we are usually busy or obtuse;
but it’s the thought that counts. Surely he thinks—
of us, I mean; or, well, of anything.
Does he need to think? What does he think with?
Does he ponder and discover his sins?
What are sins but despair, longing denied?—
and now he has his longing back, repaired,
the sins unnecessary, satisfied
like flowers with their water, light, and air;
like earth content with earth, and dust with dust.
Then what are we to him, or he to us?
he brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death
Just leave her, Johnny, leave her—this soft ship
you won by birth: carpentered its green keel,
its twitchy rudder to its overweening
prow, rough-hewing it quick chip by quick chip,
stepping a mainmast shaped by other hands,
reefing sails to the wind’s ghostly heartbeat,
working its veins and arteries like sheets—
and now the anchor drags and holds to land.
Step ashore and leave the corpse on the table,
the undertaker’s forceps in her chest,
embalming fluid flooding her grey veins:
say goodbye, let her lie, and let her rest,
for not a hair nor heartbeat can be saved.
She brought you to the shore’s forgiving breast.
Psalm 108
I will sing
My sonnet is a song of prayer—lament
and dismay at having to do without;
or wish-like vision “stricken-through with doubt;”
sometimes a moody new Jerusalem
of pagan sacrifice and praise, raw awe
and horror discordant, blaring like brass
and dental as gold in an out-held hand,
metered to pieces, obedient to law.
And sometimes the listener writes the lines,
composes the notes—and then I listen
more than complain. It isn’t praise I hear;
it is my own heartbeat listening blind,
shuddering at the universal scare
and clawing the scales for intervals of air.
Psalm 109
They remember not to show mercy, but persecute the poor and needy, and even slay the broken in heart.
The broken-hearted fill the earth like krill;
we feed on them, mouths wide as enterprise—
or else why would the desperate buy and buy?
We feed them diabetes and send our bill.
We have the law and profits on our side;
the churches of the dream are telecast
on screens the size of football fields. The last
Mohican signed his ballpoint x and died.
But let us give ourselves to prayer. The Lord
forgive us these our little sins; be pleased
to overlook the great: our blaspheming
the Holy Ghost, the infinitely poor,
whose universe was sold for the spare parts.
She broods and mourns. We’re told it broke her heart.
Psalm 110
he shall judge among the heathen
The heathen went with Robert Kennedy
some distant place where being born again
is wise but doesn’t matter worth a damn;
or they are marching to Montgomery
singing the old songs, walking hand in hand
with Bobby, Martin, Abraham, and John;
or they took the next bus for Birmingham
to see that insolently naïve swan
stagger on the cold wind, and try again.
Let us follow them to San Francisco
with flowers in our hair—one for children
born to marry the universal soldier,
one for the country I remember when,
and one for Jesus when he comes again.
I’m writing now because there’s nothing else
to do while waiting for that distant drum.
This is my way of going on a drunk
to change the world. The woman at the well
hallucinates under the midday sun.
She would have come early in the morning,
the doomed villagers shuffling and yawning,
but these days she prefers to come alone,
lowering the pail down that sunless hole;
until someone asks the smallest favor—
Water, just a little cup of water,
for the future, not for me, for the soul—
and the universal soldier’s daughter,
