Collected Poems (55 page)

Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right,

are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.

Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,

but toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge.

2.

In this tale of lies, of treachery, of superfluous dead,

were there ever so many who were right and disdained?

With no notion what to do next? If we were true seers,

as prescient as she, as frenzied, we’d know what to do next.

We’d twitter, as she did, like birds; we’d warble, we’d trill.

But what would it be really, to
twitter,
to
warble,
to
trill?

Is it
ee-ee-ee,
like having a child? Is it
uh-uh-uh,
like a wound?

Or is it inside, like a blow, silent to everyone but yourself?

3.

Yes, inside, I remember,
oh-oh-oh:
it’s where grief

is just about to be spoken, but all at once can’t be:
oh.

When you no longer can “think” of what things like lies,

like superfluous dead, so many, might mean:
oh.

Cassandra will be abducted at the end of her tale, and die.

Even she can’t predict how. Stabbed? Shot? Blown to bits?

Her abductor dies, too, though, in a gush of gore, in a net.

That we know; she foresaw that — in a gush of gore, in a net.

Ponies

When the ponies are let out at dusk, they pound across their pasture,

pitching and bucking like the brutes their genes must dream they still are.

With their shaggy, winter-coarse coats, they seem stubbier than ever,

more diminutive, toy-like, but then they begin their aggression rituals,

ears flattened, stained brown teeth bared, hindquarters humped,

and they’re savage again, cruel, all but carnivorous if they could be.

Their shoes have been pulled off for the season, their halters are rope,

so they move without sound, as though on tiptoe, through the rising mist.

They drift apart now, halfheartedly nosing the stiff, sapless remnants

of field hay — sometimes one will lift and gaze back towards the barn.

A tiny stallion lies down, rolling onto his back first, then all the way flat.

A snort, rich, explosive, an answering sigh: silence again, shadows, dark.

INDEX OF TITLES

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

Index of Titles

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Acids

After Auschwitz

After That

Again

Allies: According to Herodotus

Alzheimer’s: The Husband

Alzheimer’s: The Wife

Anger

Another Dollar

Archetypes

Artemis

Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down

Baby Talk

Bad Mouth

Becoming Somebody Else

Bed, The

Before This

Beginning of April, The

Being Alone

Beyond

Bialystok, or Lvov

Biopsy

Bishop Tutu’s Visit to the White House: 1984

Blackbird

Blade, The

Blades

Blame

Blow, The

Bob

Body, The

Bone

Bread

Bringing It Home

Call, The

Canal

Carpe Diem

Cassandra, Iraq

Cautionary, The

Cave

Cave, The

Cellophane

Chaos

Chapter Eleven

Charge, The

Child Psychology

City in the Hills, The

Clause, The

Clay out of Silence

Color of Time, The

Coma, The

Combat

Como

Conscience

Covenant, The

Cowboys

Cows

Crime

Crime, The

Critic, The

Cup, The

Dance, The

Dawn

Dawn (Symbols)

Day for Anne Frank, A

Demagogue, The

Depths

Dignity

Dimensions

Dirt

Dirty Talker: D Line, Boston, The

Dissections

Doe, The

Dog

Dog, The

Dominion: Depression

Don’t

Doves

Downwards

Dream

Dream, The

Dress, The

Droplets

Drought

Easter

Eight Months

Elegy for an Artist

Elms

End of Drought

Ethics

Even If I Could

Even So

Experience

Exterior: Day

Failure

Faint Praise

Fame

Fast Food

Fat

Fear

Fear, The

Fifteen

Fire

Fire (1987)

Fire (Symbols)

First Desires

Fish

Flamenco

Flat

Flight

Floor

For Gail, When I Was Five

Fountain, The

Fragment

Friends

Frog

From My Window

From Now On

From the Next Book by (…)

Future, The

Gaffe, The

Game, The

Gap, The

Garden

Gardens

Gas

Gas Station, The

Gift, The

Girl Meets Boy

Giving It Up

Glass

Good Mother: Home

Good Mother: Out

Good Mother: The Bus

Good Mother: The Car

Good Mother: The Métro

Good Mother: The Plane

Good Mother: The Street

Grace

Gratitude

Gravel

Greed

Grief

Guatemala: 1964

Guitar

Halves

Hard Part, The

Harm

Hawk

Heart, The

Hearth, The

Helen

Herakles

Hercules, Deianira, Nessus

History

Hog Heaven

Hood

Hooks

Hounding Mercy

House

Hovel, The

I Am the Bitter Name

Ice (1987)

Ice (1999)

Idyll, The

Image, The

Inches

Inculcations

In Darkness

Innings

Insight

Instinct

Insult, The

Interrogation II

In the Forest

In the Heart of the Beast

In There

Invisible Mending

Island, The

It Is Teeming

It Is This Way with Men

Jews

Junior High School Concert: Salle Rossini

Just Right

Keep It

Kin

King

Knot, The

Ladder, The

Last, The

Last Deaths, The

Last Things

Latin Quarter, The

Leaves

Lens, The

Lessons

Lie, The

Light

Little Shirt, The

Loneliness, The

Long Naked Walk of the Dead, The

Loss

Lost Wax

Love: Beginnings

Love: Habit

Love: Intimacy

Love: Loss

Love: Petulance

Love: Shyness

Love: Sight

Love: The Dance

Love: Wrath

Love: Youth

Lover, The (1987)

