Poetry 365

Every morning I wake
with blood on my pillow
and the taste of fresh blood
like iron against my tongue.

They say my gums are inflamed
and the bleeding will cease
at first frost—
Each morning the sun wakes me.

I think some nerve is exposed—
it is only August—
or a fine skin was peeled off
the night you were killed.

Conversations at breakfast
have the stripped truth of poems.
All day I wait
for a miraculous letter.

In fact my whole life
leans forward slightly, waiting.
Each day lurches downhill
to its red undoing.

In little dark-ringed frames of light
the neighborhood is dining: heads nod
to one another; candlelight catches on things—
threads of it snapped by knives and forks,
the glass of water, the wine. No one

is not at home here except the man
walking the block alone and peering in
as if he were a visitor from beyond
and wanted to feast his eyes again
on this picture of felicity, trying to read

the lips winestained and quick in talk,
faces where light plays like a dog
in water—haloes of hair, hands flying.

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew;
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

Yet as the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune—
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,—who cares?
But ‘tis twilight, you see,—with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart,
that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born—
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
the water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets
all of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake,
Lalla Ded sand, no larger
than on seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake
then give me the song.

In a cream-colored room with blue curtains,
a woman in long skirts gazes at her lamp.
She perfects “the art of longing.” In poems I have
gone with her to that room, escaped with relief
the travail of the fathers, their difficult
beauty, made no room in my words for the wood
they chopped, the cabbages they grew. Now I see
their hands, the nails squared, earth biting down
in the furrows. I smell the stew of tobacco, hoe-
handles and sweat, and today I long to go down
in a dense atmosphere of men working, the stone
that sinks below those lilies floating on water.

In those days—they were long ago—
The snow was cold, the night was black.
I licked from my cracked lips
A snowflake, as I looked back

Through branches, the last uneasy snow.
Your shadow, there in the light, was still.
In a little the light went out.
I went on, stumbling—till at last the hill

Hid the house. And, yawning,
In bed in my room, alone,
I would look out: over the quilted
Rooftops, the clear stars shone.

How poor and miserable we were,
How seldom together!
And yet after so long one thinks:
In those days everything was better.

Late at night, when you’re so lonely
your shoulders lean to the center of your body,
you call no one and you don’t call out.

This is dignity. This is the pure loneliness
that made Christ think he was God.
This is why lunatics smile at their thoughts.

Even the best moment, as you slip
half-a-foot deep into someone you like,
deepens to the loneliness in it

and loneliness that’s not. If you believe in
Christ hanging on the cross, his arms spread
as if to embrace the Father he calls

who is somewhere else, you still might hear
your own voice at your next great embrace
thinking Loneliness in another can’t be touched,

like Christ’s voice at death answering himself.

We are a meadow where the bees hum,
mind and body are almost one

as the fire snaps in the stove
and out eyes close,

and mouth to mouth, the covers
pulled over our shoulders,

we drowse as horses drowse afield,
in accord; though the fall cold

surrounds our warm bed, and though
by day we are singular and often lonely.

When the sparrow flies to the delicate branch
He seems to be a heavy one alighting there,
It is March, and the fine twigs dance
As the boisterous sparrow plunges masterfully.

Fly again to my heart of my beloved,
MY heart flies too high when you are absent.

it was December
and yes finally
you wanted me
we ran down the
slick narrow road
houses leaned
together the colors
wine and brown
remember the cracked
snow our scarves
floating getting
there out of
breath our
hair melting
boots clicked under
the door there
were quilts on the
sloped ceiling
and the old
stove you smile
toward going to
heat up some
coffee. I kept
looking around
to get it right:
your suede jacket
hanging in several
places your
mouth was
corduroy I wanted
to touch
but even in the
dream every
time I came close to you
that place that
was you
changed to air