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The book includes poems of family heritage, meditations on mortality and artistic expression, and love.
The book features two long works: The History of Gasoline, a single, long poem inspired by a 1972 visit to the Ford Motor Company Rouge Plant at Dearborn, Michigan, and Stops Along the Way, fourteen poems, each set in a European city visited by the author in 1976. Cover art is "In the Hand of God", an ink drawing by the author, circa 1968. |
Contents
Testimony |
Visiting My Grandmother in Miami Beach
My Grandmother’s Sheitel
Homeland
The History of Gasoline
The History of Gasoline
Life Studies
Figure Drawing
Figure Drawing
Posing with a Skeleton
Anatomy Lab
Stops Along the Way:
London
London
Train to Harwich
Amsterdam
Brugge
Paris
Strasbourg: Chateau de Portales
Leysin
Ville Franche sur Mer
Nice
Madrid
Fuengirola
Granada
Venice
Sleeping in Paris
Arrival:
The Privileged Passengers
The Privileged Passengers
“when we’are to bodies gone”
Testimony
1.
The lives of Nayan Schwarzfink
and Lillian Beretsky
have never been told outright.
Sunday afternoon visits have hinted at them.
Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and funerals are
vague reminders.
2.
These old papers
these scraps of torn and browned paper
indistinct Hebrew letters scrawled
in an uncertain hand.
The passport - AC OPTHA KH XKA -
covered in a thin black cloth
worn down to a shine.
Nathan - Hyman - Marvin
Yes, there is a pattern, a rhythm there,
I wonder if I will have the courage
when the time comes to continue it,
to name my son in its rhyme.
3.
In 1955 my grandfather was an old man who use to
reach into a large cedar closet whenever
we came to visit, and he would pull out pieces
of bubble gum for my brother and me.
That same cedar closet is now in my closet
and holds spare blankets, quilts
and pillows, and reeks of mothballs.
In 1905 Nayan Schwarzfink came to America
Nathan Schwartz lived in Williamsburg
in Brooklyn
in a tenement in the shadow of the bridge
and the river
and there Hyman grew up
there he married, divorced, and married again
gave birth to two sons and daughter
and lived his life.
4.
When we lived in Florida for two years
there was a banana tree that grew
in the backyard, and every few months
small green sprouts would form on it.
He had a revolver then that he kept beneath the register in the bar. One day he was cleaning it at home and I was standing in the corner, staring at it. Go ahead, try it, he said. In my small hands it was black metal and heavy, but I couldn't move the trigger. I tried it again with two hands, but I couldn't make it click. Okay, that's enough. I gave it back to him. Click click click.
A while after we moved back to New York, Nathan died. I hadn't seen him in several years. When we went to the Bronx apartment to see my grandmother, I quietly slipped into the bedroom and opened the cedar closet. There were two pieces of gum in the corner for my brother and me as I knew there would be. I sat by the window, chewing the gum and looked out onto the cobblestoned hill that dropped towards the bridge and the railroad tracks around the corner.
5.
My grandmother's father was a chicken farmer
and my grandfather's father made hats
in a small town outside of Warsaw
and they saw each other
only once
before the marriage.
For Nathan was then twenty five
and getting old for a bachelor in those days
and his father asked him,
as fathers usually do
when he was going to get married.
An embarrassing question under any circumstances.
Being clever, as I suspect he was,
Nathan said that if
you can fix me up with a farmer's daughter
I saw once in the village
then I'll get married.
It was arranged.
He came to America in steerage, and Lillian
came later bringing their first child
and they lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
in a tenement where the rest
of their village had settled
for at that time it was not unusual
for whole communities
to arrive on each boat.
6.
I came into possession of all this information
when after over fifty years of marriage
and ten years of mourning
my grandmother married again
and moved to Miami Beach.
It was on the ride up to The Bronx
that Sunday night
to help her pack and clean up the apartment
that my father, in a rare mood
of reminiscence
retold these old stories.
I listened to him quietly
leaning back in the upholstered seats
and watched as the night and its lights
sped backwards past the windshield.
1.
The lives of Nayan Schwarzfink
and Lillian Beretsky
have never been told outright.
Sunday afternoon visits have hinted at them.
Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and funerals are
vague reminders.
2.
These old papers
these scraps of torn and browned paper
indistinct Hebrew letters scrawled
in an uncertain hand.
The passport - AC OPTHA KH XKA -
covered in a thin black cloth
worn down to a shine.
Nathan - Hyman - Marvin
Yes, there is a pattern, a rhythm there,
I wonder if I will have the courage
when the time comes to continue it,
to name my son in its rhyme.
3.
In 1955 my grandfather was an old man who use to
reach into a large cedar closet whenever
we came to visit, and he would pull out pieces
of bubble gum for my brother and me.
That same cedar closet is now in my closet
and holds spare blankets, quilts
and pillows, and reeks of mothballs.
In 1905 Nayan Schwarzfink came to America
Nathan Schwartz lived in Williamsburg
in Brooklyn
in a tenement in the shadow of the bridge
and the river
and there Hyman grew up
there he married, divorced, and married again
gave birth to two sons and daughter
and lived his life.
4.
When we lived in Florida for two years
there was a banana tree that grew
in the backyard, and every few months
small green sprouts would form on it.
He had a revolver then that he kept beneath the register in the bar. One day he was cleaning it at home and I was standing in the corner, staring at it. Go ahead, try it, he said. In my small hands it was black metal and heavy, but I couldn't move the trigger. I tried it again with two hands, but I couldn't make it click. Okay, that's enough. I gave it back to him. Click click click.
A while after we moved back to New York, Nathan died. I hadn't seen him in several years. When we went to the Bronx apartment to see my grandmother, I quietly slipped into the bedroom and opened the cedar closet. There were two pieces of gum in the corner for my brother and me as I knew there would be. I sat by the window, chewing the gum and looked out onto the cobblestoned hill that dropped towards the bridge and the railroad tracks around the corner.
5.
My grandmother's father was a chicken farmer
and my grandfather's father made hats
in a small town outside of Warsaw
and they saw each other
only once
before the marriage.
For Nathan was then twenty five
and getting old for a bachelor in those days
and his father asked him,
as fathers usually do
when he was going to get married.
An embarrassing question under any circumstances.
Being clever, as I suspect he was,
Nathan said that if
you can fix me up with a farmer's daughter
I saw once in the village
then I'll get married.
It was arranged.
He came to America in steerage, and Lillian
came later bringing their first child
and they lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
in a tenement where the rest
of their village had settled
for at that time it was not unusual
for whole communities
to arrive on each boat.
6.
I came into possession of all this information
when after over fifty years of marriage
and ten years of mourning
my grandmother married again
and moved to Miami Beach.
It was on the ride up to The Bronx
that Sunday night
to help her pack and clean up the apartment
that my father, in a rare mood
of reminiscence
retold these old stories.
I listened to him quietly
leaning back in the upholstered seats
and watched as the night and its lights
sped backwards past the windshield.
Passages Return to top
Visiting My Grandmother in Miami Beach
Welcome to the Jewish American dream,
the land of coconut milk
and orange blossom honey.
What is it would make you happy?
A folding beach chair and a cigar,
a game of pinochle or a glass of seltzer maybe?
Saturday morning rain
brings a smile to the rabbi's lips.
This is a city of tropical devotion.
A strong wind and the beaches are littered
with coconuts and skull caps.
Even the palm trees are bent in prayer,
or do they lean to study
their neighbors' bingo cards?
I find her cooking knishes
in her condominium by the sea.
Eat, eat, she says,
giving me spongecake and schnappes,
a plate of dried figs,
and a boiled chicken.
She smiles to see me put it away,
my appetite is a sign of love.
I have been fasting all day in preparation.
We sit in the living room
and talk about the family.
The photographs on the table
are framed in metal and glass.
Babies in blankets ripe as grapefruit
A birthday boy in his Bar Mitzvah suit
She takes me to the game room before I leave.
Her friends look up from their cards.
My son's boy, she says, from New York.
Welcome to the Jewish American dream,
the land of coconut milk
and orange blossom honey.
What is it would make you happy?
A folding beach chair and a cigar,
a game of pinochle or a glass of seltzer maybe?
Saturday morning rain
brings a smile to the rabbi's lips.
This is a city of tropical devotion.
A strong wind and the beaches are littered
with coconuts and skull caps.
Even the palm trees are bent in prayer,
or do they lean to study
their neighbors' bingo cards?
I find her cooking knishes
in her condominium by the sea.
Eat, eat, she says,
giving me spongecake and schnappes,
a plate of dried figs,
and a boiled chicken.
She smiles to see me put it away,
my appetite is a sign of love.
I have been fasting all day in preparation.
We sit in the living room
and talk about the family.
The photographs on the table
are framed in metal and glass.
Babies in blankets ripe as grapefruit
A birthday boy in his Bar Mitzvah suit
She takes me to the game room before I leave.
Her friends look up from their cards.
My son's boy, she says, from New York.
Passages Return to top
My Grandmother’s Sheitel
a family story
My grandmother’s sheitel goes flying through the air
reeking of garlic and boiled potatoes,
the dank air of the steerage deck,
and the wood smoke of peasant villages.
“Welcome to America, Grandma!” I yell,
waving a flag from the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
She doesn’t hear me there, high above the harbor,
nor will she for another forty years
until a moyel rises from his work
and a drop of wine seals my cries with the ancient covenant.
The distant skyline is an open gate,
its gray towers rising to the clouds,
while the belching smokestacks of teeming ships
and their echoing foghorns
announce her arrival in a world of dreams.
And my grandmother’s sheitel goes flying through the air
as she scans the yet unreachable shoreline
for the husband who came before
and bought her passage with sweat shop labors,
this bold young woman with an infant in her arms
whose memories of a doomed and distant land
would burn with the light of the Sabbath candles,
never again to shine in her parents’ eyes
as they faded to sepia memories.
“Here!” I cry. “Grandma, look here.