Lover, The (1997)

Low Relief

Madder

Man Who Owns Sleep, The

Marina

Marriage, The

Matter, The

Meditation

Medusa

Men

Method, The

Midas

Miniature Poodle

Mirror, The

Mistress, The

Modern, The

Money

Mornings: Catherine

My Book, My Book

My Fly

My Mother’s Lips

Nail, The

Naked

Narcissism

Native Americans

Near the Haunted Castle

Neglect

Neighbor, The

New Car

Next to the Last Poem about God, The

Nickname of Hell, The

Night

Noise: Sinalunga

Normality

Nostalgia

Not Soul

Nut, The

Of Childhood the Dark

Of What Is Past

Oh

Old Man

One Morning in Brooklyn

One of the Muses

On Learning of a Friend’s Illness

On the Métro

On the Other Hand

On the Roof

Orchid, The

Other Side, The

Owen: Seven Days

Owl

Park, The

Past, The

Patience Is When You Stop Waiting

Peace

Peggy

Penance

Petit Salvié, Le

Philadelphia: 1978

Pillow Talk

Plums

Poem for the Governments, A

Poet, The

Politics

Ponies

Poor Hope

Pregnant

Prisoners

Prodigy, The

Proof

Question, The

Rabbit Fights for His Life The Leopard Eats Lunch, The

Race of the Flood, The

Racists

Rampage, The

Rats

Reading: Early Sorrow

Reading: The Bus

Reading: The Cop

Reading: The Gym

Reading: The Subway

Reading: Winter

Realms

Refuge, Serpent-Riders

Regret

Regulars, The

Religious Thought

Repression

Resentment

Ribbons

Risk

Room

Rungs

Rush Hour

Saddening

Saint Sex

Sanctity, The

Scale: I

Scale: II

Scar

Second Persons: Café de L’Abbaye

Secrets

Self-Knowledge

Self-Portrait with Rembrandt Self-Portrait

Shade, The

Shadows

Shame

She, Though

Shells (1969)

Shells (1992)

Shock

Shoe

Shrapnel

Signs

Silence, The

Singing, The

Sixteen: Tuscany

Sky, Water

Sleeping Over

Snow: I

Snow: II

Solid, The

Soliloquies

Some of Us

Song

Soon

Sorrow, The

Souls

Space

Spider Psyche

Spirit the Triumph, The

Spit

Star, The

Still Life

Sting, The

Stone

Storm

Storm, The

Suicide: Anne

Suicide: Elena

Suicide: Ludie

Sully: Sixteen Months

Swifts

Symbols

Tails

Tantrum

Tar

Telephone, The

Ten Below

Tender

Then the Brother of the Wind

They Warned Him Then They Threw Him Away

Thinking Thought

Thirst

This Day

This Happened

This Is a Sin

Thrush

Time: 1972

Time: 1975

Time: 1976

Time: 1978

Toil

To Listen

To Market

Tract, The

Train, The

Trappers

Trash

Travelers

Tree

Twins

Two: Resurrections

Undead, The

USOCA

Vehicle: Absence

Vehicle: Circles

Vehicle: Conscience

Vehicle: Forgetting

Vehicle: Indolence

Vehicle: Insecurity

Vehicle: Violence

Vessel, The

Villanelle of the Suicide’s Mother

Vocations

Waking Jed

War (1987)

War (2003)

Wasp

We

What Did the Man Do with the Clouds?

What Is and Is Not

When

Widower, The

Wig

Will

Wind

With Ignorance

Wood

Work

World, The

World’s Greatest Tricycle-Rider, The

You

Yours

Index of First Lines

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

a baby got here once who before

A basset hound with balls

A child’s cry out in the street, not of pain or fear

A city square, paths empty, sky clear; after days of rain, a purified sunlight

Across the way hands

A dense, low, irregular overcast is flowing rapidly in over the city from

A dirty picture, a photograph, possibly a tintype, from the turn of the cen-

A dream of method first in which mind is malleable, its products as

A few nights ago I was half-watching the news on television and half-

After a string of failed romances and intensely remarked sexual adven-

After the argument — argument? battle, war, harrowing; you need shrieks

After the drink, after dinner, after the half-hour idiot kids’ cartoon special

After this much time, it’s still impossible. The SS man with his stiff hair

Again and again. Again lips, again breast, again hand, thigh, loin and

A garden I usually never would visit; oaks, roses, the scent of roses I usu-

A girl who, in 1971, when I was living by myself, painfully lonely, bereft

All along certainly it’s been there, waiting before us, waiting to receive

All morning the tree men have been taking down the stricken elms

All night, snow, then, near dawn, freezing rain, so that by morning the

All the beautiful poems

All the Greek restaurants in the old student neighborhood have pigs

All under the supposition that he’s helping her because she’s so often

All we do — how old are we? I must be twelve, she a little older; thirteen

Almost as good as her passion, I’ll think, almost as good as her presence

Alone after the news on a bitter

Although constructed of the most up-to-date, technically advanced ele-