RETROSPECTIVE: POEMS OLD AND NEW (1975-2005)
Posted: September 19th, 2005, 10:41 am
THE GREAT
( after two landscapes by Cezanne)
The great leave the unfinished
among the finished--
the hand that pushes the crumbs of miracle together
shakes in its sleep
stitches the right sleeve
into the cuff of the left
like Cezanne’s treetops
stitched to the sky over the quarry
and the yellow rocks ice-creaming up
into clouds and the whole
evaporating for the finish--
like lover’s sweat between their
folded hands in church.
(2/97)
NEMO IN GRADE SCHOOL
I recognize it by the brick, and the wet copper smell of peas and cream of tartar on my plate. Here I wished for the competent steel of Captain Nemo’s eye plunging deeper than slate and chalk. Even then I dreamed of the great depths, plowing the green tons and my tongue glacier-sharp.
( 11/75)
CANCER
inoperable they would call it now
when they used to tag him a dead man
and put him in the drawer still wet
I remember his knuckles, bloodless
from ringing the bell
squeezing the blistered bedrails
his lips bubbling
under the black tide of morphine
when he spit thorns at the top of his petalled voice
I pried the nurses apart
( 11/75)
"The world is everything that is the case."
WITTGENSTEIN
was born in a palace
loved Carmen Miranda
was given a medal in the War
craved tautologies
was a hermit on a Norwegian fjord
designed door handles for his sister’s house
was a gardener in a monastery
boxed his students' ears and pulled their hair
was a philosopher at Cambridge
was often photographed carrying raincoats
was a candle of enlightenment to Bertrand Russell
got cancer and died
is justly celebrated in things not seen
(3/97)
GEORGE BROWN'S PICKUP
Dream wheels cut into moonlit dirt,
your sick and dying clutch
firms for a moment and the
swipe of oncoming lights
brings your face up clear behind the windshield:
Your leanto smile, thorax dented with wounds,
your tobacco thumbs twisted above
the wheel in your sleep,
your guts plugged with pain.
Now I understand the teenage grin
over your doublestrong steel bed,
the radiant promise of virgin vinyl,
acid fragrance of nubile chrome;
why my pity scissors open like
your dark wound, I see now.
( 4/97)
THE SPIDER IN THE CLOSET
I open the closet to blast him with light
while a sparrow hacks out a single hard note
over and over
to announce that a crow is eating her young
singing
with glossy, defiant croaks as he does.
The spider too is an economist, wasting nothing.
He writes a tight-fisted letter,
himself,
dropping it in my pocket.
Two eyes on stalks,
two seeing thumbs, jab into the wool on hangers,
looking for an opening.
Each morning I bomb him
with a megaton of closet light
but he bounces back on his heels,
a dark sumo inside his circle of web.
Last week, a spider millenium ago,
he swung into the yellow galaxy of the lemon grove;
the sun sizzled him, popped him from his dream
of a million spiders cabling together
a few trees against the spring rain.
He landed on my shoulder, a short flight
in an April gust,
a desert ascetic who spins
his resolve out of himself.
He taught me better sight, how
to let spider courage wink under
the smutted candles of defeated eyes,
bend down into the spider's sumo crouch,
and praise the brevity
of the wind that blows us behind locked doors
where we wake with a flash we cannot bear.
( 10/96)
I WILL THANK
When I leave
this job
I will not thank those in offices
whom I never saw except on tv
or in the papers.
I will thank the girl who wrote about
the red hair under her lover's arms,
how he touched her nipples with fingers
black with gear grease.
I will thank Chilean Felipe
whose car battery was stolen
by the chicanos who he said
moved in and ruined the neighborhood.
I will thank the British girl
whose sons were molested by the babysitter,
and who gave me a leather edition of Shelley,
tooled with Sussex vines.
They have changed me and the job did not.
I will thank them now.
(7/86)
COMIC BOOK
When I was a kid
I imagined myself a New York art hero--
Plastic Man with his hand in the pocket of
a Picasso,
his
arm stretching down Forty-Second Street
to Willem DeKooning's studio
or Superman soaring
over the steel-bolted
Mondrian of the New York skyline
the suddenly safer city
patrolled by aesthetes in berets on the ground
each packing an alto saxophone.
I still carry a green splinter of God
in my pocket, my fingers full of clouds,
eyes still on that other world.
(8/05)
CLASS OF 1963 REUNION
Hard orchard work and the orchard girls, their blossom eyes on me
picking, picking
and this afternoon slavery
finally fuses dusk with a storm:
time for the Saturday Night Dance.
Watching the lighting climb the bluffs
hand in hand
we could never have imagined this party
where we meet the orchard girls
not in a slash of sun
but under a bright flurry of gin.
A foam of kisses
well-wishing over the well drinks,
a night of stars and business cards.
They all dance
as if melody were a returned investment
as if they were the brokers
of their own joy and pain
as if they tasted the liquors of these
tears, kisses, songs
they cannot improve at any price.