I am the America you came to be,
spawned from the tenements and post war sprawl,
the baby boomer that carries your legacy
to a farther inland site, confident of my ability
to shed my skin, to change my name,
to cross the continent without fear. All this
I learned from you and your children,
their stern allegiance to family
and the harsh lessons of their immigrant streets.”
But my grandmother cares little for this.
She rises from a dark and crowded sleep,
awakened by shouts from the deck above
and the stillness of the ship’s engines.
She steps out in the morning light
to see unshaven men dancing in a circle,
women clapping their hands in time.
My grandmother takes it in with a careful eye.
She is no longer what she once was.
She has crossed the ocean alone.
The child at her breast shines with new life.
The sheitel on her head is damp and ill fitting.
Across the harbor, the mythic giantess salutes her
with an upraised arm, a free woman.
My grandmother’s sheitel goes flying through the air
and lands in the water. It floats for a moment
like the upturned hull of a sinking ship,
then disappears forever beneath the waves.
Yiddish words:
Sheitel - (Pronounced ‘Shay-til’) A wig worn in public by Ashkenazic Jewish married woman.
Moyel - A man authorized by Jewish law to perform circumcision, an event accompanied by a blessing over wine. Traditionally, a drop of the wine is placed on the infant’s lips to consecrate the child and divert it from crying.
a family story
My grandmother’s sheitel goes flying through the air
reeking of garlic and boiled potatoes,
the dank air of the steerage deck,
and the wood smoke of peasant villages.
“Welcome to America, Grandma!” I yell,
waving a flag from the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
She doesn’t hear me there, high above the harbor,
nor will she for another forty years
until a moyel rises from his work
and a drop of wine seals my cries with the ancient covenant.
The distant skyline is an open gate,
its gray towers rising to the clouds,
while the belching smokestacks of teeming ships
and their echoing foghorns
announce her arrival in a world of dreams.
And my grandmother’s sheitel goes flying through the air
as she scans the yet unreachable shoreline
for the husband who came before
and bought her passage with sweat shop labors,
this bold young woman with an infant in her arms
whose memories of a doomed and distant land
would burn with the light of the Sabbath candles,
never again to shine in her parents’ eyes
as they faded to sepia memories.
“Here!” I cry. “Grandma, look here.
I am the America you came to be,
spawned from the tenements and post war sprawl,
the baby boomer that carries your legacy
to a farther inland site, confident of my ability
to shed my skin, to change my name,
to cross the continent without fear. All this
I learned from you and your children,
their stern allegiance to family
and the harsh lessons of their immigrant streets.”
But my grandmother cares little for this.
She rises from a dark and crowded sleep,
awakened by shouts from the deck above
and the stillness of the ship’s engines.
She steps out in the morning light
to see unshaven men dancing in a circle,
women clapping their hands in time.
My grandmother takes it in with a careful eye.
She is no longer what she once was.
She has crossed the ocean alone.
The child at her breast shines with new life.
The sheitel on her head is damp and ill fitting.
Across the harbor, the mythic giantess salutes her
with an upraised arm, a free woman.
My grandmother’s sheitel goes flying through the air
and lands in the water. It floats for a moment
like the upturned hull of a sinking ship,
then disappears forever beneath the waves.
Yiddish words:
Sheitel - (Pronounced ‘Shay-til’) A wig worn in public by Ashkenazic Jewish married woman.
Moyel - A man authorized by Jewish law to perform circumcision, an event accompanied by a blessing over wine. Traditionally, a drop of the wine is placed on the infant’s lips to consecrate the child and divert it from crying.
Passages Return to top
Notes:
A poem in five sections nspired by a 1972 visit to the Ford Motor Company Rouge Plant at Dearborn, Michigan. The manufacturing site features a massive vertical integration process, a system that begins with tankers laden with iron ore docking at the Lake Michigan port and finishes with new vehicles exiting the assembly line. The poem reflects on the American fascination with industrial power, military might, and impersonalization of contemporary life. Presented as the culminating work for the author’s MFA in Poetry at the University of Arkansas, the poem’s primary literary influences are Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, and T.S. Elliott.
The History of Gasoline
A Poem in Five Sections
"History is bunk" - Henry Ford
Section I
Prologue It was the beginning of spontaneous generation,
egg clusters spawned in a platinum nest.
A thin smoke rose from an oily flame
and insects came into noble estates.
A fruit fly rocked the cradle
where alarm clocks sang
to the metronome's needle.
The centipede at its ease
lit up a hundred cigars.
For the man whose days are stacked like bricks,
for the man who digs one hole to fill another,
the mirror's leisure in a shard of glass,
a silent image to reflect an empty time.
The man without shadow
wears a stain on his sleeve,
the woman in pain a knotted shoelace.
To curb their common appetite
they have been sucking on a dime.
Though their lips are wrinkled like foil
they make no claim to weakness or disease.
They have the strength of more lasting metal.
They hold each other's hands and lean apart,
cables are tied to the span of their arms.
A highway bridge in a suspended arc,
the rubber smeared road in waves of heat.
On the muddied sand of an oil slick beach
dead fish lie beneath the circling gulls.
This at the center of a crystal eye
where the falling snow was fine as ash
and the air had the smell of burning.
Section II
The Rise So they agreed that trees could be bent
of Factories and wrapped around the rim of a wheel.
Filling them with air was the hard part.
Then someone invented the aerosol can,
and filled it till it burst like a drum.
Dust storms tore the leaves from trees,
sidewalks cracked and houses slid into the sea.
Factories showed the same confusion,
workers ran like slapstick cops.
When two men climbed a ladder
the one on top always had a dripping bucket.
This humor could not last.
The man of planning already had a plan.
He saw machines running smooth and fast,
he saw it as a paint by numbers kit
where he'd assign the names and numbers.
The Model T, the Model A.
* * * *
The Machine Above the assembly line floor
at Work the doors come swinging in a line.
Their colors shine from the oven's heat,
a bright moment in the routine order.
Carried on a moving ceiling,
pulled free by a man in gloves,
the blue door meets the blue frame.
Colors match with instinctual timing,
brought together by the worker's hand.
Every man touches each machine,
every man a station in the line.
A whistle blows to stop.
The hand without the glove
drops coins into a slot.
A sandwich falls,
coffee fills a cup.
He eats his bread and meat
while the whistle holds its breath,
the doors above his head
swinging themselves to rest.
In the ovens, blocks of steel are burning.
Raised by a crane at the moment of fire,
pounded in acid, cooled in its vapor,
rolled onto spools like a strip of paper,
rolled into wire.
Tankers dock in the thick canal,
the railroad hauls the slag away.
The man whose days are stacked like bricks
checks the clock, walks to his own machine.
* * * *
The Machine His working time comes back to pay
at Leisure for the car, for the home and family.
He works for the time
that buys him time away from work.
He has the means,
his tank is filled with gasoline.
The seasons have been cut
like threads around a bolt.
There is no change but a constant turning.
In his driveway the most improved machine.
It magnifies his forks and spoons.
It hangs like a charm from his daughter's wrist.
It comes into power by his turning a key.
It raises the sun to a platinum sky,
filling his eyes with the praise of metal.
Section III
The Rise It was prime growing season.
to Power The stalk arched beneath the grain's weight
and farm yards spilled through a golden horn.
The seven lean years never came.
When drilling towers broke the soil's crust
the oil spewed up and everyone grew rich.
A man's dream stretched the length of a train,
carrying beef, carrying boards and bricks,
locked in the rhythm of the freight car's passing.
They spread their names on the sky in puffs of smoke
and rode the streets in a ticker tape parade.
The immigrant accustomed himself to the changing style,
put on hats and coats, one on top of another.
He was tight as an onion, time was his money,
he brought his work home for ten cents an hour.
The virtues of bread had the working man's praise
and the man of leisure moved to the country.
But the dust bowl spilled
and the ticker tape stopped.
A fine silt settled on the still machines
and paper rained on the bankrupt pastures.
Then one man rose above them all
and taught them how to guard their power.
They called him uncle, they called him father.
He sprayed their fields with gasoline
and built machines to work a dry soil.
When the earth turned to gunpowder
he urged them on in speed and care.
The bombs grew fat in the watermelon patch,
bullets clustered in the arbor.
The missile at a moment's heat
would rise like toast from its hidden well.
This was valuable property.
each man claimed it for his own
and vowed his life for its defense.
They were carried away by the railroad.
Each life fell like a wave on a beach.
* * * *
The Maintenance Such cost for man's amusement,
of Power such labor in the planning,
ships like cities, cities under ground.
Always the odor of gasoline
in the offices where the secretary types,
on the breath of the generals like an after dinner mint.
The generals feed on napalm, a gourmet's jelly.
Their eyes bulge with explosives.
The government man bathes in gasoline,
polishes his nails and swabs his ears
the way a mechanic cleans his tools.
They built the jet because the biplane
shot its own propellers off.
The jet could race at open throttle
and spray the air with bullets,
then overtake the swarm at such a speed
that its own bullets could bring it down.
They climbed into their new machines,
all the power was in their hands.
Their engines sucked air, screamed for release,
shot them forward in the catapult's steam.
The captain checks his watch,
the bombardier squints into his sights,
the navigator stares at the sweep of his radar.
The whistling bombs speak loud as god,
a burning village, a field of craters.
This is the appeal of power,
this the wondrous strength.
Landing gear beneath the wing
flexing like a horse's leg.
You are the man to whom death pays homage,
death lets you ride his horse.
In the fumes of these machines
your flesh goes dry as paper.
Only gasoline can restore the moisture,
only gasoline can raise the dead.
Gasoline like holy water on the brow of a corpse.
Section IV
The Rise When the sky was mirror to sand
of Cities and the land was smooth with wind,
a horse rolled beneath the mountain's face,
a bird sang like a burning candle.
To break the movement of this open space
the billboard raised an abrupt geometry.
The city stood above the plain
and thrust its fingers at the sky,
a shaman for its architect.
