Artichoke & Other Poems 9780824885205

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Artichoke & Other Poems

Artichoke & Other Poems Phyllis

UNIVERSITY

Thompson

O F HAWAII

H O N O L U L U , HAWAII

PRESS 1969

The author wishes to make the following acknowledgments for permission to reprint poems in this collection which first appeared elsewhere. "Domestic Animal," in Trace, No. 67; Copyright 1968 by James Boyer May. "Two Mementos," in Cape Rock Quarterly, IV: 1, 1966. "Joyful News out of the New Found World," "What the Preacher Said Is True," "The Bench under the Pear Tree," in Things, No. 1, 1964. "The Beneficent Influence of Cane Fields," in The Poetry Bag, 1:3, 1967. "Baroque," published as "Danae," in Poet and Critic, 11:2, 1966. "Gecko!" "Blessed Are They That Mourn," in December, VIII: 1, 1966. "The Hands of the Man with the Red Beard," in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. X. "Judas," "The Island at Night," in Quarterly Review of Literature, Nov. 1967. "The Walls of Snow," in The Nation, March 1968; Copyright 1968 by The Nation Associates, Inc. "Summer Indoors," "Penelope," "Seagirt," 111:3, 1962; "Andrea," VIII:3, 1967; "Cops and Robbers," V:2, 1964; "End of Winter," VI:2, 1965, in Poetry Northwest.

Copyright

1969 by the University

of Hawaii Press

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number Standard Book Number

81022-191-2

Printed in the United States of

America

19-16163

FOR ROSEMUND TUVE I, with no rights in this matter. . .

Contents j 3

Artichoke

Seagirt | 4 Rakingj

6

Helen | 7 A Fairy Tale j 8 The Hands of the Man with the Red Beard j 9 Penelope

j

10

Judas | 14 Come i\ 15 Joyful

News out of the New Found World | 16

The wasp I 18 Bagging this fine game j 19 A Fair Quiet Day | 20 What the Preacher Said Is True ' 21 To a Great Lady j 22 Summer Indoors | 24 End of Winter j 25 Syllables j 26

Architectural

The Island at Night | 28 The Beneficent

Influence

of Cane Fields j 29

The Dogs | 30 Andrea j Possessed j

32 34

The Walls of Snow | 35 Every Occasion j 36 The Palms Transplanted At the Airstrip j 39

j 38

The Landscapes of Leaving | 40 Hours of Banana Leaves | 42 The Bench under the Pear Tree | Leaving You | 44 Parable of the Lame Poet | 45 At the Royal Hawaiian | 46 The First Heaven | 4 7 Two Mementos | 48 Emptied Heaven | 50 Pumpkin Flower | 52 Baroque | 53 Escape Artist | 54 Domestic Animal | 55 Gecko! | 56 An Idle Day in August | 57 Blessed Are They That Mourn | Windstorm | 59 November | 60 Cops and Robbers | 61 Vacancy | 62 Questions | 63 What Stays | 64 The Cave | 65

Artichoke & Other Poems

When the artichoke blooms. . .

HESIOD, Works and Days, 582

Artichoke Praise love and praise the taste of love and raise the thorny-pointed artichoke coned on a prickly needled core and tough as the gut of love. Pour the sea-dark wine unmixed. Pull off the leaves of the jagged leather artichoke from around a thickened stem. O praise the taste of love between the teeth. Go garlanded with parsley, go celery crowned to feast. Then eat the coarse, delicious heart of the horn the artichoke.

3

Seagirt Sunlit Seagirt, Atlantic girdled land, Laid the salt scene of one young summer spent With a doubting aunt. Finding me ignorant As puzzling girlhood fell away, she planned Cold lemonade in a dimity crowded room To teach me party airs. But the wise boys Walked off to the riper, prettier girls with poise. O careful aunt, my style was never bloom. Your friends, the colonels and commanders, praised My gracelessness, remembering their own Brash mastery of innocence. They'd known Maturity too long. Mere youth amazed Or pleased their cooling appetites. But I Nevertheless grew up that summer, down On the grainy sand, fingering slippery brown Seaweed, gray shells, green crabs. I spent July

4

Learning the Jersey shore, when sunlight, slant On the empty beach at morning, failed to draw The slumbering lovers. (Afternoons I saw Them though, voluptuous and confident Of their warm, lovely limbs against coarse sand.) Puzzled by lovers, shy of my clumsy speech, I found the solitude of Seagirt Beach Sufficient for my aimless need. My hand Learned textures, sounds of the steady sea Rang in my ears, the comprehensive light Of water, sand, and sky dazzled my sight. Body responded to that energy, And I learned how to love the earth with all My hungering senses. Summer gone, I went Inland again, no longer innocent, Sea mastered, aunt, made woman by that fall.

Raking Shut windows shut out sound. Let the trade winds cease. Let cease the clack of the palms for they clatter like rain of October. Shut out the push of the broom of the neighbor's yard boy sweeping up leaves and rubbish of white plumeria. Let a silence arrive in separate flakes of blue by billions spilling. Let the scraping stop of the bamboo rake on the driveway. Tell the yard boy stop that raking.

