All of us,
the musicians, the audience,
were dissolved in gratitude.
There was nothing but
the starry darkness,
the smell of fresh cut hay,
and a hand of wind caressing
every single forehead.
I don’t even remember the music.
A wide unison whispering arose
which I didn’t understand.
When I left the stage
I asked the promoter
what they were saying.
He said they were chanting:
to-re-ro, to-re-ro
A young woman drove me back to the hotel,
a flower of the race.
All the windows were rolled down.
It was a ride free from error.
I could not feel the road
or the pull of destination.
We didn’t speak
and there was no question of her
entering the lobby,
or climbing to my room.
Only recently
I remembered that drive of long ago,
and since then,
I need to be weightless
But I never am.
MY LAWYER
My lawyer tells me not to worry
Says that junk has killed the revolution
Leads me to the penthouse window
Tells me of his plan
To counterfeit the moon
1978
I CAN’T BREAK THE CODE
I can’t break the code
Of our frozen love
It’s too late to know
What the password was
I reach for the past
Keep coming up short
And everything feels
Like a last resort
Tho’ we’ve called it quits
And there’s nothing left
Still I hear my lips
Make these promises
Though we’ve squandered the truth
And there’s little left
We can still sweep the room
We can still make the bed
When the world is false
I won’t say it’s true
When the darkness calls
I will go with you
In a time of shame
In the great Alarm
When they call your name
We’ll go arm in arm
I’M LOOKING AT THE FLAG
I’m looking at the flag
My hand against my heart
If only we could win
(One of) these wars we like to start
THE LUCKY NIGHT!!!!! SUNDAY MARCH 7, 2004
Let’s say that on that lucky night
I found my house in order
and I could slip away unseen
tho’ burning with desire
Escaping down a secret stair
I cross into the forest
the night is dark but I am safe—
my house at last in order
But luck or not, I do it right
and no one sees me leaving
hidden, blind and secret night—
my heart the only beacon
But O that beacon lights my way
more surely than the sun,
and She is waiting for me there—
of all and all, the only One
And then the night commands me
to enter in Her side
and be as Adam is to Eve
before they need divide
So I can show Her what’s been kept
for Her and Her alone—
a secret place that Love had left
before the world was born
Her nipples underneath My hand
Her fingers in My hair—
a forest crying from the dead
and fragrance everywhere
And from the wall a grazing wind
weightless and serene
wounds Me as I part Her lips
and wounds Us in between
And fastened here, surrendered to
My Lover and My Lover,
We spread and drown as lilies do—
forever and forever
HE SAYS HE WANTS TO KILL US
he says he wants to kill us
he says it very often
just let him know you love him
his attitude will soften
let’s wait a little while
let’s wait a little longer
the enemy is gaining strength
let’s wait until he’s stronger
ROSHI SAID
Roshi said:
Jikan san, there’s something I want you to
know
yes, Roshi
you are the worst student I’ve ever had
2.
I disappeared for ten years.
When I came back to Los Angeles
Roshi invited me for dinner.
After dinner Roshi wanted to see me
alone.
Roshi said:
When you left half of me died.
I said:
I don’t believe you.
Roshi said:
Good answer.
3.
During Roshi’s sex scandal (he was 105)
my association with Roshi
was often mentioned in the newspaper
reports.
Roshi said:
I give you lots of trouble.
I said:
Yes, Roshi, you give me
lots of trouble.
Roshi said:
I should die.
I said:
It won’t help.
Roshi didn’t laugh.
IF THERE WERE NO PAINTINGS
If there were no paintings in the world,
Mine would be very important.
Same with my songs.
Since this is not the case, let us make haste to get in line,
Well towards the back.
Sometimes I would see a woman in a magazine
Humiliated in the technicolour glare.
I would try to establish her
In happier circumstances.
Sometimes a man.
Sometimes living persons sat for me.
May I say to them again:
Thank you for coming to my room.
I also loved the objects on the table
Such as candlesticks and ashtrays
And the table itself.
From a mirror on my desk
In the very early morning
I copied down
Hundreds of self-portraits
Which reminded me of one thing or another.
The Curator has called this exhibition
Drawn to Words.
I call my work
Acceptable Decorations.
JAN 15, 2007 SICILY CAFÉ
And now that I kneel
At the edge of my years
Let me fall through the mirror of love
And the things that I know
Let them drift like the snow
Let me dwell in the light that’s above
In the radiant light
Where there’s day and there’s night
And truth is the widest embrace
That includes what is lost
Includes what is found
What you write and what you erase
And when will my heart break open
When will my love be born
In this scheme of unspeakable suffering
Where even the blueprint is torn
DEPRIVED
Deprived of Sahara’s company
I looked around the room
and spied her purse
at the foot of the chair
I went through every item
in a little notebook
written with an eyebrow pencil
I found the very poem
which you are reading now—
the
writing smudged
but word for word:
“Straighten up, little warrior,” it ended
“It’s not as though you
wasted your life
by loving me.”
DIMENSIONS OF LOVE
Sometimes I hear you stop abruptly
and change your direction
and start towards me
I hear it as a kind of rustling
My heart leaps up to greet you
to greet you in the air
to take you back home
to resume our long life together
Then I remember
the uncrossable dimensions of love
and I prepare myself
for the consequences of memory
and longing
but memory with its list of years
turns gracefully aside
and longing kneels down
like a calf
in the straw of amazement
and for the moment that it takes
to keep your death alive
we are refreshed
FULL EMPLOYMENT
For V.R. (1978–2000)
Vanessa called
all the way from Toronto.
She said that I
could count on her
if ever I was down and out.
After I hung up the phone
I played
the six-holed wooden flute
she gave me
on the occasion of our parting.
I figured out the fingering
and I played it better
than I had ever done.