Buildings rose to press the clouds,
a babel of tongues in praise of power.
The crowded lives came thick as smoke,
each man gave to the ritual burning.
They first pulled trees for fuel,
until the trees peeled back their skin,
revealing a stronger fiber.
The bright power of steel,
needlepoint of the skyscraper's tower.
* * * *
City Life The streets are steep in shadow,
sunlight glares from the high windows.
The business man behind the glass
looks past his own reflected image.
The roof tops stretch beneath him,
he counts television antennas.
Steel bridges span the putrid river,
drilling towers rise from the sea.
A tanker's spill lies slick on the water,
dead fish lie beneath the circling gulls.
For the man whose dinner steams on the table,
whose television lights the room,
the empty glove holds the empty cup.
It spills in a dry season.
Beneath the streets in subway tunnels
the walls display an urgent graffiti.
A crowd of workers in sweat stained shirts
riding a train in a city of bones.
The metal pulse drawn through wire,
drawn through flesh like a hook through water.
The bones of cattle ground to paste,
disposal has always been a problem.
There have been lamp shades made of skin,
gold teeth and wedding rings packed in boxes,
the lingering odor of gasoline.
* * * *
Escape from The silent movie of a ticker tape parade
the City is being shown to an empty theater.
This is a stillness no longer allowed.
The hands reach out and curl about the wheel,
the machine is there for your acceleration.
Wind fills your open mouth,
trees and bushes rushing past,
cattle in the fields, farmhouses,
the floating road, the smooth air.
The landscape moves in ordered time.
Nothing lingers in the eye or mind
but the hitch hiker beckoning from the roadside,
his shadow crossing the flat asphalt.
His moving has him stand and wait,
he is the most honorable of beggars.
In the parade of rubber
his shoes are made from tires.
Telephone wires curve from pole to pole,
his eyes are on the railroad tracks
that meet the horizon like a prayer.
The road rides the earth's curve,
silence the limit of its speed.
Section V
Riding the For the business man at thirty thousand feet
Machine the clouds float like ice cubes in his whiskey glass.
He stirs his drink.
While fish bones lie in a cold wine sauce
he sees himself in a new perspective.
The earth and ocean send him lunch,
the great wings rake the air to carry him,
yet none of it would need to be
if he had not been sitting there.
The sunset passes, bringing little change.
He reads or thinks of his wife,
sleeping somewhere far beneath him.
In the rest rooms, others show a lack of ease.
A man sticks a needle in his vein,
the stain spreads along his sleeve.
A pregnant woman feels her child kick,
her stomach tight as a knotted shoelace.
I am in the pilot's cabin,
the captain showing me gauges and dials.
Metal and glass pressing the air,
the pulse of flashing lights
beating in my ears like blood.
* * * *
Living the Gasoline our primal fire.
Machine We are the elements of a carbon chain
and have ridden the upwards spiral
like monks who douse themselves and burn.
The orange robe and the clear blue flame.
A silent film at an unsettled speed,
the quickening credits of American history.
Are we asleep and riding on a train
or are we the sleep through which a train is riding?
Dream of the fire at the heart of a rose,
the petal's order in the pine cone's blossom.
Mankind shall persist,
the human swarm reeking of sweat.
We shall have no returning.
We shall come again into our lives
with the same innocence,
the same love for power.
I have seen the junkyard compressor
and the furnace where blocks of metal burn.
The rusted hulks of abandoned machines
return like leaves to the soil.
They have a slower season.
Gasoline outspeeds this nature,
a thin smoke rises from an oily flame.
The machines grow smaller.
You will wear them in your hat.
Your ring will carry you many miles.
The hitch hiker walks the empty highway.
The dark streak of a tire's skid
like the silence following a scream.
A poem in five sections nspired by a 1972 visit to the Ford Motor Company Rouge Plant at Dearborn, Michigan. The manufacturing site features a massive vertical integration process, a system that begins with tankers laden with iron ore docking at the Lake Michigan port and finishes with new vehicles exiting the assembly line. The poem reflects on the American fascination with industrial power, military might, and impersonalization of contemporary life. Presented as the culminating work for the author’s MFA in Poetry at the University of Arkansas, the poem’s primary literary influences are Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, and T.S. Elliott.
The History of Gasoline
A Poem in Five Sections
"History is bunk" - Henry Ford
Section I
Prologue It was the beginning of spontaneous generation,
egg clusters spawned in a platinum nest.
A thin smoke rose from an oily flame
and insects came into noble estates.
A fruit fly rocked the cradle
where alarm clocks sang
to the metronome's needle.
The centipede at its ease
lit up a hundred cigars.
For the man whose days are stacked like bricks,
for the man who digs one hole to fill another,
the mirror's leisure in a shard of glass,
a silent image to reflect an empty time.
The man without shadow
wears a stain on his sleeve,
the woman in pain a knotted shoelace.
To curb their common appetite
they have been sucking on a dime.
Though their lips are wrinkled like foil
they make no claim to weakness or disease.
They have the strength of more lasting metal.
They hold each other's hands and lean apart,
cables are tied to the span of their arms.
A highway bridge in a suspended arc,
the rubber smeared road in waves of heat.
On the muddied sand of an oil slick beach
dead fish lie beneath the circling gulls.
This at the center of a crystal eye
where the falling snow was fine as ash
and the air had the smell of burning.
Section II
The Rise So they agreed that trees could be bent
of Factories and wrapped around the rim of a wheel.
Filling them with air was the hard part.
Then someone invented the aerosol can,
and filled it till it burst like a drum.
Dust storms tore the leaves from trees,
sidewalks cracked and houses slid into the sea.
Factories showed the same confusion,
workers ran like slapstick cops.
When two men climbed a ladder
the one on top always had a dripping bucket.
This humor could not last.
The man of planning already had a plan.
He saw machines running smooth and fast,
he saw it as a paint by numbers kit
where he'd assign the names and numbers.
The Model T, the Model A.
* * * *
The Machine Above the assembly line floor
at Work the doors come swinging in a line.
Their colors shine from the oven's heat,
a bright moment in the routine order.
Carried on a moving ceiling,
pulled free by a man in gloves,
the blue door meets the blue frame.
Colors match with instinctual timing,
brought together by the worker's hand.
Every man touches each machine,
every man a station in the line.
A whistle blows to stop.
The hand without the glove
drops coins into a slot.
A sandwich falls,
coffee fills a cup.
He eats his bread and meat
while the whistle holds its breath,
the doors above his head
swinging themselves to rest.
In the ovens, blocks of steel are burning.
Raised by a crane at the moment of fire,
pounded in acid, cooled in its vapor,
rolled onto spools like a strip of paper,
rolled into wire.
Tankers dock in the thick canal,
the railroad hauls the slag away.
The man whose days are stacked like bricks
checks the clock, walks to his own machine.
* * * *
The Machine His working time comes back to pay
at Leisure for the car, for the home and family.
He works for the time
that buys him time away from work.
He has the means,
his tank is filled with gasoline.
The seasons have been cut
like threads around a bolt.
There is no change but a constant turning.
In his driveway the most improved machine.
It magnifies his forks and spoons.
It hangs like a charm from his daughter's wrist.
It comes into power by his turning a key.
It raises the sun to a platinum sky,
filling his eyes with the praise of metal.
Section III
The Rise It was prime growing season.
to Power The stalk arched beneath the grain's weight
and farm yards spilled through a golden horn.
The seven lean years never came.
When drilling towers broke the soil's crust
the oil spewed up and everyone grew rich.
A man's dream stretched the length of a train,
carrying beef, carrying boards and bricks,
locked in the rhythm of the freight car's passing.
They spread their names on the sky in puffs of smoke
and rode the streets in a ticker tape parade.
The immigrant accustomed himself to the changing style,
put on hats and coats, one on top of another.
He was tight as an onion, time was his money,
he brought his work home for ten cents an hour.
The virtues of bread had the working man's praise
and the man of leisure moved to the country.
But the dust bowl spilled
and the ticker tape stopped.
A fine silt settled on the still machines
and paper rained on the bankrupt pastures.
Then one man rose above them all
and taught them how to guard their power.
They called him uncle, they called him father.
He sprayed their fields with gasoline
and built machines to work a dry soil.
When the earth turned to gunpowder
he urged them on in speed and care.
The bombs grew fat in the watermelon patch,
bullets clustered in the arbor.
The missile at a moment's heat
would rise like toast from its hidden well.
This was valuable property.
each man claimed it for his own
and vowed his life for its defense.
They were carried away by the railroad.
Each life fell like a wave on a beach.
* * * *
The Maintenance Such cost for man's amusement,
of Power such labor in the planning,
ships like cities, cities under ground.
Always the odor of gasoline
in the offices where the secretary types,
on the breath of the generals like an after dinner mint.
The generals feed on napalm, a gourmet's jelly.
Their eyes bulge with explosives.
The government man bathes in gasoline,
polishes his nails and swabs his ears
the way a mechanic cleans his tools.
They built the jet because the biplane
shot its own propellers off.
The jet could race at open throttle
and spray the air with bullets,
then overtake the swarm at such a speed
that its own bullets could bring it down.
They climbed into their new machines,
all the power was in their hands.
Their engines sucked air, screamed for release,
shot them forward in the catapult's steam.
The captain checks his watch,
the bombardier squints into his sights,
the navigator stares at the sweep of his radar.
The whistling bombs speak loud as god,
a burning village, a field of craters.
This is the appeal of power,
this the wondrous strength.
Landing gear beneath the wing
flexing like a horse's leg.
You are the man to whom death pays homage,
death lets you ride his horse.
In the fumes of these machines
your flesh goes dry as paper.
Only gasoline can restore the moisture,
only gasoline can raise the dead.
Gasoline like holy water on the brow of a corpse.
Section IV
The Rise When the sky was mirror to sand
of Cities and the land was smooth with wind,
a horse rolled beneath the mountain's face,
a bird sang like a burning candle.