Helen She is eighteen. The color of her hair is iron. It is heavy as if weighted. Her eyes are the color of lead, Or of winter in the Atlantic, Or of coastal slate rock, And bright as ice. Her metal under massive stress Holds. She is hard Enough. Though she seem like a b i r d Green winged, delicate, Given to air, d e f i n i t e Or like a pale flower, A lily cut, single, pure— The aqua Pacific, The humid air of the tropic, This Eden island, Do not prosper her kind. And she has gone, Sadly, almost alone, Taking her luck North. She will not come back.

7

FOR JOHN, LATE

A Fairy Tale Prince, when I found you downwind of the toadstools In the spring wood clearing, gaping with heartache, And you gulped, swollen under your sad jewels, I took you in a cold passion, for pity's sake, For the ludicrous white belly and bulging head. You jumped, suddenly, long green legs outsplayed, To my cupped hand. So was I brought to bed By a pledge, my white flesh by your green skin laid. How shall I tell the shapely change that fell On us as we embraced, reluctant? When You kiss my glistening skin I feel a spell Dissolve, and I come green to your hands again. I do not know the seeming from the true As we slip into our unambiguous climax! I, last and loveliest born, most happy—you, Prince, still humped like a frog in the slime of sex!

8

The Hands of the Man with the Red Beard He holds with love. Kindly he handles things : telephones dollars children and cars. Stones he likes more than coinsfeels their shapes out with his freckled fingers. Keyboards he lovestypewriters and pianos. Tillers and outboard motors radios ropes he knows by hand. Myself. T-squares transistors knives and wires he lifts with deft and casual touch. His violin he raises like Burgundy to praise me. I am equal to the handle of his hammer.

9

Is it Ulysses that approaches from the east, The interminable adventurer? The trees are mended. That winter is washed away. WALLACE STEVENS,

"The World as Meditation"

Penelope i The years were never easy, but the first years Of the long war were easier, while she waited As common women waited, when, like them, She could perceive a strict, invisible line Between her mind and the Scamandrian plain Where common men joined battle under him. There was a season she could say his name And no one noted it or blamed her for Those fair, particular syllables because His name was on the tongue of every woman. Continually she overheard her servants Saying "Ulysses," washing the heavy linens He had lain in with her, buffing the cups His mouth had touched. At such times she would shape His name and mildly pass among them, keeping Herself immensely silent, marvelling To come upon a crafty, public m a n Wily Ulysses, whom she did not know. She waited as the common women waited, Wondering whether to her, as to some others, Time would give satisfaction, bringing him home.

II After the war was over, waiting became A world of meditation. She drew back Into the savage dream behind her eyes. She never said his name. Her serving women Did not speak of him. Their husbands home, The Scamandrian plain receded from their minds. But if she chanced to touch his name written On household things, she would become abstracted, Wondering what was the one so named, and where Was he, really, outside of her mind, now Ilium Was taken, the great warriors all dispersed Who had with him seized arms ten years before. She dreamed he lay in Calypso's arms, or someone's, But that did not matter. Calypso, dreamed, Quickened no jealousies. Imagined winds Over imagined oceans hurt no man. Mere theoretical accidents touched his image Only. He escaped in the end chimeras Of her brain. Safe in her dream he came Continually homeward. Rarely was her mild Apparent patience troubled. Yet sometimes

Ulysses was announced. When her women spoke His name again, she, nearly believing, Proceeded to the hall. Coming from dream Carefully, she beat back the actual body Of her hope with hammers of her heart. For they slandered him. It never was Ulysses. And yet the coming of some common man Quickened the central terror under dream That he would never come, that actual death Had taken him, or that a true Calypso Held him prisoner. But her speech was even Over the strange excitement mastering her— "That man is not Ulysses"—glad to shape Again the marvellous syllables of his name Out of her own impassioned meditation. Ill Slowly she changed. She matched her name with his. She remained "Mother" to Telemachus And "Madam" to her servants, but as the dream Took her gradually, she assumed a level, Pure serenity. She kept apart From the riotous laughter of the hall, staying

Within her chambers, weaving upon her loom A shroud for old Laertes who, in the vineyard, Mended the trees—ten apples, thirteen pears, And forty figs. Although the insolent wooers Wasted the substance of her husband's house, She made the syllables of her own name a dream Equal to his, and so evaded them. When they presumed to call her down among them She obeyed patiently, but a silence fell Over their barbarous clamor. They observed Amazed her excellent mortal clarity, And no man dared articulate her name. Is it Ulysses that approaches from the east, The interminable adventurer? The trees are mended. That winter is washed away.

13

It raged resolute in him also—God's b l o o d in Judas, when he ate the black bread of his Master, and went apart to pray after supper, crying, "Lord, before day let this cup pass from me." But no more for him than for God's Son came pardon. Judas wept, and then, like Jesus, chose what God had willed for him, that all might be fulfilled according to prophecy. Died also Judas, in public pain for the sins of the whole world, his own private loss lamenting—a Friend gone to the cross, while he hanged himself from a more bitter tree. Surely Judas then waited, an angel outside of heaven, while Christ harrowed Hell, and on Easter hailed the rising of the other obedient Son, who greeted him, "Brother, we have done. Go in with me."

