God, if I speak my love to you in fear of hell, incinerate me
in it;
if I speak my love to you in hope of heaven, close it in my face.
But if I speak to you simply because you exist, cease
withholding from me your
neverending beauty.
Rabi’a al-Adawiyya was an early Sufi poet. She died in 801.
FIRST ENCOUNTER/THE CITY
Formerly
in the first forests it was strange
if you happened
to run into somebody
you did not know; now
it is so strange meeting
someone you do.
THE NEIGHBOR
from Rilke
Strange violin, is that you?
In how many distant cities now
has your lonely night spoken to mine?
Do hundreds play you—or only one?
Are all the great cities occupied
by somebody who, but for you,
would have long disappeared in the river?
And why is this constantly happening,
why am I always the neighbor of those
who out of their own dread compel you to sing
and say: this life is heavier than
the heaviness of all things combined.
THE WEDDING
As in heaven
all are smiling
at you, even
those
who know you.
ENTRY & PRAYER
for Gail Whitney
When you get tired of reading
all the beautiful words
by lousy human beings, and come to
the end of your patience with the voluminous
indeed inexhaustible
mediocrities of goodness,
what to do? I suggest—
I don’t know.
Let him think.
And if there are no words
to this place give him back
the illiterate sleep: no need
the haldol needle night-night;
let him go quietly, not
in horror,
not in glory.
THE POEM SAID
The poem said never love anything
Not even you?
I asked
and it answered
especially me
If you must, love
not living
with hope
or not living
taste this
and remember
not yet being—
Especially me
I am just you
If you must, like
and coldly admire my cold stars
shit for brains
love what I stand for
not me
the leopard the beautiful
death
who puts on his spotted robe when he goes
to his chosen,
the
what was the not now the what will be
Like suddenly using a dead friend’s expression
Make yourself useful
while there is time
while there is still light and time
NEW PAGE
Snowfall a perpetual soft
January snowfall
covers your tracks, and what follows
the period
left
by the needle
DOING A LINE OF OLGA BROUMAS
It is my job to be ill.
—Bernadette Soubirous
It’s not the wolves it’s the sheep
Yes
And it’s not the children
Bless your night
If I knew
now
what then
I knew
Night in one eye
struck by sleep,
the nineteenth Apparition …
Bless your light
COMMUNION
This morning I saw them again
I was just going to tie off
the garbage bag
and there they were
I’d heard of them!
the upper .5%
wealthiest maggots
You do not have because
you do not ask
you do not ask
because you do not have
Last night I lay in my mother’s back yard, a
forest
listening to its bird—
Patient shall hereby refrain
from further experimentation
with the windshield wipers
and various rock & roll stations
This morning I watered the flower, extremely
impressive in a monster
Here’s one for you, Why does F drink
(Gives him something to do
after he shoots up)
Time to begin
slimming down
for the eye of the needle
Time to see the world without
the special glasses
oh light,
I had forgotten
Rats prefer it to food
AFTER APOLLINAIRE
for Eric Lorberer
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon,
and it is finished;
I sit back and light my cigarette
on a ray of dusk.
I don’t want to write anymore.
All I want to do is smoke.
I FOR ONE
I for one never asked
for my youth back; when I was young
I was always afraid.
Like somebody in a war
with no allegiance
I was terrified
of everyone.
But now
now I am amazed
and grateful every day.
I don’t know how that happened.
I am so glad
there is no fear,
and finally I can
ask no second life.
DESCRIPTION OF HER EYES
Two teaspoonfuls,
and my mind goes
everyone can kiss my ass now—
then it’s changed,
I change my mind.
Eyes so sad, and infinitely kind.
TIBETANS RAPED BY CHINESE ROBOTS
Bill Knott traveling
stripped
self-stripped of all earthly possessions
save a childhood lamp
which he carries
I’m told by a sad girl who slept
with him, or would have
from one desolation to another
in rooms across
Manhattan
winter,
1979?
FROM A DISCARDED IMAGE
The world’s wordless beauty’s
intact and can never be other than
intact no matter what
harm we perpetually do
and have done
and will I can assure everyone
do,
forever,
as they say
World’s wordless beauty, and the word’s
worldless liberty
The champagne shopping binge
is over
The check is about to arrive
and nobody knows how much it will be
I know I don’t give a shit not now
The world’s
wordless
beauty intact, indeed
it can never be other
than
radiantly intact
like the stars, like the stars
when the stars have no names once again.