To break the movement of this open space
the billboard raised an abrupt geometry.
The city stood above the plain
and thrust its fingers at the sky,
a shaman for its architect.
Buildings rose to press the clouds,
a babel of tongues in praise of power.
The crowded lives came thick as smoke,
each man gave to the ritual burning.
They first pulled trees for fuel,
until the trees peeled back their skin,
revealing a stronger fiber.
The bright power of steel,
needlepoint of the skyscraper's tower.
* * * *
City Life The streets are steep in shadow,
sunlight glares from the high windows.
The business man behind the glass
looks past his own reflected image.
The roof tops stretch beneath him,
he counts television antennas.
Steel bridges span the putrid river,
drilling towers rise from the sea.
A tanker's spill lies slick on the water,
dead fish lie beneath the circling gulls.
For the man whose dinner steams on the table,
whose television lights the room,
the empty glove holds the empty cup.
It spills in a dry season.
Beneath the streets in subway tunnels
the walls display an urgent graffiti.
A crowd of workers in sweat stained shirts
riding a train in a city of bones.
The metal pulse drawn through wire,
drawn through flesh like a hook through water.
The bones of cattle ground to paste,
disposal has always been a problem.
There have been lamp shades made of skin,
gold teeth and wedding rings packed in boxes,
the lingering odor of gasoline.
* * * *
Escape from The silent movie of a ticker tape parade
the City is being shown to an empty theater.
This is a stillness no longer allowed.
The hands reach out and curl about the wheel,
the machine is there for your acceleration.
Wind fills your open mouth,
trees and bushes rushing past,
cattle in the fields, farmhouses,
the floating road, the smooth air.
The landscape moves in ordered time.
Nothing lingers in the eye or mind
but the hitch hiker beckoning from the roadside,
his shadow crossing the flat asphalt.
His moving has him stand and wait,
he is the most honorable of beggars.
In the parade of rubber
his shoes are made from tires.
Telephone wires curve from pole to pole,
his eyes are on the railroad tracks
that meet the horizon like a prayer.
The road rides the earth's curve,
silence the limit of its speed.
Section V
Riding the For the business man at thirty thousand feet
Machine the clouds float like ice cubes in his whiskey glass.
He stirs his drink.
While fish bones lie in a cold wine sauce
he sees himself in a new perspective.
The earth and ocean send him lunch,
the great wings rake the air to carry him,
yet none of it would need to be
if he had not been sitting there.
The sunset passes, bringing little change.
He reads or thinks of his wife,
sleeping somewhere far beneath him.
In the rest rooms, others show a lack of ease.
A man sticks a needle in his vein,
the stain spreads along his sleeve.
A pregnant woman feels her child kick,
her stomach tight as a knotted shoelace.
I am in the pilot's cabin,
the captain showing me gauges and dials.
Metal and glass pressing the air,
the pulse of flashing lights
beating in my ears like blood.
* * * *
Living the Gasoline our primal fire.
Machine We are the elements of a carbon chain
and have ridden the upwards spiral
like monks who douse themselves and burn.
The orange robe and the clear blue flame.
A silent film at an unsettled speed,
the quickening credits of American history.
Are we asleep and riding on a train
or are we the sleep through which a train is riding?
Dream of the fire at the heart of a rose,
the petal's order in the pine cone's blossom.
Mankind shall persist,
the human swarm reeking of sweat.
We shall have no returning.
We shall come again into our lives
with the same innocence,
the same love for power.
I have seen the junkyard compressor
and the furnace where blocks of metal burn.
The rusted hulks of abandoned machines
return like leaves to the soil.
They have a slower season.
Gasoline outspeeds this nature,
a thin smoke rises from an oily flame.
The machines grow smaller.
You will wear them in your hat.
Your ring will carry you many miles.
The hitch hiker walks the empty highway.
The dark streak of a tire's skid
like the silence following a scream.
Passages Return to top
Notes:
Geometrical proportions of the human form as presented in life drawing classes are inadequate tools for capturing a quixotic presence in line and shading.
Figure Drawing
the model and the artist
Poised like a cat in a window
she is framed by negative space.
She will sit for you all morning,
watching her shadow.
Arrange her to your own desire
seeking an uncommon line.
Use her as you will,
you have bought her time.
Now your poems are sitting before you.
You must start here to break them down.
Watch closely:
How many heads does she have?
From the floor to the crotch - three.
Her eyes are one eye width apart
and her mouth, an eighth of her head
from her chin, is halfway to her nose
but a quarter way to her eyes.
Which are the dominant lines?
- the curve of her throat
- the ridge of bone alone her forearm
- her fingers spilling down like a flight of steps
Line into line
she appears before you
growing less like herself
and farther away.
She is coy and not to be caught
in shades of gray and black.
In your sheets of newsprint
her dusty image will reappear
backwards on the opposite page.
Scribblers, look again!
She has shifted her weight.
The hand which has been stopped
halfway to or from her lips
might be holding a glass of water.
In the shading of her eyes
a tiny spot has been left clear.
She appears to be smiling.
Geometrical proportions of the human form as presented in life drawing classes are inadequate tools for capturing a quixotic presence in line and shading.
Figure Drawing
the model and the artist
Poised like a cat in a window
she is framed by negative space.
She will sit for you all morning,
watching her shadow.
Arrange her to your own desire
seeking an uncommon line.
Use her as you will,
you have bought her time.
Now your poems are sitting before you.
You must start here to break them down.
Watch closely:
How many heads does she have?
From the floor to the crotch - three.
Her eyes are one eye width apart
and her mouth, an eighth of her head
from her chin, is halfway to her nose
but a quarter way to her eyes.
Which are the dominant lines?
- the curve of her throat
- the ridge of bone alone her forearm
- her fingers spilling down like a flight of steps
Line into line
she appears before you
growing less like herself
and farther away.
She is coy and not to be caught
in shades of gray and black.
In your sheets of newsprint
her dusty image will reappear
backwards on the opposite page.
Scribblers, look again!
She has shifted her weight.
The hand which has been stopped
halfway to or from her lips
might be holding a glass of water.
In the shading of her eyes
a tiny spot has been left clear.
She appears to be smiling.
Passages Return to top
Notes:
The poem is set in a teaching hospital anatomy lab. As a journalist researching the education of medical students, I was allowed to observe the procedures of this required class.
Anatomy Lab
If spirit resides in matter
they will find it here,
these first-year students whose hands
are slick with formaldehyde.
Like a jungle tribe whose first wheel
arrives attached to an airplane,
they have before them prima facie
the human form, God's wonderful toy.
Cadavers on the tables like roadside kill
attract carrion birds in brown lab coats
who gorge themselves with hands-on time,
peeling back the blackened skin,
sawing through the adamant bones
with stainless blades. Their minds
are in their hands and their hands
are inside a head, the empty skull
folded back, the brain
reserved for neurology lab.
From within a ransacked chest
they free the lifeless heart,
a potato sized lump of meat,
to probe the aorta with fingertips.
Workbooks propped in pelvic frames
provide names for each severed part,
display linkage and the play of muscles.
Bare forearm tendons, still mechanically sound,
are their puppet strings for a twitching hand.
In their impersonal search
they note each deviation from the norm:
black sacks of a smoker's lungs,
buckshot pellets in the upper neck
where a ragged hole invites them in
to the privacy of their donor's death.
No suicide in dissection texts
not commentary on the body's worth;
how bones of Hawaiian kings, carved as hooks,
could charm a fish from the formless depths,
how Masai elders, grown infirm,
are abandoned to hyena packs.
Many students work shirtless
beneath the heat of the lamps,
wearing the slack skin of their coats
like this dark eyed beauty
with her hair pinned loosely back,
whose frock, carelessly tied,
reveals the curves of her free breasts.
She joins the others at her table
as one uses mallet and chisel
to crack a skull, her white hands
holding firm the bones.
The poem is set in a teaching hospital anatomy lab. As a journalist researching the education of medical students, I was allowed to observe the procedures of this required class.
Anatomy Lab
If spirit resides in matter
they will find it here,
these first-year students whose hands
are slick with formaldehyde.
Like a jungle tribe whose first wheel
arrives attached to an airplane,
they have before them prima facie
the human form, God's wonderful toy.
Cadavers on the tables like roadside kill
attract carrion birds in brown lab coats
who gorge themselves with hands-on time,
peeling back the blackened skin,
sawing through the adamant bones
with stainless blades. Their minds
are in their hands and their hands
are inside a head, the empty skull
folded back, the brain
reserved for neurology lab.
From within a ransacked chest
they free the lifeless heart,
a potato sized lump of meat,
to probe the aorta with fingertips.
Workbooks propped in pelvic frames
provide names for each severed part,
display linkage and the play of muscles.
Bare forearm tendons, still mechanically sound,
are their puppet strings for a twitching hand.
In their impersonal search
they note each deviation from the norm:
black sacks of a smoker's lungs,
buckshot pellets in the upper neck
where a ragged hole invites them in
to the privacy of their donor's death.
No suicide in dissection texts
not commentary on the body's worth;
how bones of Hawaiian kings, carved as hooks,
could charm a fish from the formless depths,
how Masai elders, grown infirm,
are abandoned to hyena packs.
Many students work shirtless
beneath the heat of the lamps,
wearing the slack skin of their coats
like this dark eyed beauty
with her hair pinned loosely back,
whose frock, carelessly tied,
reveals the curves of her free breasts.
She joins the others at her table
as one uses mallet and chisel
to crack a skull, her white hands
holding firm the bones.
Passages Return to top
NOTES:
A series of travel poems, each set in a European city visited by the author in 1976. The poems are presented as a single-voice travelog whose narrator makes his way through the beauty, mystery, and alienating loneliness in his search for permanence.
STOPS ALONG THE WAY
LONDON
The light was gray at his moment of waking.
He lay between the warm sheets
where nothing could move him early in the day
but the blue sky that dawned on his homeland.
About to lose himself in the morning traffic
morning broke clear with seascapes of light.