14

Come Come, poem, into my hand. I have been two months waiting. Come out of the gritty wind That grinds and whistles, grating Steadily on the sound I cock my ear for. There Are mixed noises, many Sweet motives near, Ready to catch. Any Will serve my turn. I hear, Just out of earshot, Words in a clamor of pulses, Rhythms as riddles. I cannot Be civil till stresses Fall into their places. Out Of the air, into my hand, Poem, come. I am restless, Crazy with straining for sound. Not even love can guess This need. Come you to my hand.

15

Being 3 books of Dr. Monardes of Sevil, Englished by John Frampton, 1577

Joyful News out of the New Found World Take to your comfort this: That out of the new found world comes joyful news Brought from the Indies into Spain and hither By such as traffic daily. I, John Frampton, merchant, That the herbs described might bring in time rare profit By wonderful cures of sundry great diseases, Have Englished here three books. To illustrate: A plant Of singular virtue, which commonly grows in places Moist and shadowy, bearing the name tobacco, Gives present remedy In every manner of hurt That haps to man or woman or child. Therefore They have left off the older order of physick Used before this was known. Of the leaves only we know The virtues: Pains that come of windiness It taketh away; fresh wounds it doth reduce To perfect health; laid hot

16

To grief of headache, brings An altogether incredible relief. Smoke being freely taken in at the mouth Doth cure grief of the breast And nastiness of breath; Chewed in little balls it taketh away Hunger and drought; travellers can pass days Without having to eat Or drink; aches of joints Or teeth it cures; moreover it can make A man see visions. Find herewith aptly described Its portraiture: a flower Like white campanula, A tawny bark, broad leaves of russet green, A wide and heavy plant which groweth up To be exceeding great, Whose precious remedies Notwithstanding failure of belief Have nevertheless by practice been found out To be entirely true.

17

The wasp was ready to be born. He made a point of it, pushing the brittle crust of his gray paper chamber, Lifting himself from the cup on ochre legs that throbbed with perfect malice. 0 he was mean and able but nifty from the first. 1 think it's a pretty trick to be created finished. Take Adam or Athena or the wasp.

Bagging this fine game is harder than, say, pheasant or rabbit catching. Tracking tells only where one was before you got there, can teach you likely places, maybe, not find one for you. Traps are equally p o o r can break a back, choke what has to breathe—no use to anyone dead. Chasing one down is hopeless. You can't. It will elude you, leave you in the woods out of the running. You have to hold still and wait and listen very quietly so a poem can come into your hands.

19

A Fair Quiet Day In the morning, shivering, I cut asters—wintry flowers with fuzzy pungent stems. Now they stand in clear water bunched in a marmalade pot six inches high collecting the five o'clock light.

What the Preacher Said Is True More bitter than chilly death we are, sinner, come in. Our hands, our lily, sinuous hands will, carefully folding, be as bands, soft as silk ribbon. Our azure veins will wind a circuit under your skin in little, innocent rivers. It may hurt. Come in. We are white weavers who have everywhere laid thin lines. Our hearts are snares. Our fingers have made pretty nets, sinner, come although our risky spidered webs may stifle you. In the fine syllables of our lips we spell your service, for we have since the beginning, long ago, sought out many subtle inventions. We know our ways, sinner. We will amaze you. We will take you in, whispering, "O alas, alas."

To a Great Lady A honey-voiced old woman wrung me with rage last winter, Severe Lady, by slandering you. She presumed to use Your famous name familiarly—"Pure Poetry"—. My God! Pure! As if she'd never heard you sleep With the best men of the age, any age, and at your pleasure, As if you were a cloudy-eyed girl made happy with gingerale and kisses. Men understand this—how you are a woman excellent Beyond their understanding, though you loosen your garments For them. Lust, they bring. Poverty. Labor. Sorrow. Their best hours. Yours is the hard service. For you They leave us, and so be it, not one of us your equal. They take you when you'll have them, with a prayer, that this Sweet lay be not the last. But you go where you will. You choose a lover as I do, say for the irrelevant line Of light that falls across his shoulders, say for the way He dances at work. You come and shut the door and stay For days and ravish him with any trick he names, For the beauty of it, easy as water in his shaping hands. Or for another you come an angel crowned with stars, And he listens for the soft brush and lift of your wings in his room As he labors to find the unyielding rhythms and words of praise For you, inexpressible near him. To another you are a wife, Predictable as food. To some you give lines like kisses That come to nothing; you pass out of sight as they turn to follow you. To another you so open body and bone one deep night

Studded with stars he imagines he has you, Exalted Muse, Tame as a housebroken cat. Handsome he rises from you To comb his beard in the staring mirror. The pretty strut Of the man, oh Excellent Lady, and the stupid fact of his face With all those teeth when he finds you've gone, really gone, Leaving wrinkles, a stained hollow in the bed, and that single poem. Others, fewer, left you whom you wanted. It's hard For me to imagine you stirred by contained desire, Waiting for someone to come back who spent all your monies and left, Years ago, without words, and God! not even caring! But left. As you choose, so can he. He can't be held to your will Against his own. He has his private irrelevancies And he's not interested. This loss happens even to you. Yet you're apart. Slander cannot come near you. The rage I harbored is comforted even by your inaccessible distance. My anger changes. The terms are always yours. The price Is hard. Severe Lady, exemplar of women, Whom I serve, I cannot court. I have a prayer: Keep me in luck, in love, in poems. And keep me honest.