( 5/83)
( after two landscapes by Cezanne)
The great leave the unfinished
among the finished--
the hand that pushes the crumbs of miracle together
shakes in its sleep
stitches the right sleeve
into the cuff of the left
like Cezanne’s treetops
stitched to the sky over the quarry
and the yellow rocks ice-creaming up
into clouds and the whole
evaporating for the finish--
like lover’s sweat between their
folded hands in church.
(2/97)
NEMO IN GRADE SCHOOL
I recognize it by the brick, and the wet copper smell of peas and cream of tartar on my plate. Here I wished for the competent steel of Captain Nemo’s eye plunging deeper than slate and chalk. Even then I dreamed of the great depths, plowing the green tons and my tongue glacier-sharp.
( 11/75)
CANCER
inoperable they would call it now
when they used to tag him a dead man
and put him in the drawer still wet
I remember his knuckles, bloodless
from ringing the bell
squeezing the blistered bedrails
his lips bubbling
under the black tide of morphine
when he spit thorns at the top of his petalled voice
I pried the nurses apart
( 11/75)
"The world is everything that is the case."
WITTGENSTEIN
was born in a palace
loved Carmen Miranda
was given a medal in the War
craved tautologies
was a hermit on a Norwegian fjord
designed door handles for his sister’s house
was a gardener in a monastery
boxed his students' ears and pulled their hair
was a philosopher at Cambridge
was often photographed carrying raincoats
was a candle of enlightenment to Bertrand Russell
got cancer and died
is justly celebrated in things not seen
(3/97)
GEORGE BROWN'S PICKUP
Dream wheels cut into moonlit dirt,
your sick and dying clutch
firms for a moment and the
swipe of oncoming lights
brings your face up clear behind the windshield:
Your leanto smile, thorax dented with wounds,
your tobacco thumbs twisted above
the wheel in your sleep,
your guts plugged with pain.
Now I understand the teenage grin
over your doublestrong steel bed,
the radiant promise of virgin vinyl,
acid fragrance of nubile chrome;
why my pity scissors open like
your dark wound, I see now.
( 4/97)
THE SPIDER IN THE CLOSET
I open the closet to blast him with light
while a sparrow hacks out a single hard note
over and over
to announce that a crow is eating her young
singing
with glossy, defiant croaks as he does.
The spider too is an economist, wasting nothing.
He writes a tight-fisted letter,
himself,
dropping it in my pocket.
Two eyes on stalks,
two seeing thumbs, jab into the wool on hangers,
looking for an opening.
Each morning I bomb him
with a megaton of closet light
but he bounces back on his heels,
a dark sumo inside his circle of web.
Last week, a spider millenium ago,
he swung into the yellow galaxy of the lemon grove;
the sun sizzled him, popped him from his dream
of a million spiders cabling together
a few trees against the spring rain.
He landed on my shoulder, a short flight
in an April gust,
a desert ascetic who spins
his resolve out of himself.
He taught me better sight, how
to let spider courage wink under
the smutted candles of defeated eyes,
bend down into the spider's sumo crouch,
and praise the brevity
of the wind that blows us behind locked doors
where we wake with a flash we cannot bear.
( 10/96)
I WILL THANK
When I leave
this job
I will not thank those in offices
whom I never saw except on tv
or in the papers.
I will thank the girl who wrote about
the red hair under her lover's arms,
how he touched her nipples with fingers
black with gear grease.
I will thank Chilean Felipe
whose car battery was stolen
by the chicanos who he said
moved in and ruined the neighborhood.
I will thank the British girl
whose sons were molested by the babysitter,
and who gave me a leather edition of Shelley,
tooled with Sussex vines.
They have changed me and the job did not.
I will thank them now.
(7/86)
COMIC BOOK
When I was a kid
I imagined myself a New York art hero--
Plastic Man with his hand in the pocket of
a Picasso,
his
arm stretching down Forty-Second Street
to Willem DeKooning's studio
or Superman soaring
over the steel-bolted
Mondrian of the New York skyline
the suddenly safer city
patrolled by aesthetes in berets on the ground
each packing an alto saxophone.
I still carry a green splinter of God
in my pocket, my fingers full of clouds,
eyes still on that other world.
(8/05)
CLASS OF 1963 REUNION
Hard orchard work and the orchard girls, their blossom eyes on me
picking, picking
and this afternoon slavery
finally fuses dusk with a storm:
time for the Saturday Night Dance.
Watching the lighting climb the bluffs
hand in hand
we could never have imagined this party
where we meet the orchard girls
not in a slash of sun
but under a bright flurry of gin.
A foam of kisses
well-wishing over the well drinks,
a night of stars and business cards.
They all dance
as if melody were a returned investment
as if they were the brokers
of their own joy and pain
as if they tasted the liquors of these
tears, kisses, songs
they cannot improve at any price.
( 5/83)