The barbed wire and
sunlight will be his only
friends. Perhaps, he will discern
freedom as a rat swimming in
a ditch, or pleasure as the
smell of green tea. And the full
moon, crazed with the voices
of dead men, will make him
relive again and again the double
ax murder. And will he know
himself? The Inuit have
thirty words describing varieties
of ice. I see a man in
twenty years walking into the
sunlight. He will know a thousand
words for varieties of pain.
His first act may be a knife
at the jugular, and his ensuing acts
may be terrors of the earth.
Pouilly-Fuissé
1
Foxes and pheasants adorn
the store window. A woman sells
dried anise, dried purple
mallow, and caviar inside.
But we don’t live on purple mallow,
or Pouilly-Fuissé. I think
of the Africans I met
going to pick grapes at
$1.40 an hour.
2
A man trying to sell roses
throws water, and, instead of sprinkling,
drenches the roses. And
an old woman carrying leeks
wears shoes at least three sizes too large,
and walks almost crippled.
But, then, they make a world of
leeks and roses.
Alba
South light
wakes us. I turn
to your touch,
your long hair, and
slow kisses.
A wren sings in
the clear light.
Red cassia
blossoms in your
hands. And all
day the wren sings
in the day’s
branches.
The Opal
Nailing up chicken wire on the frame house,
or using a chalk line, or checking a level at a glance
gets to be easy.
We install double-pane windows
pressurized with argon between the panes
for elevations over 4500’.
And use pick and shovel
to dig for the footing for the annex. Lay cinder blocks,
and check levels. Pour the cement floor, and
use wood float and steel trowel to finish the surface
as it sets.
Nailing into rough, dense, knotted
two-by-twelves, or using a chalk line to mark the locations
of the fire blocks, or checking the level of a
stained eight-by-ten window header gets to be
easier.
In nailing up chicken wire, we learn
how to cut for the canal, pull the wire up over the
firewall, make cuts for the corners, tuck it
around back, and nail two-head nails into the stud.
And when the footing is slightly uneven and we are
laying a first row of cinder blocks, find that a
small pebble under a corner often levels the top
to the row.
And, starting on rock lath, the various
stages of a house—cutting vigas, cleaning aspens for
latillas, installing oak doors, or plastering the
adobe wall—are facets of a cut opal.
Pentimento
In sepia, I draw a face and hands,
a river, a hawk. When I read your letter,
and feel the silences, the slow
changes in perspective, in feeling,
I make a fresco—fading even as it’s painted.
It’s pentimento: knowing the original
sepia lines, and the changes:
the left hand in darkness, a face, effaced,
in fading light, and the right hand
pointing to a Giotto-blue