23

Summer Indoors Out of the brilliance where the sun streams in Through one wide open window, at my desk, I read grave histories or study thin Scholastic arguments, leaf through grotesque Impulsive Gothic fiction, or translate The metered Greek and level Latin prose. Ranged in the shadows, books, inanimate Against the wall, are fixed in heavy rows. Here every afternoon where leaded panes Refract the summer light that breaks in schemes Of color on oak floorboards, darkly stains The shined mahogany furnishings or gleams On cherry wood, I write in silence. Wind Stirs the curtains. I am half aware Of summer out of doors, undisciplined Abundance of green leafing, humid air, Wide, hazy blue of sky above thick trees, Tall elms and heavy maples, bristling pines, Stirred in the light wind. Yet I turn from these Toward summer darkness, where my mind assigns Itself to learning, willing not to look Outdoors at sunlight. I am satisfied By the black craft of letters, by the book Under my hands, illumined from outside.

End of Winter I was a fool in April to imagine At winter's end an end to dangerous loving. Given to doubt of any sudden vision I could not trust the cold excitement rising Through neurons, jabbing the rigid, lonely skeleton When suncracked ice spun light about your striding Over the frozen lake in the barren season. Hard to your steps the quickened air fell ringing As love broke with a solid, riving motion Through lucid, rigorous bone, though I stood striving Not to be struck by a winter made illusion. But now, when the rainy spring is overcoming The iron chill of winter, it has not taken That stern excitement from me. And I leave doubting. Love blazes at the center, cold and certain.

25

F O R BOB

Architectural Syllables I. Salisbury The veined, intelligent vaults collected ribs of darkness and thrust them sloping into the buttresses. Daylight in warm streams swung out of the clerestory and flowing into the choir ran out in high hosannahs trumpeted to the altar of the Lord. II. A Castle Hall Immense with hung tapestries over the obscure stone: green weaving of intricate woodland branches and small enamelled buttercups pricked into a lawn whereon appropriate knights consorted with their dames sedately rose or tan. But at night when purple logs flared orange on the castle's massive walls in the heavy light the colors leapt on the retina and the whole arrangement thickened and moved grossly into the deepest shade, dancing, dancing.

III. The Parthenon Driven into the mind and curved so simply upward it seemed turned out of air or the air had endowed it with breath with pure vibration— very still— you could nearly hear it exhaling. IV. We Made These Our heads full of seasons. Our hands full of death.

27

IN M E M O R Y O F MY F A T H E R

The Island at Night Question has driven me back at length to the island, And I come to its unchanged coast and stand on a shore Where gradual salt waves strike the slatey sand Mildly as wind. All seems the same, but far More pure than I had imagined. In the end I find things I can touch—gray shells, warm as before, And broken glass, dulled by the steady sea, Lie in my hand. If these are true, then what are memory And knowledge? Once I learned the abstract outline Of the island. I held in mind the unshifting delicate Indentation of the coves and the masculine Fragmented rock of the promontory, cut Out of Narragansett Bay. But maps define A mental place, a fixed idea of what The island might be, not what it is—less Than it is, as a remembered word is less Than a voice saying it. Sound is heard. Shrill cries Quicken the air, the hidden foxes' barking. Now I hear, singly, many sweet bird calls rise And waver, riding the salt sands before morning. Rain dissolves the darkness. As my eyes Find the island, it becomes real, and I, touching The sand, discover the clear immediate thing I know in sense only—hold, love, and let go.

The Beneficent Influence of Cane Fields When we flew in, screaming over the red dirt cane-roads, I held fast to my envy of her whom all angels would loathe For her lust, if they knew her, if there are angels, And came quietly down with it safe in my body. Afterwards, part way up the big mountain, I buried it covertly under the sugar And later went swimming hard with a man, and purely, In a wide irrigation ditch that was lined with stones.

29

The Dogs The lamps have been put out. The dark moves in Steadily upon the bed and chair. The room is growing wider where There is no light. The bedroom walls begin To wait. Heavy, tense with their own will, The mirrors hang, the tables stand Fast, while the soft corners expand Indefinitely outward. The floor holds still. We are glassed in, reflected in the panes Of looming windows. We lie flat, Face up, under the smothering blanket. Then in the yards the dogs break their terrible chains And come roaming across the rugs to pant in our faces With murky breath, to sniff at our heads. We hear them, feel their paws on our beds. They are smiling. They move with intelligent paces.

30

Our bright blood waits murderous in the arteries. We think in the groin. And the furtive ear Deep inside heeds the dogs. We hear Nothing we can tell. But as our eyes Widen upon them, and they pack the brain, And begin to expand indefinitely inward, They hunt in the mind. They pad around Inside. There is no way out. And who can chain The dogs inside the head before they front And mangle in huge jaws the thing they hunt?

