Adopt? Be adopted? It’s funny, but those born
From eggs seem not to feel homeless. Something
Pushes them out, and they fly to sea, or swim
Up from the gravel, milkily transparent, and they’re gone.
This man went up to monsters and asked to be
Adopted. I’ve done that often. Reader, are you
Fond of the Jonah story? Say to a monster,
“I may have something for you, but I can’t promise.”
THE BLACK FIGURE BELOW THE BOAT
We hear phrases: “He made me do it.”
“I never wanted that.” The boy’s boat gets
Pushed out on the sea, and before long the tidal
Currents guide it from beneath. He goes to sleep.
Then he meets a woman, and marries her even though
He doesn’t want to. He says, “It was the current.”
But some tiny black figure swims below the boat,
Pushing it. This man or god works all night.
Then what? Months go by, years, twenty years.
A lot of water. The boat hits gravel.
It’s an island—the kind where giants live.
“Don’t say you didn’t want it. Just get ready.”
THE MAN WHO DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS HIS
There was a man who didn’t know what was his.
He thought as a boy that some demon forced him
To wear “his” clothes and live in “his” room
And sit on “his” chair and be a child of “his” parents.
Each time he sat down to dinner, it happened again.
His own birthday party belonged to someone else.
And—was it sweet potatoes that he liked?—
He should resist them. Whose plate is this?
This man will be like a lean-to attached
To a house. It doesn’t have a foundation.
This man is helpful and hostile in each moment.
This man leans toward you and leans away.
Maybe you’ve met this man who doesn’t know what is his.
THE MOUSE
It’s good to have poems
That begin with tea,
And end with God.
A man is drinking tea,
Let’s say, and a mouse
Runs across the floor.
It makes him think
Of all hidden things.
A mouse is a furry
Cruelty with paws.
It’s a secret with ears,
A shame the man
Thought he could tell
No one of, a shame
That searches quietly
For kernels of grain
Below that awful
Cat of Augustine.
THE STORM
A sadness comes when we think back.
The car says, “I will bring you home.”
Confusion says, “Is it all clear?”
The driver says, “A storm is coming.”
The car was still warming up
When the storm came. Like all storms,
It lacked subtlety and obeyed
Something or someone irresistible.
The people stood looking out at the car.
There wasn’t room for everyone.
Someone would be left behind
In the cold house. Human longing
Says, “I know there’s a better place.”
The car says, “Let’s stop talking and go.”
Confusion says that we’re quite clear about it.
And the storm says, “Here I come.”
THE YELLOW DOT
In memory of Jane Kenyon
God does what she wants. She has very large
Tractors. She lives at night in the sewing room
Doing stitchery. Then chunks of land at mid-
Sea disappear. The husband knows that his wife
Is still breathing. God has arranged the open
Grave. That grave is not what we want,
But to God it’s a tiny hole, and he has
The needle, draws thread through it, and soon
“Don’t let her die!” But God says, “I
Need a yellow dot here, near the mailbox.”
IV
IT’S AS IF SOMEONE ELSE IS WITH ME
1
It’s as if someone else is here with me, here in this room
In which I lie. The longing the ear feels for sound
Has given me the sweetness that I confuse with Her.
The joy of being alone, eating the honey of words.
The white-walled room, and Stevens, and the sun.
This is the joy of the soul that has preserved
Itself despite fleas and soap in the light-hearted sun.
One is not alone when one is alone, if She
Is here. It is a She that no one loves, a She
That one loves when one loves what one does love.
2
November is gone, bare trees, winter.
At nightfall the lonely streets fill with
Ice and cars. Loneliness fills my chest,
As if I walked all night by the North Sea.
I am here, somewhere near the edge of life,
A warm room, lamps, some poems I love—
To nudge a poem along toward its beauty—
Is that selfishness? Is it something silly?
Do others love doing this? Longing
To find her in a phrase, and be close
There, kissing the walls and the doorframe.
Happy in the change of a single word.
