the snow
The news again challenges our speech
The speech or the voices of our young people
The radio newscast reporting now the mad student
Leaps on the poor girl with his brush and pot
Of paint and paints her face some innocent hue
Dripping on her white somnolent dress
Causing her boyfriend to despise her
Singing that he loved only her guilt
The schizoid art students of Minnesota
Have come to New York City and ruined
Our city what with their crimes of bad
Grammer “farm life” German extraction
The schizoid art students of Minnesota
ENGAGEMENT
Keep your trust with him and do not go near
The dunce of charity who seeks to hold you
By your own want and tells his to physicians
Leaving his gifts a noontide charm of dew
Your hopeful orchard fields darken with fear
Buttoning the shirt we have depraved with flowers
Against the sudden cold rain
We do not see the force that makes us fall
Prey to the whining genius of the dark
Hours stealing our casual garden the march
Of our imagination to the lake and the arc
The light builds there, and we must fall
Victims to the petty erosions of the dark
The picture of the beautiful lake:
The secretive launch pressing our suspect horizon
Someone loves you the green wave you float on
You are our sensuous lady but exceedingly dull
So what will you have now, your dominion
You burn like the moon in the night for what
Trembling leaf in a pond and for whose sake
He would see currency in your lies and mark
The coursing of your blood a plot
Don’t you hear what the chariot says
As it crushes the air we are excited
To breathe Don’t you hear teenage songs
From 1956 flowing around your knees like
The surf we remember last summer afternoons
When you press your lips softly on the
Letter you send me or telephone and argue
With me about inconsequential events of
The air, why are you hearing only our voices
Only the signature of the electric space
We confine to chaperone us
The pedestrian bridge over the highway and
The moonlight; auto lights like an electric river
Sound of the wheels like a stagnant pond
Under the evening under the summer moon
Did you hear the Chinese verses the tires
Were saying, telling you the direction
These words are taking which way over
The strange map of our feelings. Our feelings.
Our feelings. Our feelings Are we trapped
In the speed of the mind’s careless radar
Zone where I am the driver If I were the driver
The airy car would run through villages
Through dark and accident and rain
Securing the award of my attentions
To you, which is a prize I wd greedily covet
And drive angrily to win year after year
Don’t you hear the proud heart’s cylinders
Facetiously singing
The moon is rouge on the horizon’s foggy face
To ask her for one dance, the dense
Fog of the 2-step recorded music
Coming to circle the womanly heart
Of the night; goes through his head.
How can it be that he is not the lover
She has sought in her French books
His regard is for her the etiquette of statues
Another time he speaks to her in French
Which is a voice so distant calm and grave
And its inflections darling gauzy Sundays
He invites her into the Bijou’s white frame
Where the minutes admire the beautiful fan
And her escort sleeping in the light
THE CONVENTION
The din of your heart on a desolate evening
Across the bleak court your white tears flash
In a soft room. The sharp hands
Replace the garish furniture and
Still I sit here the last image of
Your striking care. The autumn snow
Collects