31

Andrea I will plunge her among fishes. They will stir through her hair spread lusterless upward from her pallid head. On her eyes will hide two simple minnows. At the tips of her fingers and wanton on her shoulders the lips of fishes will flirt and kiss. They will nibble her thighs. At breast and belly light fins will flick and cups of the squid will suck her loins. The sidewise crabs will nip at her toes and her fine blue ankles. Or I will dump her to earth where silvery slugs will yearn at her ear and cloudy snails, pulling from touch their tender horns, ease over her arms, while under her buttocks slick mannered beetles fix tiny red stings and the dead grass flattens.

Small spiders will value her matted hair to stay their webs, and hundred eyed flies will cruise all summer to spin to her body's indelicate sweat Or sometime in Chicago at the end of winter I will cause her hair to be unbraided while the rain falls prettily bringing little cinders to stick in particles on each thin strand, and she cries to find her mane, her pride, all sooty yellow, so a twining hand might yank away stained smudged with the smoke that rails her hair. I need some sweet scheme to do her in by air, earth, and water. But burn her hair.

Possessed He stands here at my left hand, though dead. Noon high exactly, the sun on the red stone Gives nothing a shadow. So, like him, I have none. I too could be the illusion. It is as he threatened. He has cruelly driven my eyes to stare overhead Into the dark vacancy, where what is human Is nothing. And on this desert earth, under the sun, He has forced me to see that men are as he said. Before he died I loved him, long ago, When I was held in a closed heaven. The moon came near, A gust of apple petals fell in the odd light, The pale grass felt warm, and, seeing him there, I trusted the random blessing of that night. But I was a child when I loved him. Now I don't know.

34

The Walls of Snow Bright snow, white sheeted, winter drifted, lies Beyond the glass on the other side of the mind Where it is shining wet on rail track, cold street, And unshoveled walk. Inside this room, ice Hardens in the hard body of my lover and friend Who by his own hand died out of reach last night. Not last night. I had to go back many years to find His death, when I learned that a body has vacant eyes And dead flesh is solid, heavy, and gray as granite, Laid rigid on the bed. The room is blind. The ceiling presses inward, the rugs rise, The woodwork bends where the papered walls meet. No sheen from the blazing snow outside could pass Into that closed room to lighten it, where he lay And I stood, wet booted, chapped raw at the wrists, my sorrow Caught in breathy sobs over him. That loss These many years have never equalled. Snow Lies bright on the walls of winter. It is still that day.

35

FOR

YADDO

Every Occasion i Given to me, as if I were the one to be trusted, these: bluejay that sweeps continually and stilled across a credible dogwood steeped in w h i t e named image of a minute kept from May caught also, out of compassion, out of a pure act, the true air that rustles on the other side of a screen the night of my infidelity The loved night air—how given again when I myself can scarcely tell for love of the palpable tongue, sweet English, my meaning? The language joins and sunders as much as marriage. II Yet every occasion is the possible occasion for meeting each other, receiving— not arguments, not celebrations, not things or times I chose—those I forgot— but those that have chosen me to perceive them:

36

the woodland floor where sticky green pine cones dropped not to seed—to needled shade and the weedy flowers of August a field of high goldenrod I lay down in before I was five back to the whirled earth, face to the mounting azure. But more than that. Listen! The sound! Notes easy for gods struck from the splendid instrument in large arcs over and over, outbeating our nearness. Such opulence gives us each other as we bend inward, attending, answering the violence of the distracted air, collisions of song outreaching ourselves each note articulate in the warm disturbing stream discrete even as hailstones, rain drops, water drops, one, one or equal, hand by mortal hand held, warm fist interfolded with separate curving fingers locked charity borne inward human love.

37

F O R TOM

The Palms

Transplanted

The smoky trunks of the palms curve heavy and tall on three guy wires that brace their slant and balance. They are so shallow rooted it seems their shafts cut free of the wires would fail in the first big wind. Not so. For years their fronds will shake in the air with a sound like water spraying. Supple as love, the palms will weather the winds though they have as little to go on.

38

At the Airstrip Two jets over the horizontal ocean Lift, swing, level, and are gone. Sun blinded, I raise my eyes To deeper than I have ever seen heaven And backed by the whole world Stare past the tracks that reason Marks for stars to run on. There the dark is, Empty of every thing. Who, knowing this, Has not been afraid? Hurled By imagined laws in skies We carry around us, what's to hinder Our sundering but reason? I shudder down into the sand, blinder Than ever, and try to hold on.

39

The Landscapes of heaving A hundred landscapes back the shapes of them Leaving in their own attitudes. North Carolina. A stormy morning under heavy elms. Raincoated for the foul weather, one goes to the post office Past where I have watched for him from a sad house. He knows. He walks as if covered, And I follow him, follow his going As long as I can, lose him, Find him out, all the time hiding Behind a closed window. Stop. If he comes back, it will be another way. One I see off in a gear-mounted truck to Denver As dawn swims over the farmlands into the dairies All over Wisconsin, and moistens the city streets. He has not slept this night, for working and loading. He will drive until noon today, beyond Chicago, And sleep in the truck, unwashed. He will not kiss in public. He waves, backs down the driveway, Smiling grittily. I Am the last stop. He Will come back sometime, b u t I will not be here.

