Snow Angel
The storm’s threat and ache
Angels are in peril there on the rooftops
Angels are grey
Sticks the prancing
sticks to give them shelter it rained and webs
broke wings shrank the branch-bearing river
shook
bewildered as a sun
Magister who brings
thunder the firs are ready for their burden
underground fires are lit
in the dark sits
the first Angel of snow
tomorrow in the outraged
sky
his form
Santa Fe Trail
I go separately
The sweet knees of oxen have pressed a path for me
ghosts with ingots have burned their bare hands
it is the dungaree darkness with China stitched
where the westerly winds
and the traveler’s checks
the evensong of salesmen
the glistening paraphernalia of twin suitcases
where no one speaks English.
I go separately
It is the wind, the rubber wind
when we brush our teeth in the way station
a climate to beard. What forks these roads?
Who clammers o’er the twain?
What murmurs and rustles in the distance
in the white branches where the light is whipped
piercing at the crossing as into the dunes we simmer
and toss ourselves awhile the motor pants like a forest
where owls from their bandaged eyes send messages
to the Indian couple. Peaks have you heard?
I go separately
We have reached the arithmetics, are partially quenched
while it growls and hints in the lost trapper’s voice
She is coming toward us like a session of pines
in the wild wooden air where rabbits are frozen,
O mother of lakes and glaciers, save us gamblers
whose wagon is perilously rapt.
Nocturne
Toi, Seine, tu n’as rien. Deux quais, et voilà tout …
VERLAINE
Do you know what silence means?
Deux quais, et voilà tout.
My dear, my dear,
The skaters tremble.
In the grey there is no void.
The grey resembles ice as the stairs
This city. The voice begins
Like the ice to tremble.
Oh! foreign vase
On the mantel your force
Is tremendous as if the ice were soft
And you immovable.
Or the white statue,
Statue of lace
Moved even her hand or her face
Leaned backward into the past.
So my mysterious, unbroken calm,
This fortitude you have kept for an hour.
Do you know what silence means?
Deux quais et voilà tout.
The First of May
My eye cannot turn toward you
Night
because it has Day watching.
(A spoon heated over the fire,
a cup with milk in it
shadows at its brim.)
I would like to go for a walk
in the dark
without moonbeams
down that path of mushrooms
in my nightdress
without shoes.
I would like to sit under your wall
and you fortify me
as you did once on the road,
a stranger.
I would like to steal
and take it to you.
I would like to go to a hotel
with you.
Turn out the lights!
Your arms, I feel them,
your eyes, I cannot see them.
Day is watching me
from over the transom.
Day whose light is blinding me,
as lightning on the firebreak
of a mountain,
who brings me a quail
caught in the smoldering underbrush
where the smell is of yucca
and sage.
Day brings me this bird.
I must go and feed it
with milk from the cup,
a few drops on the spoon.
The sirens are screaming
in the streets.
It is an order to take cover.
And I, I
must bring this bird to shelter.
I must not be caught out
in the night
unless I am willing
to give you up Day forever,
when I join the guerrillas,
who would like my cup
and spoon,
who would roast my bird
and eat it.
Dardanella
Those forms in gauze
we see as arches
the tile replaces with mountain
the script says: As water this life
poets go to the mountain
followed by girls in white
The king of the heavy mustache
“like buffaloes these men”
cannot find dawn in his sleep
So