Poems 1962-2012 (3 page)

Not long ago, I caught him pausing to pose

Before the landing mirror in grandiose semi-profile.

It being impossible to avoid encounter on the stairs

I thought it best to smile

Openly, as though we two held equal shares

In the indiscretion. But his performance of a nod

Was labored and the infinite
politesse
of rose palm

Unfurled for salutation fraud-

ulent. At any rate, lately there's been some

Change in his schedule. He receives without zeal

Now, and, judging by his refuse, eats little but oatmeal.

MY LIFE BEFORE DAWN

Sometimes at night I think of how we did

It, me nailed in her like steel, her

Over-eager on the striped contour

Sheet (I later burned it) and it makes me glad

I told her—in the kitchen cutting homemade bread—

She always did too much—I told her Sorry baby you have had

Your share. (I found her stain had dried into my hair.)

She cried. Which still does not explain my nightmares:

How she surges like her yeast dough through the door-

way shrieking It is I, love, back in living color

After all these years.

THE LADY IN THE SINGLE

Cloistered as the snail and conch

In Edgartown where the Atlantic

Rises to deposit junk

On plush, extensive sand and the pedantic

Meet for tea, amid brouhaha

I have managed this peripheral still,

Wading just steps below

The piles of overkill:

Jellyfish. But I have seen

The slick return of one that oozed back

On a breaker. Marketable sheen.

The stuffed hotel. A shy, myopic

Sailor loved me once, near here.

The summer house we'd taken for July

Was white that year, bare

Shingle; he could barely see

To kiss, still tried to play

Croquet with the family—like a girl almost,

With loosed hair on her bouquet

Of compensating flowers. I thought I was past

The memory. And yet his ghost

Took shape in smoke above the pan roast.

Five years. In tenebris the catapulted heart drones

Like Andromeda. No one telephones.

THE CRIPPLE IN THE SUBWAY

For awhile I thought had gotten

Used to it (the leg) and hardly heard

That down-hard, down-hard

Upon wood, cement, etc. of the iron

Trappings and I'd tell myself the memories

Would also disappear, tick-

ing jump-ropes and the bike, the bike

That flew beneath my sister, froze

Light, bent back its

Stinging in a flash of red chrome brighter

Than my brace or brighter

Than the morning whirling past this pit

Flamed with rush horror and their thin

Boots flashing on and on, all that easy kidskin.

NURSE'S SONG

As though I'm fooled. That lacy body managed to forget

That I have eyes, ears; dares to spring her boyfriends on the child.

This afternoon she told me, “Dress the baby in his crochet

Dress,” and smiled. Just that. Just smiled,

Going. She is never here. O innocence, your bathinet

Is clogged with gossip, she's a sinking ship,

Your mother. Wouldn't spoil her breasts.

I hear your deaf-numb papa fussing for his tea. Sleep, sleep,

My angel, nestled with your orange bear.

Scream when her lover pats your hair.

SECONDS

Craved, having so long gone

Empty, what he had, hardness

That (my boy half-grown)

Still sucked me toward that ring, that bless-

ing. Though I knew how it is sickness

In him: lounging in gin

He knots some silken threat until

He'll twist my arm, my words—my son

Stands rigid in the doorway, seeing all,

And then that fast fist rips across my only

Child, my life … I care, I care.

I watch the neighbors coming at me

With their views. Now huge with cake their

White face floats above its cup; they smile,

Sunken women, sucking at their tea …

I'd let my house go up in flame for this fire.

LETTER FROM OUR MAN IN BLOSSOMTIME

Often an easterly churns

Emerald feathered ferns

Calling to mind Aunt Rae's decrepit

Framed fan as it

Must have flickered in its heyday.

Black-eyed Susans rim blueberry. Display,

However, is all on the outside. Let me describe the utter

Simplicity of our housekeeping. The water

Stutters fits and starts in both sinks, remaining

Dependably pure ice; veining

The ceiling, a convention of leaks

Makes host of our home to any and all weather. Everything creaks:

Floor, shutters, the door. Still,

We have the stupendously adequate scenery to keep our morale

Afloat. And even Margaret's taking mouseholes in the molding

Fairly well in stride. But O my friend, I'm holding

Back epiphany. Last night,

More acutely than for any first time, her white

Forearms, bared in ruthless battle with the dinner, pierced me; I saw

Venus among those clamshells, raw

Botticelli: I have known no happiness so based in truth.

THE CELL

(
Jeanne des Anges, Prioress of the Ursuline nuns, Loudun, France: 1635
)

It's always there. My back's

Bulging through linen: God

Damaged me—made

Unfit to guide, I guide.

Yet are they silent at their work.

I walk

The garden in the afternoon, who hid

Delusions under my habits

For my self was empty … But HE did

It, yes.

           My Father,

Lying here, I hear

The sun creak past granite

Into air, still it is night inside.

I hide and pray. And dawn,

Alone all ways, I can feel the fingers

Stir on me again like bless-

ing and the bare

Hump mount, tranquil in darkness.

THE ISLANDER

Sugar I am
CALLING
you. Not

Journeyed all these years for this:

You stalking chicken in the subways,

Nights hunched in alleys all to get

That pinch … O heartbit,

Fastened to the chair.

The supper's freezing in the dark.

While I, my prince, my prince …

Your fruit lights up.

I watch your hands pulling at the grapes.