40

After the snow that abandoned the traffic all night In Times Square, the morning shines as bright as lakes, J u l y , Christmas, knives in the sun, white sheets Of ice. The lions of stone stare ahead, silent And blind. He touches my face, oh cold, and "Goodbye, Girl," and he goes into stone. Goodbye, that sings in the ribs. Goodbye, that the empty vaults Of the station kill finally Almost twenty years later, Though the midday snow still falls on the early dead. What weather, what lame time of night or day, leaving, Has taken him who had taken a habit of coming Any time or weather, wherever I was, desiring His welcome. He is gone without leavetaking. His image, hinging on vacancy, stands in the mind Of itself. If ever I touch Even the hand of his image I shudder. I cannot find Any way to fasten my heart Again to the pain—love gone, The uncomprehending body of love remaining.

41

Hours of Banana heaves I will spend your absence Upon some false occasion I cannot grasp or question to make a presence watching the broad furled banana frond as still as the hour hand spread slowly wide. If I watch the leaf heedfully expand to shred in the humid wind I may not perceive wrapped in a leaf hour how far and long you stay or think how happy they are where you are.

42

F O R TIM

The Bench under the Pear Tree Old friend, too solemn still, too troubled, Hunched on the stone bench near the pear tree, Find comfort in your backyard. Look! The mechanisms work. The wind Grinds the old vane about; the children Will not wrench it awry in its rusty socket. The rules, at least, are fixed: Your grandsons Can plot galaxies, though this sun fail; Incredible white still crowns the believable pear.

43

heaving You Leaving you your loving still quick in my veins and acrid in my breath like running fire I turn into the cold hall turn down eighteen bare steps and shoulder the storm door open. I turn lighter than wind. I turn into the cracking winter and walking by brownstone houses in a winter coat by freezing slush in the gutter by iron fences walking on ice for twenty minutes common, vague, and luminous in a city of shining hazard I am still warm and bitter.

Parable of the Lame Poet Day came, taking the lame poet with irremediable laughter where he lay that he should have discovered there in a woman's arms, after all, himself, as they'd always said he would. She lay ruddy beside him, perfectly realized, hyacinthine hair on the pillow, shoulders warm, her face rosy with sleep. "Lady," he said, waking her, "Lady," and she turned lazily into his arms. "What can I give you for this night we've spent? What can I promise for what you've given me? I want to pledge you something." She answered dreamily, questioning the poet, "What have I given more than the hundred others? I do not pity you, and I believe little of what you swear." "That doesn't matter. Listen. I find I'm simpler than I'd thought, need less and can give more, for once. What you will have, I promise." She looked away from him, past the white window. "Poems." she said, and abruptly rose. He stared, wordless, as she dressed and left him whose written word had been whole miracle and did not come to him again.

At the Royal Hawaiian I waited more than an hour at the open window, my hair disturbed upon my shoulders, a salty wind slapping the coconuts with a steady, waterlike sound. I heard him come and turned. Hotel rooms say nothing worth trying to hear. In the flat light that lies upon clean furniture, paper covered tumblers, mirrors, rugs, octagonal bathroom tile, we whispered endlessly touching each other very soft uncertain words. Sometime near morning he spilled warm liquor on the carpet. Rented and stained. Later he went away. The rainclouded morning lit the saddest world that I had seen in years.

The First Heaven The charitable rain drifting over our valley Inaudibly in sunlight every afternoon Is our blessedness made visible. With quiet clemency The rains of Manoa move away from the mountain, Mild and fine, with a cool, milky shining As of pearl, clouded and luminous as the moon. Our hairs become hazed with individual glistening And even our lashes are made wet with the colors Of the sky's double bow, high overarching. Such corporeal luster comes upon our hours That though we know that there are other islands Somewhere in Paradise, we've chosen these shores That seem created for us, so our hope corresponds With the measure of our blessing. Thus contented, wishing Only for what is ours, we live at peace within the bounds Of this pacific valley, where the clement rain descends.

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Two ISJiementos I. Red Stones Against the eroded rock her comeliness shone like a curded moon. "But nothing is like you here," he said. The big lake jabbed bright water cold as knives into the scooped red hollow of the rock. "Your tears are salt," he said. But he cupped red stones in her hand. "Keep them," he said, "to remember that we came." She turned and turned the polished stones. Summer and winter are gone and he. She turns the stones, and over and over she tries to remember what he said.

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II. Shell Shell of a mollusc Hard as stone Greaved, groined, Color of ash— Souvenir of NothingTaken from sands She had never seen It evoked no imageOnly itself And its own lost chance in the sea.

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Emptied Heaven Heaven, emptied even of common angels and the chance of their wings' covering us, their leaning and listening, turned to stone and was rolled away from our windy earth. For what was it without the splendid wings of the heralds who terribly hailed and named us, wings coasting the dark passage that throbbed responsive to their bright passing? What was it without the attentive clemency of the unfolding rose of heaven who smiled more mild and warm, soft petals hovering over us, hidden from us? Turned stone, heaven stood, an absurd vault, an unintelligent tomb the earth whirled outside of sloping surely around the closed walls as it swung on its unambiguous course.

