is green. I recognize
the powerful daylight heat. My savages
a cooling torpor rearranges,
as at its southern margins, the oak.
From your journals
He said: “In nymphic barque”
She replied: “A porcupine.”
And later,
“Reason selects our otherness.”
In the broad strange light,
a region of silences. The delphic
clouded tree knows its decline,
if you were to forget animosities, girls,
and in the pagan grass slide heedlessly
blossoms would return such songs
as I’ve sung of you, the youthful ashes
fling upward settling fragrant
brightness on your dusky marquetry,
All grey-haired my sisters
this afternoon’s seraphicness
is also fading. Linger while
I pass you quickly lest the cherry’s
bloom changed to white
fall upon my head.
Windy Afternoon
Through the wood
on his motorcycle piercing
the hawk, the jay
the blue-coated policeman
Woods, barren woods,
as this typewriter without an object
or the words that from you
fall soundless
The sun lowering
and the bags of paper
on the stoney ledge
near the waterfall
Voices down the roadway
and leaves falling over there
a great vacancy
a huge leftover
The quality of the day
that has its size in the North
and in the South
a low sighing that of wings
Describe that nude, audacious line
most lofty, practiced street
you are no longer thirsty
turn or go straight.
Russians at the Beach
The long long accent
the short vowel
that thing wrapped around a palm tree
is it this water, or this jetty?
The blue, in air dismal
to the face further than sand
then green rolling its own powder
you will provide you stranger
The cargo intimate cargo
of lashes and backs bent like a crew
the miles are vast and the isthmus
shows five-toed feet
erect thunders all afternoon
You have traveled
more than this shore where
the long bodies
wait
their thin heads
do not understand
They are bent
the breeze is light
as the step of a native is heavy
you are tired
but you breathe
and you eat
and you sleep where the stream is narrow
where the foam has left off
ascending
the day meets your borders
so easily
where you have discovered it.
The Hero Leaves His Ship
I wonder if this new reality is going to destroy me.
There under the leaves a loaf
The brick wall on it someone has put bananas
The bricks have come loose under the weight,
What a precarious architecture these apartments,
As giants once in a garden. Dear roots
Your slivers repair my throat when anguish
commences to heat and glow.
From the water
A roar. The sea has its own strong wrist
The green turf is made of shells
it is new.
I am about to use my voice
Why am I afraid that salty wing
Flying over a real hearth will stop me?
Yesterday the yellow
Tokening clouds. I said “no” to my burden,
The shrub planted on my shoulders. When snow
Falls