Water swirled a whirlpool in the sink,
motion and speed the implements of its loss.
The bitter draught, the international squalor,
smells that follow buses like flies after a horse.
He was alone with his memory and his money,
with last year's book to tell him the prices.
History came on like crossing a border,
he could not go on till the tariffs were paid,
pondering the footsteps that had scuffed the stone markers,
Donne in his winding sheet, Raleigh in his tower.
The polished knights rode clattering to battle,
lifted to saddle by block and tackle.
Their costumes remain, like crustacean shells,
showing the upright man in the prime of his service.
There were men who paced these battlements
with time to spare before they lost their heads,
time to scratch their names on the stone walls,
cryptic letters now covered with glass.
New names scratched behind the guard's back
must hold their own against the tourists'
probing fingers. The desire is unchanged
in modern graffiti, remember my name.
"Ah you stayin de night?" asked the West Indian chambermaid.
"Ah you leavin today?" her voice echoes in the hall.
A series of travel poems, each set in a European city visited by the author in 1976. The poems are presented as a single-voice travelog whose narrator makes his way through the beauty, mystery, and alienating loneliness in his search for permanence.
STOPS ALONG THE WAY
LONDON
The light was gray at his moment of waking.
He lay between the warm sheets
where nothing could move him early in the day
but the blue sky that dawned on his homeland.
About to lose himself in the morning traffic
morning broke clear with seascapes of light.
Water swirled a whirlpool in the sink,
motion and speed the implements of its loss.
The bitter draught, the international squalor,
smells that follow buses like flies after a horse.
He was alone with his memory and his money,
with last year's book to tell him the prices.
History came on like crossing a border,
he could not go on till the tariffs were paid,
pondering the footsteps that had scuffed the stone markers,
Donne in his winding sheet, Raleigh in his tower.
The polished knights rode clattering to battle,
lifted to saddle by block and tackle.
Their costumes remain, like crustacean shells,
showing the upright man in the prime of his service.
There were men who paced these battlements
with time to spare before they lost their heads,
time to scratch their names on the stone walls,
cryptic letters now covered with glass.
New names scratched behind the guard's back
must hold their own against the tourists'
probing fingers. The desire is unchanged
in modern graffiti, remember my name.
"Ah you stayin de night?" asked the West Indian chambermaid.
"Ah you leavin today?" her voice echoes in the hall.
Passages Return to top
TRAIN TO HARWICH
Meal time, tea time, time to set the table,
the days move on like a soot blackened train.
Industrial towns glimpsed beyond the window,
unworthy of a photograph, passed and forgotten.
The cobbler, the farmer, the man who drives a bus,
what was his part in the empire's growth?
"I'm the guy that kicked the winning goal!"
"I'm the guy that planted those trees!"
"I'm the guy that lifted your wallet!"
Who are you and where are you going?
"I'm Pinky Lee on my way to the camera."
"I'm Jayne Mansfield out on a joyride."
"I'm Lenny Bruce on my way to the crapper."
Such sadness does not fit the traveling.
Though the sky presses low, dripping mist,
the trees in these fields are powdered with moss.
The lambs still bleat their joyful songs
and crows are perched on chimney bricks.
Lettuce grows green in the earthly gardens
and flower beds spin a fragrant color wheel.
Meal time, tea time, time to set the table,
the days move on like a soot blackened train.
Industrial towns glimpsed beyond the window,
unworthy of a photograph, passed and forgotten.
The cobbler, the farmer, the man who drives a bus,
what was his part in the empire's growth?
"I'm the guy that kicked the winning goal!"
"I'm the guy that planted those trees!"
"I'm the guy that lifted your wallet!"
Who are you and where are you going?
"I'm Pinky Lee on my way to the camera."
"I'm Jayne Mansfield out on a joyride."
"I'm Lenny Bruce on my way to the crapper."
Such sadness does not fit the traveling.
Though the sky presses low, dripping mist,
the trees in these fields are powdered with moss.
The lambs still bleat their joyful songs
and crows are perched on chimney bricks.
Lettuce grows green in the earthly gardens
and flower beds spin a fragrant color wheel.
Passages Return to top
AMSTERDAM
These streets have grown so close upon themselves,
in five hundred years so close,
that buildings leans like dominoes,
like smoked eels in a vendor's shed,
and lives are passed below the water
in floating houses. The broad hulled barges
with garden desks and dripping laundry
parked tight as cars in the crowded canals.
When Van Gogh was here
did his madness cry like a wheatfield of crows,
his blue trees, his yellow sky,
his cypresses rising to a whirlpool of stars?
A black hooker in white lace,
a slant eyed girl in a velvet sarong,
their open windows in deep red shadow,
like open mouths of waiting time.
Up the ladder to the attic room,
wax drippings on the table where a candle burned
and the hash pipe carried him far away
from the squeal of motorcycles and African jabber.
Sex shop signs glare late and dealers
like dark swans cruise the streets for buyers.
Those girls are mute, the night is in their eyes,
but the dealers call you, beckon you to buy.
These streets have grown so close upon themselves,
in five hundred years so close,
that buildings leans like dominoes,
like smoked eels in a vendor's shed,
and lives are passed below the water
in floating houses. The broad hulled barges
with garden desks and dripping laundry
parked tight as cars in the crowded canals.
When Van Gogh was here
did his madness cry like a wheatfield of crows,
his blue trees, his yellow sky,
his cypresses rising to a whirlpool of stars?
A black hooker in white lace,
a slant eyed girl in a velvet sarong,
their open windows in deep red shadow,
like open mouths of waiting time.
Up the ladder to the attic room,
wax drippings on the table where a candle burned
and the hash pipe carried him far away
from the squeal of motorcycles and African jabber.
Sex shop signs glare late and dealers
like dark swans cruise the streets for buyers.
Those girls are mute, the night is in their eyes,
but the dealers call you, beckon you to buy.
Passages Return to top
BRUGGE
Old women are patient as they twist frail thread,
breathing through their fingers to set the pins,
to tie white strings in an ivy pattern
for a cuff or a collar, inextricably woven.
Women in windows with bifocal eyes
are still life portraits but their hands are moving
and the blood is in their cheeks, blossoming
blue rosettes where the capillaries shine.
Men learned masonry while the women wove lace
and raised their towers above the red rooftops,
carrying mortar up lean wooden ladders
like clockwork figures, persistent and slow.
Was it God's glory that drew them to those heights
or military vistas in the face of assault,
a passion for ornament to grace their city,
sculptured flowers to relieve the bare walls?
A magnifying lens in a museum display
shows a wooden ball of walnut size
with knights carved on horseback, visor and lances,
gabled cathedrals and cobblestone streets.
The ball falls open on minute hinges.
Inside, the manger with madonna and child.
Did time move slower for the medieval craftsman
or was time unmeasured in his consummate art?
Bells in the tower are ringing the hour.
Bells in the steeple are calling the people.
Windmills turn their blades
and sea water churns into the canals,
emerald fields above moist black loam,
cattle and sheep like fat tubs of butter.
The wind from the sea is racing with clouds
and sailboat prows are slicing the waves.
The blond children are shouting to their kites.
Old women are patient as they twist frail thread,
breathing through their fingers to set the pins,
to tie white strings in an ivy pattern
for a cuff or a collar, inextricably woven.
Women in windows with bifocal eyes
are still life portraits but their hands are moving
and the blood is in their cheeks, blossoming
blue rosettes where the capillaries shine.
Men learned masonry while the women wove lace
and raised their towers above the red rooftops,
carrying mortar up lean wooden ladders
like clockwork figures, persistent and slow.
Was it God's glory that drew them to those heights
or military vistas in the face of assault,
a passion for ornament to grace their city,
sculptured flowers to relieve the bare walls?
A magnifying lens in a museum display
shows a wooden ball of walnut size
with knights carved on horseback, visor and lances,
gabled cathedrals and cobblestone streets.
The ball falls open on minute hinges.
Inside, the manger with madonna and child.
Did time move slower for the medieval craftsman
or was time unmeasured in his consummate art?
Bells in the tower are ringing the hour.
Bells in the steeple are calling the people.
Windmills turn their blades
and sea water churns into the canals,
emerald fields above moist black loam,
cattle and sheep like fat tubs of butter.
The wind from the sea is racing with clouds
and sailboat prows are slicing the waves.
The blond children are shouting to their kites.
Passages Return to top
PARIS
Paris is the prize awaiting the traveler
who rides the night train and arrives with the sun.
Gargoyles sneer their grimaces to the dawn
as Paris sleeps and river water seeps
between the stones, gathering in sewers
below the street, in dank pissoir odors
where moisture beads the walls, stairwells
where footsteps creek in steep darkness.
Leaves on the tress like limp birds
falling through the ageless October.
A water jet arcs from a satyr's mouth,
his hair rusted green, a tangle of ringlets.
Clarinet melodies, saxophones in the Metro,
swank heels, stilettos of the boulevards.
The rigor of fashion in a city that bares its breasts,
that raises its skirts and squats in an alley.
Feminine smells, a toxic profusion,
clutter the sidewalks like bistro tables.
Voices pause as the scent lingers.
The public eye surveys the public mirror.
A woman stands waiting at a stop light corner
then moves her body between the eyes of the crowd,
and the man behind her measures her walking.
Roman goddess in a pigeon shit hat,
Chagall would paint her star struck and amber,
white stockings at her ankles like puffs of pastry.
She studies the traffic that circles the Opera,
she scowls from the lantern of Napoleon's Tomb.
Rusted giantess whose arms support the bridges,
suppose she bent over adjusting her nylons,
suppose her dog were to pee on your leg?
What if her lipstick dripped blood from a sausage,
and she, no Crazy Horse stripper with legs like saplings,
were short and homely with bad teeth?
If her eyes were agate, more piercing than icicles,
could she crack the dull mirror at the depth of your heart?
Sunset view of perfume and pomp
with bells ringing in the cathedral tower
and the organ groaning from within the earth.