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Then the earth sighed in every cavern, drafts gathered in all the hollows, the bulging ocean began to exhale, breath shook across the faulted world, the trillion leaves listened, sunbeams swam nearer, mist waited quietly, buds opened—roses of earth—expectant, even the silent snow yearned closer desiring us, answering our outreaching. For we live in a new world, investing things as we touch them. We are open to them now as the angels were to us, sanctifying. Therefore let heaven be cenotaph for angels gone from the terrifying spaces between stars. The earth has been given us again, far dearer than before, to our own shaping love.

Pumpkin Flower Cut delicate as ash, wide yellow star, Like paper curved in fire and yet not burned, Its joined petals open (over the broad leaves turned), Curl curiously at noon (ringed with irregular Tendrils circling at the stem), flower And fold at evening, taking their later shape. Coiled, lined with soft green, the blossoming crepe Assumes direction, even changes color, In mockery of the comic orange gourd For which it curves, opens, folds, and falls. For the flower, which seems to know its fruit, though whole, Perfect, and valid as the gross melon stored Beneath the damp yellow petals, must give way To the great pumpkin by the close of day.

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Baroque Caged in her tall prison of bronze she learned The rages of the sun. Dawn hammered and burned As light doubled on sheeted metal. Noon, Molten upon the brazen walls, was drawn Slowly from morning, when the light lay dry, Hard, and metallic about her chamber. Sky Gave all the change she knew. Afternoon Shone brassy. Only the rain and the curded moon Brought cloudy shadows. And the rain alone came in To touch her, driving from a limited heaven Sweet water on her face and hands and hair. She shivered and let fall her garment. There In the quickening rain she gave her maidenhood To no dissembling hero. The thunder god In a golden shower of love came wet and hot To change what she had and give what she had not.

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Escape Artist Lady, my cat, my pretty familiar, proud as jade and careful as calipers, cat of my clan who kept your distance even from me, whom you seldom allowed out of the sight of your yellow eyes, martyr for my sake who yielded to games at the hands of children, grabbing for love, you waited your chance for the cool evasion, some slick maneuver that smacked of wit, no outright getaway. The dolphin's tricks were not sleeker than yours, slipping from fingers, my elegant relative, my gentle cat. You're clean gone now, as certain as earth.

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Domestic Animal Touch my throat. I do not snarl. I am by these times domesticated Wholly. Look I fall back, curl And stretch, by your lavish hands made languid. I am not dangerous. You cannot Doubt me longer. See how craftless— A cat to tongue your hand or set Body against your legs, press, Arch. I require food and affection. Shelter me for your pleasure and thus Spend to advantage. You are a man, I am your mere cat. You could be generous Or you could pick me up by the scruff And toss me out. The lady tigress Would not let you, or she-wolf. But I will not hurt. Believe, and place Your hands, your mouth, here on my throat Where I am most vulnerable. See, I am tame. Rest easy, you who thought Me violent. You are safe with me.

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Gecko! Gecko! the mating shriek. Gecko! in gilded grapes on the frame of the tinted photograph of my dead virgin aunt. Gecko! the waiting head sees in the central slit of its unlidded eyes myself waiting. Gecko! slick at the kitchen window gripping warm glass with footpads fast it gulps quick as scissors all down its anatomy (pellucid, color of plastic) fast at the lamp, at the screen, at the lintel doormat, bookcase, wall it cries Gecko! at me out of its modern body built like a shriek.

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An Idle Day in August All day lazy and heavy limbed I have gone Around and around the house, so love encumbered I could not get hold of my body. I have been burdened By an audible quiet so weighting my shoulders down That my languid hands could lift neither book nor thread. I observed that the palms in the yard are slipped with a silver As dull as the words of love told over and o v e r Other than that, nothing. Nothing has happened. While all the long day you have held on your sinewy arm Her whose lightness I envy. Her unbraided hair Is lifted. How silent the room is. I wonder where You are now, wanton? The evening wind is warm. The street lights strike the luminiscent palm fronds, Glazing the shifting green with luster. I'll scream Her name and "Whore!" and hammer at every room. My lungs are damp. I don't know what to do with my hands.

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Blessed Are They That Mourn For Katherine God forsaken on Maui What comfort is there? Give place to her salty grief. Let nothing touch her. Bring cowrie shells from the reef. Scatter plumeria down. Keep her from rain. May doves, ah, by sevens Swing in the air Over the mounded earth Where she lies huddled. Though losing has never been easy She will turn to our tokens in time And come home.

Windstorm Listen! The vacant Northwind rides and swells Off the mountain, driving a foul winter rain. Whipped branches snap and crash. A tree falls, Dragging the leaves. And now it's dark again. How can I read this rage of rain and wind As the blank nightmare of a windy mind? Light rips the sky. I do not dream this fear. I heard a tree crack in that strike, saw the plain Swept level, instantly wet, and even now hear Thunder. Still in the dark I find the profane Facts. Where am I among them? This Only I know: More than myself is. What is out here, haunting the splitting storm? Why do black branches swim in the pouring air? Adverse and animate, does the wind scream To be felt in the dark as fact? Is it mere weather, Wrung from indifferent nature? Or is it of God? I hazard a final darkness in this dread. I have no edge against the storm, no ward, And night comes on. if it was out of my fear I made God, knowing no human word Could save my soul or charm the rushing air, What shall I turn to in this turning wind, Outside of earth, outside of my mind?

