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The old woman
walks past the battered wall
A shadow follows her
twisted and huge
It is her shadow
She doesn’t want to see it
She keeps her eyes on the ground
humming some tuneless tune
Thirty-nine geese
and the shadows of thirty-nine geese
from DEPARTURE
1973
The Cache
Behind the house in a field
there’s a metal box I buried
full of childhood treasure a map
of my secret place a few lead pennies
from 1943
The rest I’ve forgotten
forgotten even the exact spot
I covered with moss and loam
Now I’m back and twenty years
have made so little difference
I suspect they never happened
this face in the mirror
aged with pencil and putty
I suspect even
the box has moved as a mole would move
to a new place long ago
Notes from the Underground
I enter the book
amazed to discover
the destruction of happiness
At times I think I’m a reasonable man
though I have no use for reason
Faces intrude saying, I’m to be considered
Stay at home Don’t take a chance
It rains when you least expect it
No one relies on tomorrow
a proverb the interpretation
the words of the wise their dark sayings
like giving everything you own away
relieved to discover
it was never yours
from THE CHINESE POEMS
1978
Dripping from the eaves everything melting
clearheaded this morning in the mist
drifting like life from the ice
The order and disorder of that order
“Nothing is so important”
The way we read that
defines our vision
We had better leave it
“Nothing is”
from Letters to a Distant Friend
1
Nothing seems to get any better
I have given up waiting for more
Once we had youth on our side
full of promise
Now we are what we are
and struggle with one aging mind
to climb the wall
we no longer believe is there
2
For months we live a day’s trip apart
absorbed in writing flowers for the void
What are they to us
but orphaned children
What are these days that won’t come again
but moments we labor
to preserve our loneliness
5
Another winter morning
I’m expecting your call
I stand close to the window and watch
my breath form a rose on the glass
I scratch your name on it
then wipe it away with my sleeve
listening for your tires
to crunch through the ice on the drive
I notice how snow glistens on the pine boughs
that there’s no wind at all
It’s too cold for my walk
Nothing dares disturb this stillness
I know you aren’t coming
I press my cheek to the window
The telephone rings
My breath forms a rose on the glass
9
Happiness is only one condition
Fools