Song birds in the market and car horns
in the street, sounds like tobacco smoke rising
where dancers perspire, obsessed with their motion.
The river grew warmer, like a bread baking,
and the city drew its breath, began its dance macabre.
The stones of Montmartre were salmon and orange,
on its steps were the gypsies so young and wild,
who sang their guitars as their bottles splashed open
sparkling the stairs with fragments of glass.
"Sing us the song of the highwayman's father.
The villain who laughed as he swung from a rope.
Though we die tonight, we'll sing of tomorrow.
The stars be our witness, the gallows poet was one of our own."
The catacombs of the Pantheon were ringing with laughter
as the nobles of France sprang gaily from their vaults.
Greeks abandoned the frescos, slid down the columns,
and the Resistance heroes rose up from the pavement.
The ghosts of a living city. This one drinking anise,
this one with his nose in a ripe Camembert.
Paris is the prize awaiting the traveler
who rides the night train and arrives with the sun.
Gargoyles sneer their grimaces to the dawn
as Paris sleeps and river water seeps
between the stones, gathering in sewers
below the street, in dank pissoir odors
where moisture beads the walls, stairwells
where footsteps creek in steep darkness.
Leaves on the tress like limp birds
falling through the ageless October.
A water jet arcs from a satyr's mouth,
his hair rusted green, a tangle of ringlets.
Clarinet melodies, saxophones in the Metro,
swank heels, stilettos of the boulevards.
The rigor of fashion in a city that bares its breasts,
that raises its skirts and squats in an alley.
Feminine smells, a toxic profusion,
clutter the sidewalks like bistro tables.
Voices pause as the scent lingers.
The public eye surveys the public mirror.
A woman stands waiting at a stop light corner
then moves her body between the eyes of the crowd,
and the man behind her measures her walking.
Roman goddess in a pigeon shit hat,
Chagall would paint her star struck and amber,
white stockings at her ankles like puffs of pastry.
She studies the traffic that circles the Opera,
she scowls from the lantern of Napoleon's Tomb.
Rusted giantess whose arms support the bridges,
suppose she bent over adjusting her nylons,
suppose her dog were to pee on your leg?
What if her lipstick dripped blood from a sausage,
and she, no Crazy Horse stripper with legs like saplings,
were short and homely with bad teeth?
If her eyes were agate, more piercing than icicles,
could she crack the dull mirror at the depth of your heart?
Sunset view of perfume and pomp
with bells ringing in the cathedral tower
and the organ groaning from within the earth.
Song birds in the market and car horns
in the street, sounds like tobacco smoke rising
where dancers perspire, obsessed with their motion.
The river grew warmer, like a bread baking,
and the city drew its breath, began its dance macabre.
The stones of Montmartre were salmon and orange,
on its steps were the gypsies so young and wild,
who sang their guitars as their bottles splashed open
sparkling the stairs with fragments of glass.
"Sing us the song of the highwayman's father.
The villain who laughed as he swung from a rope.
Though we die tonight, we'll sing of tomorrow.
The stars be our witness, the gallows poet was one of our own."
The catacombs of the Pantheon were ringing with laughter
as the nobles of France sprang gaily from their vaults.
Greeks abandoned the frescos, slid down the columns,
and the Resistance heroes rose up from the pavement.
The ghosts of a living city. This one drinking anise,
this one with his nose in a ripe Camembert.
Passages Return to top
STRASBOURG: CHATEAU DE PORTALES
Sunlight in the forest as leaves descend
in scarlet spirals, in streams of gold.
Their colors cut the silence like a scream
whose echo ends when swallowed by the earth.
The traveler keeps his path between the bushes,
drawn onward by a labyrinth of light,
and the wind, rattling the canopy of branches,
steals these words, hidden inside his breath.
"My father dug this garden with his hands as shovels.
He scattered these boulders so his flocks could feed.
When I called his name, my father turned to shadow.
Now I know him without speaking, I see him the same."
The scientist is the chronicler of time
who draws us out to face our origins
and calls the stars the spinning flares of space,
which comforts us, like a night light in the room.
When the man of science burns his fingers
he measures heat loss by the advance of cold,
yet other men walk on burning coals,
their soles no thicker than leaves.
In the silent forest where the trees are screaming
a figure decays with the persistence of stone.
Breasts pitted by the wind and rain,
arms lost from the shoulders down
where metal rods jut out like bone,
like arteries that have rusted hard.
The smooth face and rounded chin
smashed in like a paper mask and chipped away.
Neglect has taken up this artist's stand,
completing his work like dutiful apprentice.
The pedestal is cracked from probing tendrils,
hammer blows falling like dusk each day.
Swamp grass and cattails in a bowl of earth,
sludge at the reed bottoms where mosquitoes swarm,
here was a lake with precise stone borders
whose cooling water eased the great house.
In summer heat the open windows
revealed a vista of man above nature,
the cultivator of its providence,
the organizer of its unkempt beauty.
Now the house creaks like a rusted gate,
worn in the hinges from wear,
and paint falls in dry flakes.
Those who come to restore the old grace
move slow. They know their work will also pass
though now it serves to stall a fleeting season.
Reminded of loveliness and our aging,
we call the falling leaves bittersweet.
Sunlight in the forest as leaves descend
in scarlet spirals, in streams of gold.
Their colors cut the silence like a scream
whose echo ends when swallowed by the earth.
The traveler keeps his path between the bushes,
drawn onward by a labyrinth of light,
and the wind, rattling the canopy of branches,
steals these words, hidden inside his breath.
"My father dug this garden with his hands as shovels.
He scattered these boulders so his flocks could feed.
When I called his name, my father turned to shadow.
Now I know him without speaking, I see him the same."
The scientist is the chronicler of time
who draws us out to face our origins
and calls the stars the spinning flares of space,
which comforts us, like a night light in the room.
When the man of science burns his fingers
he measures heat loss by the advance of cold,
yet other men walk on burning coals,
their soles no thicker than leaves.
In the silent forest where the trees are screaming
a figure decays with the persistence of stone.
Breasts pitted by the wind and rain,
arms lost from the shoulders down
where metal rods jut out like bone,
like arteries that have rusted hard.
The smooth face and rounded chin
smashed in like a paper mask and chipped away.
Neglect has taken up this artist's stand,
completing his work like dutiful apprentice.
The pedestal is cracked from probing tendrils,
hammer blows falling like dusk each day.
Swamp grass and cattails in a bowl of earth,
sludge at the reed bottoms where mosquitoes swarm,
here was a lake with precise stone borders
whose cooling water eased the great house.
In summer heat the open windows
revealed a vista of man above nature,
the cultivator of its providence,
the organizer of its unkempt beauty.
Now the house creaks like a rusted gate,
worn in the hinges from wear,
and paint falls in dry flakes.
Those who come to restore the old grace
move slow. They know their work will also pass
though now it serves to stall a fleeting season.
Reminded of loveliness and our aging,
we call the falling leaves bittersweet.
Passages Return to top
LEYSIN
Skiers on the balconies waiting for snow
stretch their limbs and look down to the valley
where cattle graze with grass stained teeth
in the green vertigo of the pastureland.
Cow bells swing from leather belts as heads
bend low. Cow bells ring as grass is torn
in thoughtless motion. A cathedral chorus sings
from the bottomland, says the herd is feeding.
Chalets cling to hillsides like wildflowers
and sparrows dart from the eaves, silent as fish
that flash beyond the windows, a flock of stones
that twists, that flutters in the air
while the cattle graze, their jaws moving slow
and their bells ringing clear. When mountain walls
resound with echoes, the distant becomes near,
though the eyes strain to see what the ear can hear.
Constant snow in the highlands, the jagged peaks
are white with powder. There, if anywhere,
glittering in sunlight above our eyes
in the cold and windswept glare the gods must live.
Cable cars ascend on lines as thin as thread,
effortlessly as the angels on Jacob's ladder,
rising like sounds that dwindle and fade,
that gently mock the scope of our senses.
Hearing and sight in open space, like birds
that have no strength to fly above the trees
or the farmer that walks among his grazing herd
collecting dung to fertilize his garden.
Skiers on the balconies waiting for snow
stretch their limbs and look down to the valley
where cattle graze with grass stained teeth
in the green vertigo of the pastureland.
Cow bells swing from leather belts as heads
bend low. Cow bells ring as grass is torn
in thoughtless motion. A cathedral chorus sings
from the bottomland, says the herd is feeding.
Chalets cling to hillsides like wildflowers
and sparrows dart from the eaves, silent as fish
that flash beyond the windows, a flock of stones
that twists, that flutters in the air
while the cattle graze, their jaws moving slow
and their bells ringing clear. When mountain walls
resound with echoes, the distant becomes near,
though the eyes strain to see what the ear can hear.
Constant snow in the highlands, the jagged peaks
are white with powder. There, if anywhere,
glittering in sunlight above our eyes
in the cold and windswept glare the gods must live.
Cable cars ascend on lines as thin as thread,
effortlessly as the angels on Jacob's ladder,
rising like sounds that dwindle and fade,
that gently mock the scope of our senses.
Hearing and sight in open space, like birds
that have no strength to fly above the trees
or the farmer that walks among his grazing herd
collecting dung to fertilize his garden.
Passages Return to top
VILLE FRANCHE SUR MER
The sky is a ripe peach with its skin pulled back,
exposing moist flesh as the color drains.
Evening draws its curtain of indigo haze
and the yachts, each in its basin like a pampered child,
nod their slender prows with the lapping waves,
easing down from the quest for sunlight and speed,
their tarpaulins buckled tight over polished wood,
their white hulls riding the cool water.
On the light house point a beacon flashes red
to warn the unwary the harbor keeps its shape
when the night descends and the hills
are draped in darkness. The bougainvillea vines
are lost to sight, but their fragrance carries,
and villa windows shine like distant candles.
Voices float from out of gardens,
settling on the water like buoyant flowers.