November These ironed sheets are cold. A while ago After I put out the lamp I went to the window To wait, and leaned on the chilly frame. A cloud Rolled out of the garden, over the stubbly field And up to the half moon, covering it. So darkness Fell. Therefore I watched for you in the blankness Outside. Then imagined you. The sill was wet And the screen had caught little wet drops of light. Later, rain began splattering the ruddy leaves Of the streetlit maple and quietly spilling through needles Of the spruce. I finally got into bed. By tomorrow All the leaves will be down, underfoot and sodden. Below The front windows the cars pass and pass again. I need sleep. I count them pass—habit, to listen Strictly—after the hissing approach on the wet street The sibilant passing—and to watch the headlight That flashes across the ceiling. You may be driving Fast on some turnpike this rainy night, hurtling Across a murderous landscape to this room In time. I think I hear tires and brakes. I dream. Perhaps your car will stop outside again. Meanwhile the leaves fall and pile up, the rain Falls on the rain. The season is passing. I listen To the cars drive past as I lie awake alone.

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Cops and Robbers And him, the other one, I never meant to hurt him. The game was nice and slick But fake, of course, so I thought Nothing could matter. As long As we side-stepped grainy plaster On stairs and knocked past all Those broken bottles, cans, And general paper trash In the hot alleyways We'd be all right. Our guns were Honest-to-God imitations Of the real thing. Harmless. But In the dark we got mixed up, All of us. One, I think, Changed sides and didn't tell. Then matchlight glowed suddenly Under a tight face, cold. So I yelled out "Double Grosser," Lit out for the back fence, felt Myself impaled. But wasn't. Really frightened, I wheeled, Flinging my arms out hard, And struck. He fell apart. And the game was over.

Vacancy Up stairs of hot concrete, at the solid corner of the building, above an asphalt court, is the room they lived in, empty. Very light. The sun slants through the jammed louvers in bars, warming the floor she swept. The air is thin inside. He had packed and boxed everything—tied twine all one morning. They had kept so much, and what they had lost he found when he cleaned. He wasn't sure what had been hers so he left only hangers. Then he closed all the doors and came back down to the ground.

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Questions Long ago our cares were random swallows in lovely heaven, questions with feathery wings drifting in the very distance. They passed after a little while away from our vision. They divided and fell into thickets unanswered and out of sight when we shut them out with our kisses, locked love in our fists, and held ourselves warm to each other, in the afternoon, not looking. But now look, love, look now! The questions are not far or random any more. Thousands of birds have closed upon us in great ragged wars. Let go of me! Slap them away with your fingers. The shapes are falling! Beat them away from me! Slack, slack. How our arms are thin. How the luck has gone out of our hands. The cold is as hard as claws. Answer!

What Stays Fleet and living you ran the games. Your hard body is bone under snow. Even your eyes that stared into the pains of stars Are gone. Hollows of your face are gone To cold. Your tongue is gone that told desire And the mouth my tongue dabbled in. All thought is gone. Earth fills the cave of your mind. I balance the winter wind. You Are barren. Under your ribs are stones. The taking hand is dead that handled my bone innocence. Finger and knucklebones stay And bone of lean leg, light foot. What rived the wild night is gone And that year's icy weather. What can you remember of love? Can you remember, love? I have grappled your ghost to my skeleton.

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The Cave Bend your head. Going inside is hard. Slowly lower your shoulders down Into the hollow lava out of the sun. Carry your body sloped forward As if heavily burdened.

You can straighten

Your back and stretch out at the center. There Is no god-stone. Never in caves. Nor need. Around

is stone. God is a round

Everywhere

stone,

Waterworn, far o f f on the coast that watches what dies. Six men are interred here in endless sleep. Look at the big seven foot Hawaiian—deep Under sinews and muscles of lava lies His tall skeleton.

Mark the great size of the skull.

Here uncoffined

he came to peace.

There are five more recent skeletons in this place, To your left and down this lower tunnel Who were brought in by litter to this airless hollow. The bier Was lowered and left. It has since decayed. There lies a bier pole. The men are a long time dead. Ranked,

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invaded by our stare,

Rot the five dry cages. I sweat underneath The lava. See him—the gag in his mouth, His broken jawbone, wristbones bound, the cloth That decays at the crotch. His death Was hard. I can touch the bone of his rib—my own I cannot touch. I am nearer his Than mine. Near death, I gape for wet air. This Air was caught in the hardening stone To form chambers. And God is still in the stone, Below, above, around these dead. In time, the dead will become God in the stone. No ceremony else, and none Is needed, where God, the Dead, and the Stone are one. We cannot stay. The air is gone. Come quickly. Think. When I die, I will turn to bone Like these. And dust of bone. And then, like God, To stone.

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