Circles on the Water (24 page)

We drink the water of this hill

and give our garbage to its soil.

We haul thatch for it and seaweed.

Out of it rise supper and roses

for the bedroom and herbs

for your next cold.

Your flesh grows out of this hill

like the maple trees. Its sweetness

is baked by this sun. Your eyes

have taken in sea and the light leaves

of the locust and the dark bristles

of the pine.

When we work in the garden you say

that now it feels sexual, the plants

pushing through us, the shivering

of the leaves. As we make love

later the oaks bend over us,

the hill listens.

The cats come and sit on the foot

of the bed to watch us.

Afterwards they purr.

The tomatoes grow faster and the beans.

You are learning to live in circles

as well as straight lines.

I am the woman who sits by the river

river of tears

river of sewage

river of rainbows.

I sit by the river and count the corpses

floating by from the war upstream.

I sit by the river and watch the water

dwindle and the banks poke out like sore gums.

I watch the water change from green to shit brown.

I sit by the river and fish for your soul.

I want to lick it clean.

I want to turn it into a butterfly

that will weave drunkenly from orchid to rose.

I want to turn it into a pumpkin.

I want it to turn itself into a human being.

Oh, close your eyes tight and push hard

and evolve, altogether now. We can

do it if we try. Concentrate

and hold hands and push.

You can take your world back

if you want to. It’s an araucana

egg, all blue and green

swaddled in filmy clouds.

Don’t let them cook and gobble it,

azure and jungle green egg laid

by the extinct phoenix of the universe.

Send me your worn hacks of tired themes, your dying horses of liberation,

your poor bony mules of freedom now.

I am the woman sitting by the river.

I mend old rebellions and patch them new.

Now the river turns from shit brown to bubbling blood

as an arm dressed in a uniform

floats by like an idling log.

Up too high to see, bombers big as bowling alleys

streak over and the automated battlefield

lights up like a Star Wars pinball machine.

I am the old woman sitting by the river scolding corpses.

I want to stare into the river and see the bottom

glinting like clean hair.

I want to outlive my usefulness

and sing water songs, songs

in praise of the green brown river

flowing clean through the blue green world.

Kneeling at the pipes 1965

Visiting a dead man on a summer day 1966

Girl in white 1963

Noon of the sunbather 1961

A valley where I don’t belong 1961

S. dead 1965

Hallow eve with spaces for ghosts 1965

Landed fish 1966

A few ashes for Sunday morning 1961

Concerning the mathematician 1966

Postcard from the garden 1964

The cats of Greece 1964

Sign 1967

A married walk in a hot place 1964

The Peaceable Kingdom 1966

Gasman invites the skyscrapers to dance 1967

The skyscrapers of the financial district dance with Gasman 1967

Breaking camp 1966, revised 1981

Walking into love 1968

Community 1967

The neighbor 1966

The friend 1967

The morning half-life blues began 1952, finished 1967

Erasure 1967

The cyclist 1966

Juan’s twilight dance 1967

Learning experience 1966

Half past home began 1960, finished 1968

Simple-song 1967

For Jeriann’s hands 1967

I am a light you could read by 1967

Crabs 1968

Trajectory of the traveling Susan 1968

The butt of winter 1968

Bronchitis on the 14th floor 1968

The death of the small commune 1969

The track of the master builder (published in
Hard Loving
as “Homo faber” 1967, rewritten 1981 for this vol.)

Why the soup tastes like the
Daily News
1967

Curse of the earth magician on a metal land 1967

Letter to be disguised as a gas bill 1965

Sojourners 1966

Under the grind 1967

Somehow 1968

Never-never 1969

Ache’s end 1969

A work of artiface 1970

What you waited for 1971

The secretary chant 1968

Night letter 1968

In the men’s room(s) 1972

The nuisance 1968

I will not be your sickness 1968

The thrifty lover 1971

A shadow play for guilt 1969

Song of the fucked duck 1969

A just anger 1971

The crippling 1969

Right thinking man 1971

Barbie doll 1970

Hello up there 1972

High frequency 1973

The woman in the ordinary 1970

Unlearning to not speak 1971

Women’s laughter 1972

Burying blues for Janis 1970

The best defense is offensive began 1960, finished 1971

Icon began 1960, finished 1972

Some collisions bring luck 1967

We become new 1971

Meetings like hungry beaks 1972

To be of use 1973

Bridging 1971

Doing it differently 1972

The spring offensive of the snail 1972

Councils 1971

Laying Down the Tower 1971–72

Living in the open 1974

I awoke with the room cold 1970

Gracious goodness 1971

Homesick 1973

Seedlings in the mail 1972

The daily life of the worker bee 1974

Cod summer 1972

A proposal for recycling wastes 1974

The bumpity road to mutual devotion 1974

On Castle Hill 1973

From
Sand Roads
1975

Rough times 1972

Phyllis wounded 1975

Rape poem 1974

The consumer 1969

The provocation of the dream 1975

Looking at quilts 1974

To the pay toilet 1973

All clear 1972

Unclench yourself 1968

The homely war 1975

The twelve-spoked wheel flashing 1976

What the owl sees 1975

The Greater Grand Rapids lover 1975

The Lansing bad penny come again blues 1975

The poet dreams of a nice warm motel 1976

Skimpy day at the solstice 1974

The market economy 1977

The love of lettuce 1977

Martha as the angel Gabriel 1976

Snow in May 1976

The window of the woman burning 1975

Going in 1975

Athena in the front lines 1962–75

The root canal 1976

Doors in the wind and the water 1976

You ask why sometimes I say stop 1977

Smalley Bar 1977

For Shoshana Rihn—Pat Swinton 1975

In the wet 1977

Crows 1975

If they come in the night 1977

At the core 1975

Beauty I would suffer for 1976

A gift of light 1977

The inside chance 1979

Night flight 1978

Excursions, incursions 1978

Apologies 1968

The long death 1979

The cast off 1977

Rainy 4th 1979

Attack of the squash people 1978

Intruding 1978

September afternoon at four o’clock 1978

Morning athletes 1977

Cats like angels 1978

For strong women 1977

For the young who want to 1979

Hand games 1979

Right to life 1979

Shadows of the burning 1979

The sabbath of mutual respect 1979

The perpetual migration 1978

The longest night 1979

Crescent moon like a canoe 1978

It breaks 1979

What’s that smell in the kitchen? 1980

Wind is the wall of the year 1980

Laocoön is the name of the figure 1979

Snow, snow 1981

Digging in 1981

Let us gather at the river 1980