3
A lamp pours light into the room, and it’s your
Room, and you write poems there. You never
Tire of the curving lines, and the freedom of the sounds,
And the demons peering around the molding.
The beauty that six or seven words can bring
Together makes the whole brain sing.
And I feel like a single-souled cook in the Middle
Ages praising God in the kitchen pans.
But our praise is more like humming of bees.
What if a beehive were run this way? Who would
Eat up all the honey? Don’t worry about it.
The workers say, “I’ll fly out and be religious.”
4
It’s morning and it’s calm. And the man
Writes along, inviting this detail
And that—looking toward some playful life.
What life? Oh never mind—the life of language.
And thinking. Longing waves one arm,
And the woman inside us looks out
From her eternal indolences, feeding
The hummingbirds with her flowery thoughts.
I lie here with a cover and coffee and a pen,
Feeling delight in being a child of language,
Neither man nor woman exactly, but a young monk
In a skin boat, bobbing among the seals of sound.
5
I’ve been thinking about these little adventures
In morning longing—these embarkations,
Excursions in round hideboats on the sea,
Passing over the beings far below.
The deep vowels—perhaps whales—mourn
And sing at their stone table five miles down
On the ocean floor. They mourn some loss.
But the small finny sounds, the ers and ins
And ors and ings, mourn as well—we don’t
Know what. Perhaps vowels were all created
In a moment of sorrow before creation—
A grief they’ve not been able to sing in this life.
6
It’s good to remain in bed a while, and listen
For the ay slyly hidden in sequacious,
And scent in summer world the two ers.
I especially love the in hidden in woodbins.
Am I li
ke the hog snuffling for truffles,
Followed by skimpy lords in oversized furs?
For this gaiety do I need forgiveness?
Does the lark need forgiveness for its blue eggs?
So it’s a bird-like thing then, this hiding
And warming of sounds. They are the little low
Heavens in the nest; now my chest feathers
Widen, now I’m an old hen, now I am satisfied.
7
The world is its usual rich self. Disturbed news
Came before sleep, then hours below light, finally
A return to coffee and the joy of unfinished poems.
It is early October, bright leaves falling everywhere.
What could it mean that such sharp leaves fall?
Does it imply that the best are called first?
Do we long to think that when a baby
Dies early it nevertheless blesses the stars?
I don’t want to imply such abundance of meaning
Exists in me. A lamppost shines over
The ocean. The waves take what they want of the light.
The rest they give back, to the hospitals and the poor.
8
The dawn comes. Leaves feel it’s time
To say something, and I feel myself drawn
To You. I know this is wrong.
To be drawn to You can cause trouble,
I do so against all advice, from that one
In me who saved me by keeping me alone.
I’ve lived in so many houses, where
You were not. If You became a dock
I became a boat and pushed away.
Those who are drawn to You become land
If You are land, or water if You are water.
I want nothing from You but to see You.
A WEEK OF POEMS AT BENNINGTON
SUNDAY
THE DOG’S EARS
A little snow. Coffee. The bowled-over branches,
The wind; it is cold outdoors; but in the bed
It’s warm, in the early lamplight, reading poems.
These fingers, so rosy, so alive, move about
This book. Here is my wide-traveling palm,
The thumb that looks like my father’s, the wedding ring.
It’s time to prepare myself, as a friend suggested,
“Not to be here.” It will happen. People will say,
“That day the dish lay empty on the brown table.
“The gold knob shone alone in the dark.
The light came in, and no eyes received it,
And bits of ice hung on the dog’s ears.”
MONDAY
WHEN THE CAT STOLE THE MILK
Well there it is. There’s nothing to do.
The cat steals the milk and it’s gone.
Then the cat steals you, and you’re found
Days later, with milk on your face.
That implies that you become whoever
Steals you. The trees steal a man,
And an old birch becomes his wife
And they live together in the woods.
Some of us have always wanted
God to steal us. Then our friends
Would call each other, and print
Posters, and we would never be found.
