When I was a child and the soft flesh was forming

Quietly as snow on the bare bough of bone,

My father brought me trout from the green river

From whose chill lips the water song had flown.

Dull grew their eyes, the beautiful, blithe garland

Of stipple faded, as light shocked the brain;

They were the first sweet sacrifice I tasted,

A young god, ignorant of the blood’s stain.

I wanted to be sure to reach you;

though my ship was on the way it got caught   

in some moorings. I am always tying up   

and then deciding to depart. In storms and   

at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide   

around my fathomless arms, I am unable   

to understand the forms of my vanity   

or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder   

in my hand and the sun sinking. To   

you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage   

of my will. The terrible channels where   

the wind drives me against the brown lips   

of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet   

I trust the sanity of my vessel; and   

if it sinks, it may well be in answer   

to the reasoning of the eternal voices,

the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

Orpheus


When I wrote of the women in their dances and 

      wildness, it was a mask,

on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,

it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,

fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone

      down with song,

it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from

      myself.
  

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory

of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued

      child

beside me among the doctors, and a word

of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,

the fragments join in me with their own music.

Dear K., there’s a mosquito stain

between the pages of your book, a streak

of platelets beside my index finger.

The broken microscopic cells have escaped

the hurly-burly of the wide aorta, the stark

unholy flow through veins and tubules.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mistake

anatomy for emotion. My heart is meat

and gristle, like Artaud’s: a simple

pump, it never falters. If I weep

it’s for the rocking chair, three knocks

embedded in the nursery wall.

On one window, I found instructions:

“Here, no cares invade, all sorrows

cease” in almost perfect iambs.

Forgive me. I tried to keep them

“far outside” but they marched right up

to my room. All month they’ve been waving

tenuous arms. Have you seen them?

What could I do but let them in

and let them rest in your favorite chair. Soon

they’ll disappear or I will. In the afternoons

(do you remember?) light falls

or spills, spills or falls through the amber

stained-glass windows. It lifts my spirits

but I’m still waiting for you to appear

at the edge of my bed with a message. Think

of the ruins I could have traveled to

by now, think of the days I’ve wasted

lying on the pink divan, a stand of hawthorns

blocking my view of the rose garden,

my American Beauty, already fully blown.

My tactic is to look at you

To learn how you are

Love you as you are

My tactic is to talk to you

And listen to you

And construct with words

An indestructible bridge

My tactic is to stay in your memory,

I don’t know how

Nor with what pretext

But stay within you

My tactic is to be honest

And know you are too

And that we don’t sell each other illusions

So that between us there is no curtain or abyss

My strategy instead is

Deeper and simpler.

My strategy is that some day

I don’t know how, nor with what pretext

That you, finally, need me.