SELF-PORTRAIT AT 40
He’s not in the hospital now
the hospital’s in him,
it’s everywhere
like the sky
all his poor
friends lining up
for their little white paper
shotglasses
filled with pills
yearlong instants of fear
and clinical paranoia
at the water fountain
in second grade
already deceitful obsequious the book reduced to writing
At times he’s inspired
intense desire
to heal him in women
and then
a bit later
to kill him
A strangerness
that will always be with him
sometimes
cruel
and often funny
scared to death
every so often
for days on end,
however
Engaged
between one
December
and another
and another
perpetual gift
He will be buried with
a little gold
cross hanging from his neck
pulling him down
and lifting him up—
truly
there is no down
or up where he is going, bright
gold gleaming in the earth
the sun
still shining in it
at the moment…
Just say
he wished to do something
that would make his friends glad
and his enemies sick, and
there was apparently nothing
he could do about it, and nobody
can tell you why
SCROLLING MARQUEE
Broken-necked sunflower
in my dusk wind glowing
Like reading the Iliad
to a blind child …
No, Friday’s out, Franz
how about never
is never good for you
is sleep to me burning is sleep to me burning
Harmless, unless
he takes a liking to you
I never do get caught, it’s very odd
BATHTUB IMPROV
Book composed of poems no one will ever read
or write, if I can help it:
each verse composed of words
I will never cleverly jot,
or transcribe from memory, never
recite in my blood—
e.g., the jagged sonnet which begins
For sure the motherfucker’s sober now—
book with hunter
green cover, the beautiful color
of oak leaves in summer,
with no smirking photograph;
color of life, color of death
with no prizes, no trivial biography, no academic
honors earnable by any moron who can read
or write his name. No name
or gloating progeny
of shame, no irrelevant
lies and not one
date.
RESURRECTION: ELEGY
In San Francisco John Logan said, light
is the shadow of God
and
have you ever tried
Green Chartreuse
What do you mean
you’ve never heard
Mahler’s 2nd Symphony
Sent me long before that
friendly evening meeting
under the Bridge
one gray northern Ohio winter day
the great Glenn Gould and Roxolana Roslak Das Marienleben
right before
my translation came out
who could barely open his eyes,
and politely
yet met me the summer
after you died
his dead friend’s
son
he treated me
one glorious last champagne and tequila-fueled
supper and led me then
no doubt by heart
in the streets
to the vast golden house of this music
SIMULTANEOUS SENTENCES
Only diamonds can cut diamonds, though
to do any such thing
they have no wish
The ghosts don’t believe in us
GOODBYE
But I have overcome you
in myself,
I won’t behave
like you, so you
can’t hurt me now;
so you are not
going
to hurt me again
and I, I can’t
happen
to you.
SLANDER
I can just hear them
on the telephone and keening
all their kissy little knives
or voraciously taking turns
nursing a lie
still in its early white whisperhood
and I could do something
bad back to them
someday I guess—
but why
Exclusion doesn’t hurt
that much, in fact
I’ve visited the stars on foot
Come disdain of the dreamhand for grammar
and fame, this Boston’s
gothic chilly April
night (new leaves the color
of her eyes) beloved
booknight real
real world, oh
prasini arachnid
s’agapo
Light green eyes dusk distant
tolling now fading
to heartscar
which says
I was loved, always
loved
And then they wounded me
so usefully
AESTHETIC
The instant before
the slash bleeds—
for example
her hair getting long like the night in late fall.
Kayaking alone on Lake Kakapoopee.
Crown of barbed wire, no one is born sad.
WHEN YOU SEE FAME COMING RUN
I owe you so much—
I owe you my life.
I would have killed myself
five different times, had it
not been for the thought of
your intense secret pleasure
while you wept at my grave.
I would go hiddenly
write in rage: when she smiles
she looks just like a knife blade—
know what I mean.
In my mind, I was already dead; now
I am alive again
and it is you
who’re deceased, despite appearances
and I like this
so much better.
To tell you the truth.
THE SPEAKER
Who worked his fingers to the ghost,
and for what
Words will be over, then: soon
he’ll be silenced,
and said.
CHURCH
Lantern cabin,
Arkansas
organ
beating
bass
Wind, dark
and wind
bird
tiny dark
startled
eye.