracle
and you can eat it and stand up and walk,
today and today only your last chance
a head of cabbage with every single lovely rose.
And any time and any day I hear a flower seller so calling
I shall be quick and I shall buy
two roses and two cabbages,
the roses for my lover
and the cabbages for little luckless me.
Or am I wrong—is love a rose you can buy and give away and keep for yourself cabbages, my lord and master, cabbages, kind sir?
I am asking, can you?
And it won’t help any, it won’t get us anywhere,
it won’t wipe away what has been
nor hold off what is to be,
if you hear me saying
love is a little white bird
and the flight of it so fast
you can’t see it
and you know it’s there
only by the faint whirr of its wings
and the hush song coming so low to your ears
you fear it might be silence
and you listen keen and you listen long
and you know it’s more than silence
for you get the hush song so lovely
it hurts and cuts into your heart
and what you want is to give more than you can get
and you’d like to write it but it can’t be written
and you’d like to sing it but you don’t dare try
because the little white bird sings it better than you can
so you listen and while you listen you pray
and after you pray you meditate, then pray more
and one day it’s as though a great slow wind
had washed you clean and strong inside and out
and another day it’s as though you had gone to sleep
in an early afternoon sunfall and your sleeping heart
dumb and cold as a round polished stone,
and the little white bird’s hush song
telling you nothing can harm you,
the days to come can weave in and weave out
and spin their fabrics and designs for you
and nothing can harm you—
unless you change yourself into a thing of harm
nothing can harm you.
***
***
The little white bird is my candidate.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
the little white bird you can’t see
though you can hear its hush song
and when you hear that hush song it’s love
and I’m ready to swear to it—
you can bring in a stack of affidavits
and I’ll swear to it and sign my name
to every last one, so help me God.
And if a fat bumbling shopworn court clerk tells me,
Hold up your hand, I’ll hold up my hand all right
and when he bumbles and mumbles to me like I was
one more witness it was work for him to give the oath to,
when he blabs, You do solemnly swear so help you God
that in this cause you will tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
I ’
ll say to him, I do, and I ’ll say to myself,
And no thanks to you and you could be more
immaculate
with the name of God.
I am done.
I have finished.
I give you the little white bird—
and my thanks for your hearing me—
and my prayers for you,
my deep silent prayers.
Offering and Rebuff
I could love you
as dry roots love rain.
I could hold you
as branches in the wind
brandish petals.
Forgive me for speaking
so soon.
***
***
Let your heart look
on white sea spray
and be lonely.
Love is a fool star.
You and a ring of stars
may mention my name
and then forget me.
Love is a fool star.
Morning Glory Blue
The blue of morning glory climbs fences and houses.
It is a Gettysburg Union blue setting itself against
a morning haze.
The blue of morning glory spots and spatters a rail
fence.
The fence zigzags and the morning glory staggers on
a path of sea-blue, sky-blue, Gettysburg Union blue.
High Moments
Keep this flower to remember me by.
So she told him.
Keep this, remember me, remember.
Fold this flower where you never forget.
Put me by where time no longer counts.
Then come back to a sure remembering.
Night itself, night is one long dark flower.
She said night knows deep rememberings,
All flowers being some kind of remembering
And night itself folding up like
many smooth dark flowers.
Find me like the night finds.
She measured herself so.
Keep me like the night keeps
For I have night deeps in me.
Flesh is a doom and a prison.
Flesh jails those only flesh.
Air speaks nevertheless,
spray, fire, air,
thin voices beyond capture
save only in remembering
the luster of lost stars,
the reach for a wafer of moon.
Let us talk it over long
and wear cream gold buttons
and be proud we have anger and pride together,
remembering high loveliness hovers in time
and is made of passing moments.
I have kept high moments.
They go round and round in me.
Mummy
Blood is blood and bone is bone.
All bloods are red and all bones white.
The beginning is being born.
The end is being dead.
The magnificent repeated themes of line and color
forming the final exterior of a Pharaoh mummy
try to appeal otherwise and fix an affirmation
of the blood there yet and the bones there yet.
Nevertheless and for all the exquisite patterning
The blood is dry as dust and the bones obey no voices
Telling them to rise and walk.
Some such Pharaohs are born with a name,
one more of a line of names.
Some such Pharaohs die with music and mourning
and sleep under careful epitaphs.
Yet they and the scrubs, the rabble, the hoi polloi
end in the same democracy to never fail them all,
to be true to each, to render the blood and bones
of high and humble the dust of homage.
This is the timeworm chant of the grand democrat
Death: dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
For them all, scrub or wellborn, the hustle, the race,
the hullabaloo, is over.
They no longer earn their livings.
They no longer take what is handed them.
Old Hokusai Print
In a house he remembers in the Howlong valley
not far from bends of the Shooshoo river
where each of the leaves of fall
is a pigeon foot of gold on the blue:
there is a house of a thousand windows
and in every window the same woman
and she too remembers better than she forgets:
she too has one wish for every window:
and the mountains forty miles away
rise and fade, come and go,
in lights and mist there and not there,
beckoning as mountains seen on a Monday,
phantoms traveled away on a Tuesday,
scrawls in a dim blot on Wednesday,
gone into grey shawls on Friday,
lost and found in half lavenders often,
back again one day saying they were not gone,
not gone at all, being merely unseen,
the white snow on the blue peaks no dream snow,
no dream at all the sawtooth line of purple garments.
Can a skyline share itself like drums in the heart?
One Parting
Why did he write to her,
“I can’t live with you"?
And why did she write to him,
“I can’t live without you”?
For he went west, she went east,
And they both lived.
Ever a Seeker
The fingers turn the pages.
The pages unfold as a scroll.
There was the time there was no America.
Then came on the scroll an early
America, a land of beginnings,
an American being born.
Then came a later America, seeker
and finder, yet ever more seeker
than finder, ever seeking its way
amid storm and dream.
Old Music for Quiet Hearts
Be still as before oh pool
Be blue and still oh pool
As before blue as before still
Oh pool of the many communions
A wingprint may come
Flash over and be gone
A yellow leaf may fall
May sink and join
Companion fallen leaves
The print of blue sky
The night bowl of stars
These far off pass and bypass
Over you blue over you still
Oh pool of the many communions
Now hold your quiet glass oh pool
Now keep your mirrorlight blue
They come and they go
And one and all
You know them one and all
And they know not you
Nor you nor your mirrorlight blue
Only old music for quiet hearts;
Personalia
The personal idiom of a corn shock satisfies me.
So does the attack of a high note by an Australian mezzosoprano.
Also the face and body blow punishment taken by the boilermaker who won the world’s championship belt.
I find majesty in the remembrance of a stump speech by John P. Altgeld explaining his act as governor of Illinois in the pardon of four convicts.
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