The tunnel's mouth screams, spits out a train,
whose passengers dream they have mastered speed
by pressing banknotes to their waiter's palm.
The blazing windows hurtle past, trailing
sounds like streamers clanking on the rails.
The night absorbs this noise, at last regains
the silence, and a breeze comes in from off the water,
starting the sway of the sailboat masts.
The sky is a ripe peach with its skin pulled back,
exposing moist flesh as the color drains.
Evening draws its curtain of indigo haze
and the yachts, each in its basin like a pampered child,
nod their slender prows with the lapping waves,
easing down from the quest for sunlight and speed,
their tarpaulins buckled tight over polished wood,
their white hulls riding the cool water.
On the light house point a beacon flashes red
to warn the unwary the harbor keeps its shape
when the night descends and the hills
are draped in darkness. The bougainvillea vines
are lost to sight, but their fragrance carries,
and villa windows shine like distant candles.
Voices float from out of gardens,
settling on the water like buoyant flowers.
The tunnel's mouth screams, spits out a train,
whose passengers dream they have mastered speed
by pressing banknotes to their waiter's palm.
The blazing windows hurtle past, trailing
sounds like streamers clanking on the rails.
The night absorbs this noise, at last regains
the silence, and a breeze comes in from off the water,
starting the sway of the sailboat masts.
Passages Return to top
NICE
What can the land reveal beyond geography?
A stunted pine with roots splintering a rock,
each crevice an anagram of hardiness,
the palm's bushy head and slender trunk
as elegance and untested strength?
What of the sea wind and this beach of smooth stones
or the gulls that hang impassionate on the air,
that drift with outspread wings like white kites?
The beach is a smile where the waves lick their teeth
and spit back the bones of half eaten ships,
fish nets torn from cork floats expurged
onto these stones, undigested trash
like plastic toys and the wooden soles of shoes.
Hotels and casinos are sparkling clouds,
crisp bell boys idling on their carpets
or squawking like sparrows for a roost of leather bags.
On the bus stop benches old women sleep
and shriek their toothless dreams, their frayed coats
and sack of rags cushioning the slats.
I have seen them sleeping on the beach
in a corner blocked from wind by the bath house wall.
I have seen them lay down in groups like weary beasts,
wrapped in ratty blankets, sharing their warmth,
dark shapes on the stones as twilight softens the shadows.
What can they mean, who rest so far from human need?
While the city builds its homes thick as leaves
they live like bedouins who pitch their tents
where the sky and sand assault the empty space.
Pariahs in the midst of affluence and grace,
the tourist and the gambler's anti-christ,
they are the stigma of all our winning's loss,
like chaos in the soul, a living archetype.
What can the land reveal beyond geography?
A stunted pine with roots splintering a rock,
each crevice an anagram of hardiness,
the palm's bushy head and slender trunk
as elegance and untested strength?
What of the sea wind and this beach of smooth stones
or the gulls that hang impassionate on the air,
that drift with outspread wings like white kites?
The beach is a smile where the waves lick their teeth
and spit back the bones of half eaten ships,
fish nets torn from cork floats expurged
onto these stones, undigested trash
like plastic toys and the wooden soles of shoes.
Hotels and casinos are sparkling clouds,
crisp bell boys idling on their carpets
or squawking like sparrows for a roost of leather bags.
On the bus stop benches old women sleep
and shriek their toothless dreams, their frayed coats
and sack of rags cushioning the slats.
I have seen them sleeping on the beach
in a corner blocked from wind by the bath house wall.
I have seen them lay down in groups like weary beasts,
wrapped in ratty blankets, sharing their warmth,
dark shapes on the stones as twilight softens the shadows.
What can they mean, who rest so far from human need?
While the city builds its homes thick as leaves
they live like bedouins who pitch their tents
where the sky and sand assault the empty space.
Pariahs in the midst of affluence and grace,
the tourist and the gambler's anti-christ,
they are the stigma of all our winning's loss,
like chaos in the soul, a living archetype.
Passages Return to top
MADRID
Child on a horse that pulls the ragman's wagon
as cars swerve past their walking pace.
The nag whose lips have never caught the carrot,
whose belly hangs from its spine, a drooping sack,
lowers its head, blinks its eyes and waits
while the child pulls its mane, shouting her joy
at racing the street, her bare heels flailing
the ribbed flanks, her dark eyes aflame.
How does the city earn its identity
that a stranger on its streets will loose his way,
mistaking window bars for ornate cages
where song birds call in human voices?
A stairwell's spiral at the building's heart,
a bell that sounds within the walls,
a door half opened, eyes that question,
these are scenes he has greeted before.
Cheer for the traveler, a hearty meal
and a glass of beer on a hill above the city.
In the riverless city of fountains, the shade is deep
in the narrow streets and fish heads stink
like waves of heat. A blind man sells
lottery tickets from a string about his neck,
and old women, hugging black shawls
like silent crows, vanish in doorways.
El Bosco saw the world as ripe for sin
and death the mirror man dared not look in.
His birds were perched to pluck the corpse's skin
while naked souls outdanced the bagpipes' din.
Crabs are hissing in the boiling pot,
losing their salt in a froth of pink water.
Red claws raised up from the trash bins of the sea,
spindly legs fragile as a spider's,
trembling limbs that will be torn apart
for the white meat to be eaten. God Saturn
was no less severe, ate his children raw,
swallowed their screams to preserve what he held dear.
Whole pigs, but for their guts, hang in the doors
of butcher shops. Their death mask holds our eye
because a smile shapes their chins,
unlike our own, which must reveal the bone
before it shows a grin. A grim joke
to waste below while others' bellies grow tight.
We eat what we are able and keep our thoughts
off our plates to make room for the meat.
Child on a horse that pulls the ragman's wagon
as cars swerve past their walking pace.
The nag whose lips have never caught the carrot,
whose belly hangs from its spine, a drooping sack,
lowers its head, blinks its eyes and waits
while the child pulls its mane, shouting her joy
at racing the street, her bare heels flailing
the ribbed flanks, her dark eyes aflame.
How does the city earn its identity
that a stranger on its streets will loose his way,
mistaking window bars for ornate cages
where song birds call in human voices?
A stairwell's spiral at the building's heart,
a bell that sounds within the walls,
a door half opened, eyes that question,
these are scenes he has greeted before.
Cheer for the traveler, a hearty meal
and a glass of beer on a hill above the city.
In the riverless city of fountains, the shade is deep
in the narrow streets and fish heads stink
like waves of heat. A blind man sells
lottery tickets from a string about his neck,
and old women, hugging black shawls
like silent crows, vanish in doorways.
El Bosco saw the world as ripe for sin
and death the mirror man dared not look in.
His birds were perched to pluck the corpse's skin
while naked souls outdanced the bagpipes' din.
Crabs are hissing in the boiling pot,
losing their salt in a froth of pink water.
Red claws raised up from the trash bins of the sea,
spindly legs fragile as a spider's,
trembling limbs that will be torn apart
for the white meat to be eaten. God Saturn
was no less severe, ate his children raw,
swallowed their screams to preserve what he held dear.
Whole pigs, but for their guts, hang in the doors
of butcher shops. Their death mask holds our eye
because a smile shapes their chins,
unlike our own, which must reveal the bone
before it shows a grin. A grim joke
to waste below while others' bellies grow tight.
We eat what we are able and keep our thoughts
off our plates to make room for the meat.
Passages Return to top
FUENGIROLA
Sparks fly from the grinder's wheel
and dust pervades the room.
The residue will stay within his lungs,
a prayer capsule he may never open
but carry in the faith of a needed service.
Prolonged use may blunt the sharpest blade
yet increase the user's skill. Novice with a razor
may not master cutting until his blade is dull.
Look to the commonplace for something new:
the wind that tugs at your eyes, the radio
that calls your name. Familiar things
no longer true; trees that twist and bend,
stones falling from limbs,
the tight rope walker's dance, his wire
strung between the clouds, his hands
rooted in the earth, thistle blooming
from each finger tip.
Silence amidst the noise, composure
in the most frantic bodies.
These campgrounds where laundry flaps on lines,
the beach sand marked by foot prints of gulls,
and the beach-side high rise where tourists
on balconies photograph the sky
then shut their windows against the rain
while the campgrounds listed, tottered in the mud.
Inside the tent we listened to the dripping
as nylon walls hung close and damp.
No room to sit, we lay on sleeping bags
and cursed the space, that prone waiting
for leaks to begin. While the sky scraped its belly
on tree tops, we learned the patience
of hopelessness, such as the pauper knows
effortlessly waiting out the storm.
Like beggars on the street, we proffered our hands
and found dryness a hard coin to beg.
And some were in the bar wetting their insides
while their hair stayed dry, and some splashed away
with soggy bundles. And some sat patiently
as trees, the trees who bark grew dark
as the soil, whose leaves fell like tiny handbills
sticking to the tent walls, announcing the obvious truth.
Sparks fly from the grinder's wheel
and dust pervades the room.
The residue will stay within his lungs,
a prayer capsule he may never open
but carry in the faith of a needed service.
Prolonged use may blunt the sharpest blade
yet increase the user's skill. Novice with a razor
may not master cutting until his blade is dull.
Look to the commonplace for something new:
the wind that tugs at your eyes, the radio
that calls your name. Familiar things
no longer true; trees that twist and bend,
stones falling from limbs,
the tight rope walker's dance, his wire
strung between the clouds, his hands
rooted in the earth, thistle blooming
from each finger tip.
Silence amidst the noise, composure
in the most frantic bodies.
These campgrounds where laundry flaps on lines,
the beach sand marked by foot prints of gulls,
and the beach-side high rise where tourists
on balconies photograph the sky
then shut their windows against the rain
while the campgrounds listed, tottered in the mud.
Inside the tent we listened to the dripping
as nylon walls hung close and damp.