TUESDAY
BEING HAPPY ALL NIGHT
It’s as if the mice stayed warm inside the snow,
As if my cells heard laughing from the Roman vineyards.
Mice slept despite the cruel songs of the stars.
We laughed and woke and sniffed and slept again.
Some people inside my body last night
Married each other just in order to dance.
And Sara Grethe smiled so proudly the men
Kicked their heels on the planks, but kept the beat.
Oh I think it was the books I read long ago.
It’s as if I joined other readers on a long road.
We found dead men hanging in a meadow.
We took dew from the grass and washed our eyes.
For S. B.
WEDNESDAY
THE WIDOWED FRIEND
I hear rustlings from the next room; and he is ready
To leave. “See you tomorrow.” A long line
Of feeling follows him out the door. He carries
On his shoulders—which slope a little—a divorce,
Prosody, marital love as pertinacious
As a bulldog’s mouth, a grandfather, grand-
Mother. Land and death weigh him down, so he
Becomes a large man on a thin bridge walking.
If, now, he lives alone, who will hear
The thin cough in the morning, who will hear
The milk hitting the pail when the old man sings?
Who will notice the forty drafts on yellow paper?
It’s up to us to see him, call him, and say,
“Stay, friend, be with us, tell me what happened.”
For D. H.
THURSDAY
WE ONLY SAY THAT
“There are so many things to love around here.”
We only say that when we want to hint
Something—the day after we notice a woman,
Who waves a hand with her female bravery.
We say, “The icicles are really brilliant today!”
Or, “Let’s make fun of other people.”
That would bring us closer. Or “Martha brought
Her dog out into the morning snow.”
Her hand reaches up to brush her neck,
Or she puts on her boots. A voice inside us
Says, “Oh a woman! Let’s close the door.
Let’s flirt and not flirt. Let’s play cards and laugh.”
FRIDAY
WOUNDING OTHERS
Well I do it, and it’s done.
And it can’t be taken back.
There’s a wound in my chest
Where I wounded others.
But it will knit, or heal, in time.
That’s what you say.
And some that I wounded
Claim: “I am the better for it.”
Was it truth-telling or
A thin man with a knife?
The wound will close, or heal
In time. That’s what you say.
SATURDAY
WHAT THE BUTTOCKS THINK
Don’t tell me that nothing can be done.
The tongue says, “I know I can change things.”
The toe says, “I have my ways.”
The heart is weeping and remembering Eden.
Legs think that a good run will do it.
Tongue has free tickets; he’ll fly to heaven.
But the buttocks see everything upside down:
They want you to put your head down there,
Remind the heart it was upside down
In the womb, so that when your mother,
Knowing exactly where she was going,
Walked upstairs, you weren’t going anywhere.
WHAT BILL STAFFORD WAS LIKE
With small steps he climbed very high mountains
And offered distinctions to persuasive storms,
Delicacies at the edge of something larger,
A comfort in walking on ground close to water.
Something large, but it wasn’t an animal snorting
In a cave, more like the rustling of a thousand
Small-winged birds, all together, comfortable,
In a field, feeding. One felt at home nearby.
There are many possible ways to see the world
(To whom we should be fair). When someone
Spoke, his face thought, and his eyebrow
Said it. The words weren’t always comforting,
But calculated to nudge us along to that place
—Just over there—where we would be safe for the night.
A POEM IS SOME REMEMBERING
It’s morning; there’s lamplight, and the room is still.
All night as we slept, memory flowed
Onto the brain shore. Memories rise and fall
And leave behind a delicate openness to death,
Almost a longing to die. That longing
Is like rain on canyon ground, only droplets.
And the brain is like brown sand, it stretches
On and on, and it absorbs the rain.
What is a poem? “Oh it is some remembering,”
A woman said to me. “Thousands of years ago,
When I stood by a grave, a woman handed
Me a small bone made red with ochre.
“It was a poem about heaven, and I wept so.”
RETHINKING WALLACE STEVENS
What can I say? You have this funny