Snow
Walking through a field with my little brother SethI pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
From The Roof
This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowersanimal vines twisting over the line and
slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
I recall out of my joy a night of misery
walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth,
halfmade foundations and unfinished
Call To Arms
Only you, O Iranian woman, have remainedIn bonds of wretchedness, misfortune, and cruelty;
If you want these bonds broken,
grasp the skirt of obstinacy
Do not relent because of pleasing promises,
never submit to tyranny;
become a flood of anger, hate and pain,
excise the heavy stone of cruelty.
Where You Are Planted
He's as high as a georgia pine, my father'd say, half laughing. southern treesas measure, metaphor. highways lined with kudzu-covered southern trees.
fuchsia, lavender, white, light pink, purple : crape myrtle bouquets burst
open on sturdy branches of skin-smooth bark : my favorite southern trees.
one hundred degrees in the shade : we settle into still pools of humidity, moss-
dark, beneath live oaks. southern heat makes us grateful for southern trees.
the maples in our front yard flew in spring on helicopter wings. in fall, we
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling whatthe heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Love Poem
The rain whistled.A taxi brought me to your apartment building
And there I stood.
I had dreamed a dream
Of us in a bedroom.
The light shining upon us in white sheets.
You were singing me a song of your sailing days
People Of Watts
where we come from, sometimes, beautyfloats around us like clouds
the way leaves rustle in the breeze
and cornbread and barbecue swing out the backdoor
and tease all our senses as the sun goes down.
dreams and memories rest by fences
Texas accents rev up like our engines
customized sparkling powerful as the arms
that hold us tightly black n fragrant
The Color Green
Two floors up, at the corner of Hearst and Shattuck,he's clamped for good
in an iron lung. When it's time to eat
he nudges his head a sweaty mile
to the edge of the pillow. It takes a while.
His brilliant bloodshot light-blue eyes
steer me from cupboard to fridge:
he would like his chicken burrito
cut into bite-size pieces,
The Hampstead Heath Toad
It was one of thosebeautiful
English summer nights
when levitating
on the moonshine
of a moonlit world
was your entranced lucky
fate.
The lilac shimmer of silent
Talking To Grief
Ah, Grief, I should not treat youlike a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
The Key to the Kingdom
It's not exile, homes and families behindus, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
from the crumbling empires round us,
without stamps or Eurovision entries.
No-one does it with a rough guide in a week.
You inhabit it
or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe
Work
Pushing off on her back outInto the fishpond's cold
Archaic glitter, my naked wife
Could not have guessed how
High she rode into the noon
Sky, a brightened polestar
Gliding out between nothing
And nothing, between a sun-
All All And All The Dry Worlds Lever
IAll all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.
How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
In the Theatre
Sister saying—‘Soon you'll be back in the ward,'sister thinking—‘Only two more on the list,'
the patient saying—‘Thank you, I feel fine';
small voices, small lies, nothing untoward,
though, soon, he would blink again and again
because of the fingers of Lambert Rogers,
rash as a blind man's, inside his soft brain.
If items of horror can make a man laugh
then laugh at this: one hour later, the growth
Sweet Rain
Tasted, smelled, rising from hot asphalt, sweet rainin the street where a man works on his camper in the rain.
Like desire, felt less often now we are old, the joint pain
and fatigue competing with that other. Sweet rain
rising, lifting the dampened piano that hides its teeth
beneath a lid. Sweet rain, bird song, all the rain-wet
exigencies a house brings to bear. Valence, curtain,
While Writing
Someone inside says, "Get busy."But I've got appointments to keep,
I have an abstemious love of equations calculated quickly
While the tepid day melts into design.
And the high cheekbones of the beautiful life
Bear the loose look of a calendar by lamplight.
I search for patterns in everything.
I am tied in knots of comprehension.
Train To Derry
A crow beats on the updraft over a scragged hawthorn,rocked but plunging on. A stick of Paras, bristling with nerves,
coughs and boots forward along the sheugh.
Long after the soldiers have gone, the crows will settle home.
Since Newry, choppers have been battling back and forth
across the track. These trains are overheated, sweat
stings in my underslept eyes; I'd rather the crows' lift and pluck
than to be here, rocked to the quick, driving on Derry.
Democracy
Democracy will not comeToday, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.
The Alphabet
The letters of the Jews as strict as flamesOr little terrible flowers lean
Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages,
Singing through solid stone the sacred names.
The letters of the Jews are black and clean
And lie in chain-line over Christian pages.
The chosen letters bristle like barbed wire
That hedge the flesh of man,
Twisting and tightening the book that warns.
These words, this burning bush, this flickering pyre
Question
Body my housemy horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go