Tears came out of my eyes
because of the sound,
and the recollection
of her extraordinary beauty
which no one could avoid,
and because she said
a song had gone missing,
and I had been selected,
out of all the unemployed,
I had been selected
to recover it.
I see you in windows
that open so wide
there’s nothing beyond them,
and nothing inside.
You take off your sandals
you shake out your hair,
your beauty dismantled
and worn everywhere.
The story’s been written.
The letter’s been sealed.
You gave me a lily,
but now it’s a field.
I HEAR THE TRAFFIC
I hear the traffic
On the Main
Love my coffee
Love Charmaine
Another day
To rise and fall
Make a buck
Start and stall
I love Charmaine
Her heart is kind
I’m still a fool
She doesn’t mind
Her eyes are grey
But when I’m mean
Her eyes display
A shade of green
February 26, 2000
HOMAGE TO MORENTE
When I listen to Morente
I know what I must do
When I listen to Morente
I don’t know what to do
When I listen to Morente
My life becomes too shallow
To swim in
I dig but I can’t go down
I reach but I can’t go up
When I listen to Morente
I know I have betrayed
The solemn promise
The solemn promise that justified
All my betrayals
When I listen to Morente
The alibi of my throat is rejected
The alibi of my gift is overthrown
With six impeccable threads of scorn
My guitar turns away from me
And I want to give everything back
But no one wants it
When I listen to Morente
I surrender to my feeble imagination
Which itself has surrendered long ago
To the Great Voice of the Taverns
And the Families and the Hills
When I listen to Morente
I am humbled but not humiliated
I go with him now
Out of the darkness of what I could not be
Into the darkness of the song I could not sing
The song that hungers for an earthquake
The song that hungers for religion
Then I hear him begin the great ascent
I hear Morente’s Aleluya
His thundering murderous serene Aleluya
I hear it rise to the impossible occasion
And pierce the ordinary ambiguities
With the sharpened horns
Of his own inconceivable ambiguities
His cry his perfect word pitched against
The baffled contradictions of the heart
Wrestling them embracing them
Strangling them with a jealous conjugal desperation
And he hangs it there beneath his voice
Above all the broken ceilings
The disappointed sky
His voice escaped from the mud of hope
And the blood of the throat
And the strict training of the cante
And he hangs it there
The Kingdom of Morente
Which he does not enter as Morente
But as the great impersonal anointed Voice
Of the Taverns and the Families and the Hills
And he takes us there
By the bleeding finger by the throat by the soiled lapel
Takes what’s left of us
To his Kingdom
the Kingdom of Poverty he himself established
The only place we want to be
Or ever wanted to be
Where we can breathe the childhood air
The unborn air
Where we are nobody at last
Where we cannot go without him
Long live Enrique Morente
Long live the Family Morente
The dancers the singers
The disciples of the Taverns and the Families and the Hills
HOMAGE TO ROSENGARTEN
If you have a wall, a bare wall in your house
All the walls in my house are bare
And I love the bare walls
The only thing I would put up
On one of my beloved bare walls
Not beloved
It doesn’t need beloved
It doesn’t need an adjective
The wall is fine as it is
But I would put up a Rosengarten
A Rosengarten produced with a wooden
Comb and black ink
Going nowhere forever in a swirl of indelible parallel curves
Is it a letter or a woman?
It is another perfect startling black letter in a word
Among hundreds of words
In a continuing Rosengarten epic that celebrates
Mankind’s holy and relentless desire for itself
Your heart is the same as the white paper
Upon which the woman is so carefully splashed
Both need her in order to become significant
If you had a vast white wall
And if you hung hundreds of his commanding women in a row
You would not have to study the calligraphy
For very long
To understand and to forgive yourself
For falling in love so often
And for championing our mysterious and radiant race
And it would silence whatever foolish argument
About beauty
You had been tricked into embracing
And it is the same with a piece of furniture
I have one or two wooden tables
That I bought for a song long ago
I’ve polished
them for years
And I don’t want anything on them
Except elbows a plate and a glass
But I have a Rosengarten on one of them
Because a Rosengarten celebrates the wood it stands on
Because it is made with the same mind
That made the table a hundred years ago
The mind of honour and skill and modesty
That patiently manifests an artifact
Of unutterable usefulness
You would have to live with a Rosengarten
To know how useful it is
As useful as a table or a wall
To serve your helplessness
To locate your “wrecked life” in a room
You have forgotten to explore
Just as there is no extra word in a great poem
In a Rosengarten
There is no extra volume
There is no gesture, no conceit, no winking eye
Soliciting a compliment
It is as it is
Respectful of the tradition from which it arises
But independent of it too
It stands there surrounded by the room
Establishing second after second
New alarming original friendships with the air and the light
Which the room so deeply needs
To irrigate and refresh your struggle
And if you have a garden or an acre
And you want it to flourish
Place a number of Rosengartens here and there
His great commanding Asherahs
The streamlined female presence
Which men and women sought and worshipped
In the “high places” of the Bible
And still do today
As we walk hand in hand
Through the bewildering and shabby insignificance
Of our official corrected public and private daily lives
And here She is:
Fully born from herself
Urgent and accommodating
A thrust of polished energy that does not cut the air
But softens it and ignites it softly
Offered up on a simple stone staircase
Which in itself is a masterpiece of escalating harmony
Offered to the mystery of beauty
Which no one dare explain
Offered up for the secret reasons
Which are known to all
Offered up in the usual conditions of distress
And the deep inner certainty of perfection
And now your garden
Does not need reminding
I’M ALWAYS THINKING OF A SONG
I’m always thinking of a song
For Anjani to sing
It will be about our lives together
It will be very light or very deep
But nothing in between
I will write the words
And she will write the melody