LETTER FROM PROVENCE

Beside the bridge's photogen-

ic lapse into air you'll

Find more interesting material.

In July the sun

Flatters your Popes' delicate

City as always, turning granite

Gold. The slum's at standstill then,

Choking with droppings. Still

Its children are not entirely hostile;

Proffer smiles

At intervals most charmingly. I gave

Them chocolate, softened in the heat,

Which they would not

Go near. We heard they live on love.

MEMO FROM THE CAVE

O love, you airtight bird,

My mouse-brown

Alibis hang upside-down

Above the pegboard

With its dangled pots

I don't have chickens for;

My lies are crawling on the floor

Like families but their larvae will not

Leave this nest. I've let

Despair bed

Down in your stead

And wet

Our quilted cover

So the rot-

scent of its pussy-foot-

ing fingers lingers, when it's over.

FIRSTBORN

The weeks go by. I shelve them,

They are all the same, like peeled soup cans …

Beans sour in their pot. I watch the lone onion

Floating like Ophelia, caked with grease:

You listless, fidget with the spoon.

What now? You miss my care? Your yard ripens

To a ward of roses, like a year ago when staff nuns

Wheeled me down the aisle …

You couldn't look. I saw

Converted love, your son,

Drooling under glass, starving …

We are eating well.

Today my meatman turns his trained knife

On veal, your favorite. I pay with my life.

LA FORCE

Made me what I am.

Gray, glued to her dream

Kitchen, among bones, among these

Dripping willows squatted to imbed

A bulb: I tend her plot. Her pride

And joy she said. I have no pride.

The lawn thins; overfed,

Her late roses gag on fertilizer past the tool

House. Now the cards are cut.

She cannot eat, she cannot take the stairs—

My life is sealed. The woman with the hound

Comes up but she will not be harmed.

I have the care of her.

THE GAME

And yet I've lived like this for years.

All since he quit me—caught the moon as round as aspirin

While, across the hall, the heartfelt murmurs

Of the queers … I see my punishment revolving in its den:

Around. Around. There should have been

A lesson somewhere. In Geneva, the ferocious local whore

Lay peeled for absolution with a tricot membrane

Sticking to her skin. I don't remember

How it happened that I saw. The place was filthy. She would sit

And pick her feet until they knocked. Like Customs. She'd just wait.

III     COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY

COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.

And there were other signs

That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us

By land: among the pines

An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss

Reared in the polluted air.

Birth, not death, is the hard loss.

I know. I also left a skin there.

PHENOMENAL SURVIVALS OF DEATH IN NANTUCKET

I

Here in Nantucket does the tiny soul

Confront the water. Yet this element is not foreign soil;

I see the water as extension of my mind,

The troubled part, and waves the waves of mind

When in Nantucket they collapsed in epilepsy

On the bare shore. I see

A shawled figure when I am asleep who says, “Our lives

Are strands between the miracles of birth

And death. I am Saint Elizabeth.

In my basket are knives.”

Awake I see Nantucket, the familiar earth.

II

Awake I see Nantucket but with this bell

Of voice I can toll you token of regions below visible:

On the third night came

A hurricane; my Saint Elizabeth came

Not and nothing could prevent the rent

Craft from its determined end. Waves dent-

ed with lightning launched my loosed mast

To fly downward, I following. They do not tell

You but bones turned coral still smell

Amid forsaken treasure. I have been past

What you hear in a shell.

III

Past what you hear in a shell, the roar,

Is the true bottom: infamous calm. The doctor

Having shut the door sat me down, took ropes

Out of reach, firearms, and with high hopes

Promised that Saint Elizabeth carried

Only foodstuffs or some flowers for charity, nor was I buried

Under the vacation island of Nantucket where

Beach animals dwell in relative compatibility and peace.

Flies, snails. Asleep I saw these

Beings as complacent angels of the land and air.

When dawn comes to the sea's

IV

Acres of shining white body in Nantucket

I shall not remember otherwise but wear a locket

With my lover's hair inside

And walk like a bride, and wear him inside.

From these shallows expands

The mercy of the sea.

My first house shall be built on these sands,

My second in the sea.

EASTER SEASON

There is almost no sound … only the redundant stir

Of shrubs as perfumed temperatures embalm

Our coast. I saw the spreading gush of people with their palms.

In Westchester, the crocus spreads like cancer.

This will be the death of me. I feel the leaves close in,

Promise threaten from all sides and above.

It is not real. The green seed-pod, flaky dove

Of the bud descend. The rest is risen.

SCRAPS

We had codes

In our house. Like

Locks; they said

We never lock

Our door to you.

And never did.

Their bed

Stood, spotless as a tub …

I passed it every day

For twenty years, until

I went my way. My chore

Was marking time. Gluing

Relics into books I saw

Myself at seven learning

Distance at my mother's knee.

My favorite snapshot of my

Father shows him pushing forty

And lyrical

Above his firstborn's empty face.

The usual miracle.

THE TREE HOUSE

The pail droops on chain, rotten,

Where the well's been

Rinsed with bog, as round and round

The reed-weed rockets down Deer Island

Amid frosted spheres of acid: berry pick-

ing. All day long I watched the land break

Up into the ocean. Happened long ago,

And lost—what isn't—bits of jetty go

Their private ways, or sink, trailing water.

Little's left. Past this window where

My mother's basil drowned

In salad, I can see our orchard, balsams

Clenched around their birds. The basil flourished on