No room to sit, we lay on sleeping bags
and cursed the space, that prone waiting
for leaks to begin. While the sky scraped its belly
on tree tops, we learned the patience
of hopelessness, such as the pauper knows
effortlessly waiting out the storm.
Like beggars on the street, we proffered our hands
and found dryness a hard coin to beg.
And some were in the bar wetting their insides
while their hair stayed dry, and some splashed away
with soggy bundles. And some sat patiently
as trees, the trees who bark grew dark
as the soil, whose leaves fell like tiny handbills
sticking to the tent walls, announcing the obvious truth.
Passages Return to top
GRANADA
Snow on the mountain peaks reflects the sun
before the city wakes, a distant glare
that lures the skiers from their dark beds
to glide the slopes in a downward rush or air,
to skim the white fields lithe as swallows.
The sea within their sight, smooth as opal.
Blue water and sky, the indefinite line
their sunglassed eyes imagine to be curved.
On the street where pomegranates drop from trees
those slopes seem unattainably bright and high.
The cement truck crawls to the building site
heavy and slow, like an elephant pushing logs.
We must believe there are skiers on those slopes
like angels shooting slaloms through the clouds
and God who lifts them before they end their run
and become derelict women asleep on the benches.
A hilltop fortress below those fields of snow,
its walls and ceiling cut in crystal facets.
Dark-eyed Africans swung their scimitars
and ran the water up the hill, made flowers
bloom in dry gardens and filled the pools
so pleasure domes would doubly please the eye.
A heathen paradise which the cross reclaimed
and purified for the virgin bride.
Where a chapel crowns a hill, ragged children
scamper like goats, throwing rocks
at stray dogs that chase their lean cattle.
These are gypsies that live in shanty houses
or hand-dug caves that pit a barren field.
No gold earrings here or tambourines,
but their poverty and squalor looking down on the city
from the endless vista of sky and dry mountains.
Snow on the mountain peaks reflects the sun
before the city wakes, a distant glare
that lures the skiers from their dark beds
to glide the slopes in a downward rush or air,
to skim the white fields lithe as swallows.
The sea within their sight, smooth as opal.
Blue water and sky, the indefinite line
their sunglassed eyes imagine to be curved.
On the street where pomegranates drop from trees
those slopes seem unattainably bright and high.
The cement truck crawls to the building site
heavy and slow, like an elephant pushing logs.
We must believe there are skiers on those slopes
like angels shooting slaloms through the clouds
and God who lifts them before they end their run
and become derelict women asleep on the benches.
A hilltop fortress below those fields of snow,
its walls and ceiling cut in crystal facets.
Dark-eyed Africans swung their scimitars
and ran the water up the hill, made flowers
bloom in dry gardens and filled the pools
so pleasure domes would doubly please the eye.
A heathen paradise which the cross reclaimed
and purified for the virgin bride.
Where a chapel crowns a hill, ragged children
scamper like goats, throwing rocks
at stray dogs that chase their lean cattle.
These are gypsies that live in shanty houses
or hand-dug caves that pit a barren field.
No gold earrings here or tambourines,
but their poverty and squalor looking down on the city
from the endless vista of sky and dry mountains.
Passages Return to top
VENICE
The bones of Ezra Pound have dissolved
in canal water, adding to the smell
of a body well immersed in history.
Wagner's spirit rises with the tide,
his flesh is the moss on the hulls of barges.
Where Tintoretto's "Paradiso"
adorns a palace wall with angelic swarms
passing their light like translucent glass
the faithful come to labor at their art,
to learn the pilgrimage of servitude
on damp islands of sinking lands that waves
would break apart but for the linking bridges.
Where better to learn of immortality
than a city peeling like a mildewed fresco,
where towers pose in a weary tilt, their stones
as soft as chalk? The floors of churches
sunk like water pools, though their ceilings
stay dry and angels fly the arid clouds
while the lord declines his hand,
beckoning the worthy to rise.
The artist draws a temporal scene, his forms
are muscular and large. Does he present
a body which speaks its timeless grace, or show
the body's peak within a lifetime's changing?
Perspective creates distance, which equals time
for the eye to rest on the space between the columns
or spy a marble figure in its niche,
an angel on the tower, San Marcos' frieze
where horses' manes, despite the lack of breeze,
snap like waves that crash upon a beach.
The body yields to the undertow of time,
its timeless grace continually passing.
And here the artists come to work and die,
to learn that only time can measure
their immortality. In their studios
the rotting ceilings gape to show the sky.
The bones of Ezra Pound have dissolved
in canal water, adding to the smell
of a body well immersed in history.
Wagner's spirit rises with the tide,
his flesh is the moss on the hulls of barges.
Where Tintoretto's "Paradiso"
adorns a palace wall with angelic swarms
passing their light like translucent glass
the faithful come to labor at their art,
to learn the pilgrimage of servitude
on damp islands of sinking lands that waves
would break apart but for the linking bridges.
Where better to learn of immortality
than a city peeling like a mildewed fresco,
where towers pose in a weary tilt, their stones
as soft as chalk? The floors of churches
sunk like water pools, though their ceilings
stay dry and angels fly the arid clouds
while the lord declines his hand,
beckoning the worthy to rise.
The artist draws a temporal scene, his forms
are muscular and large. Does he present
a body which speaks its timeless grace, or show
the body's peak within a lifetime's changing?
Perspective creates distance, which equals time
for the eye to rest on the space between the columns
or spy a marble figure in its niche,
an angel on the tower, San Marcos' frieze
where horses' manes, despite the lack of breeze,
snap like waves that crash upon a beach.
The body yields to the undertow of time,
its timeless grace continually passing.
And here the artists come to work and die,
to learn that only time can measure
their immortality. In their studios
the rotting ceilings gape to show the sky.
Passages Return to top
SLEEPING IN PARIS
The city swarms like a cafe crowd, and the street
is alive with cars despite the hour. The night
displays its monuments bathed in the heat
of lamps. Fountains pour cold streams of light.
The woman who lies in bed in this hotel room
has gone to sleep, a dark solitude
where I will also lie, a silent tomb
to share the body's warmth, like sharing food.
In the insatiable city, where bodies press
and voices linger, as light does in the west,
I will answer a day-long weariness
of searching. Though the sun flames in space
I will turn away my eyes and lie at rest
in the familiar city of sleep, keeping pace.
The city swarms like a cafe crowd, and the street
is alive with cars despite the hour. The night
displays its monuments bathed in the heat
of lamps. Fountains pour cold streams of light.
The woman who lies in bed in this hotel room
has gone to sleep, a dark solitude
where I will also lie, a silent tomb
to share the body's warmth, like sharing food.
In the insatiable city, where bodies press
and voices linger, as light does in the west,
I will answer a day-long weariness
of searching. Though the sun flames in space
I will turn away my eyes and lie at rest
in the familiar city of sleep, keeping pace.
Passages Return to top
The Privileged Passengers
for Sandy
Moonlight shining through the window pane
reflects the glow of a unseen star.
Moonlight sets the sheets aflame
then tosses them out on the sea of night,
infused with a radiance from afar
in the flawless geometry of silver light.
In that whirling open place,
we lay in each other’s arms, so calm,
so unpossessed by our embrace,
that distant worlds once set apart
drew together and became one
in the silence of a beating heart.
We saw the earth, the moon and stars
as from a ship, vast and dark.
All human souls were its passengers
and all in dread of what lay in store,
fearful that they must embark
on the journey to an unknown shore.
Yet from the bridge unmoved by fear
the souls of lovers held no complaint.
We blessed the journey in voices clear
and mapped a course of unity,
our passage led without restraint
by moonlight on the luminous sea.
for Sandy
Moonlight shining through the window pane
reflects the glow of a unseen star.
Moonlight sets the sheets aflame
then tosses them out on the sea of night,
infused with a radiance from afar
in the flawless geometry of silver light.
In that whirling open place,
we lay in each other’s arms, so calm,
so unpossessed by our embrace,
that distant worlds once set apart
drew together and became one
in the silence of a beating heart.
We saw the earth, the moon and stars
as from a ship, vast and dark.
All human souls were its passengers
and all in dread of what lay in store,
fearful that they must embark
on the journey to an unknown shore.
Yet from the bridge unmoved by fear
the souls of lovers held no complaint.
We blessed the journey in voices clear
and mapped a course of unity,
our passage led without restraint
by moonlight on the luminous sea.
Passages Return to top
“when we’are to bodies gone”
John Donne
The time we lie in still embrace
All passion cleared, all fears dispelled
Our souls in weightless balance rise
And all the world recedes
Into solemn twilight
As evening darkens the sky
No thrashing limbs, no restlessness
No breath stirs the air
And though our hearts beat on
Our bodies lose all substance
That now, without presence, without form
Your hand upon my chest
Is no hand and no chest
And in this disembodied state
We lie as lovers in ages past
Who saw beyond themselves
Their souls revealed as light
Flowing from a higher place
To a world of shadows
Their souls emitting light
So much like starlight are we then
We shine in vast uncharted space
And set a mark
For those who search the sky
Seeking time and place
By the glowing of a star
Our light travels as far
As the breath that stirs the water
As the colors of the evening sky
We hold each other in the dark
And the room’s aglow
Though no light is seen to shine
John Donne
The time we lie in still embrace
All passion cleared, all fears dispelled
Our souls in weightless balance rise
And all the world recedes
Into solemn twilight
As evening darkens the sky
No thrashing limbs, no restlessness
No breath stirs the air
And though our hearts beat on
Our bodies lose all substance
That now, without presence, without form
Your hand upon my chest
Is no hand and no chest
And in this disembodied state
We lie as lovers in ages past
Who saw beyond themselves
Their souls revealed as light
Flowing from a higher place
To a world of shadows
Their souls emitting light
So much like starlight are we then
We shine in vast uncharted space
And set a mark
For those who search the sky
Seeking time and place
By the glowing of a star
Our light travels as far
As the breath that stirs the water
As the colors of the evening sky
We hold each other in the dark
And the room’s aglow
Though no light is seen to shine
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