permit the night to cleanse its air
with moving vans
olympic as dawn
Upon the big liner
moored at last
by little landscape poems
frail as lifeboats
settling down to rest
While we kiss in the saloon
far above the cries
from plows and auto parts
sending up goodbyes
as ugly as those waifs of paper
on the pier
or that truck profiled into gloom
his whole insides protest
Departures make disgust into a cartoon
of rose Nabiscos and I digest
the sinking afternoon in a fleet
of taxicabs dead sure as you
and Carthage after?
we’ll float on that wine-dark sea
Safe Flights
To no longer like the taste of whisky
This is saying also no to you who are
A goldfinch in the breeze,
To no longer wish winter to have explanations
To lace your shoes in the snow
With no need to remember,
To no longer pull the two blankets
Over your shoulders, to no longer feel the cold,
To no longer pretend in the flower
There is a secret, or in the earth a tomb,
And no longer water on stone hurting the ear,
Making those five noises of thunder
And you tremble no longer.
To no longer travel over mountains,
Over small farms
No longer the weather changing and the atmosphere
Causing delicate breaks where the nerves confuse,
To no longer have your name shouted
And your birthmark again described,
To no longer fear where the rapids break
A miniature rock under your canoe,
To no longer repeat the mirror is water,
The house is a burden to the weak cyclone,
You are under a tent where promises perform
And the ring you grasp as an aerialist
Glides, no longer.
Sadness
We were walking down a narrow street.
It was late autumn. In my hotel room
the steam heat had been turned on. In the office
buildings, in the boutiques, coal was lit.
That morning I had been standing at the window
looking out on the Tuileries. I had been crying
because the yellow tulips were gone and all the children
were wearing thin coats. I felt an embarrassing pain
distributed over my arms which were powerless
to order the leaves to blossom or the old women
on the stairs to buy shoes to cover their feet.
Then you took my hand. You told me that love
was a sudden disturbance of the nerve ends
that startled the fibres and made them new
again. You quoted a song about a man running
by the sea who drew into his lungs the air
that had several times been around the world.
A speck of coal dust floated down and settled on my lapel.
Quickly with your free hand you rubbed out the spot.
Yet do you know I shall carry always
that blemish on my breast?
Jaffa Juce*
This orange bric-a-brac has a paper luster very decadent.
Crossing Hyde Park I am brimming
with sad thoughts of the Royal Bank of Scotland
when the shepherd calls to his sheep
and daylight crisps my hands in streaks.
The primroses are lying in thin groups of threes
transparent as the fool’s stammer
when the old king came wailing to his pool
and vagabonds clustered
to the guard’s hall
hoping to see
a burning palace. Then the family
sat down to tea.
There’s a lady in a macintosh
trying to climb a wall. Her tears
her broken tears,
more fabulous for their tumult caused
(by moonlight assembling pears,
a Jericho harp for the guests)
she has heard the museum mating chairs,
seen the varnished fragments of the bomb
meeting in a closer circle.
Reginald after the battle!
What a cry for a miner, alas he’s lost
his keys and can’t locate the platter.
The silver cooking geese have left the plain,
no one shoves the tin
My darling
Weymouth sands are green
There’s drought in the wind
there’s ash in our eye
the poor dead hands are clean
Sing derry down
the hospital shakes its leaves
For the players
and their laughing daughters, the morning is bright
upon the square, the air shows its face
like a powdered Indian, the fog
is braced with sun; over the setting
heyday toasts there’s a ring of moon
for tomorrow.
A crown lies
under the cake. They’re borrowing streamers
for the race and white candles with tartan crests
burn in the cellars below the streets. The Crescent
has an Egyptian hue. Everyone is civil.
Buns in the oven, cider in the hall,
pleasant sings our land.
Who frets above the stair with sour