alive in our hearts
as yesterday or tomorrow
or the ghost ship from Athens
plying its shuttered bark
crying Zeus! Zeus!
as it shatters this pier.
People in Wartime
Attilio, the minor Hun,
Rose with the sun.
Washed his face
In a little grape
And cried, This is I.
This is one who would
Conquer
The fever
And the world outside.
With this he took a stride
Across his hall bedroom,
Faced the broken glass
And into the mirror sighed,
Such was I.
Now am I to become
This singular juxtaposition
Between the man
And his decision
Am I history, or am I a plot?
Or such was his reflection
For
He was not interested
In
Art
Or politics
Or women
Or even getting ahead,
I have said
He was a minor character
And his misery
Was not Alpine,
But extremely particular,
Was he history, or was he not?
Landing
This afternoon I am very careful.
I watch myself. I watch the egg
Unhatched. I am the sight
Over the egg, like an aviator
Unknowing, but confident
That the instrument will behave.
The window outscaped
Brings the climate indoors.
The eye is free, adorned
By that which is becoming.
What is near, prevalent, adored
By the inner is echoed
By the ear. My conscience
Is receptive. I sight the cause
Of the exterior and so I hear
What is sounded in the interior.
Yet the break is this:
The germinal is split.
Not content with eye and sphere,
I race the continual
And drift to the absurd,
The conjugal, from which
The flight is only heard.
History
for Frank O’Hara
Old Thing
We have escaped
from that pale refrigerator
you wrote about
Here
amid the wild woodbine landscapes
wearing a paper hat
I recollect
the idols
in those frozen tubs
secluded by buttresses
when the Church of
Our Lady cried Enough
and we were banished
Sighing
strangers
we are
the last even breath
poets
Yet the funicular
was tied by a rope
It could only cry
looking down
that midnight hill
My lights are
bright
the walk is
irregular
your initials
are carved on the sill.
Mon Ami!
the funicular
has a knife
in its side
Ah allow these nightingales to nurse us
Oriental Movie
Lady your orange back
is waving at Foujita
we’re all in a canoe
sipping the light drink of the tamarind bark
while the white-eyed paddles
whisper orange
and blue
