inside of our hands,
flesh and land, body and prairie.
I reached to smoke down his next-to-last,
which he lit and made ready.
The poultry like a war ration
we ate all the way through.
What we wished, we said.
What we said, we found that night
by these, and no other,
means.
[Does the war want
us to unstitch its side and climb in, to become
its good surgeon?
Stupid poet, a war can’t know
what it wants.]
Beasts of the Field
Name those things, too,
you cannot bear the thinking of.
In blackberries and moths Adam drew up a study:
carpet bombs, drones, solitary.
So it behooved God not to create these.
[Savage, Sinner, Scapegoat, Peacekeeper,
Exdrone, Blue Streak, Fireflash.
Long March, Peacekeeper, Gladiator, Grail,
Theatre, Scrooge, Gimlet, Wasserfall,
Blue Eye, Peacekeeper, Patriot, Ash.]
Pistol
He put pistol shadow
where my husband’s hand had been,
pistol now in hand as shadow,
but unlike any good shadow
of linden or grass, portioned
according to fresh light as it passed,
no time could erase this portion,
no hand could loose such shadow.
Husband , I said, look at my hand.
He stared at what a stranger
had put by crime on skin, my land.
I put ideas, camphor, soils in hand
but the pistol only grew
and having little left to lose, I said
give me back my mind to know
if this is now my steely hand
in which he left such shadow.
Little Belief
By this river wall
this solvent light
it’s stark enough to say
I hate, I think,
I think in the quartz
the water sharpens back
how badly
I would like to have
a cutting tool,
a proven gun.
A heavy work
it must have been
to strip this river of film
so I can say,
there are humans
the worst of dogs
put to shame.
Mercy, have mercy on me.
Shooting Gallery
A shooting gallery!
I step right up:
ten paper men
smile at me
and circle round and round.
O my pellet!
It tears a hole
clean through!
My olde-tymey men,
such steadfast smiles
make happy practice!
I could get used to us.
Sighting
I did not see a god,
and the god I did not see was not
the god I was told
to see or call, alternately,
in the trade and settle of God’s country
where the farmer’s root crops
were gone, almost —
Shoot me, said the earth,
like a woman who would not
do it to herself. The ones who heard
convinced her why not, why not
even as they took their sticks
to her in the street.
Shoot me, said the earth. Shoot .
Little Goat
God is not light upon light, no more
than goat is need upon need,
although there, where it grazes, it is sun upon coat
within which ticks and stray-blown feed burrow
into the pocked skin of such foul scent
covering the underflesh heart that could eat
this farmer’s grain or the barren mountain’s bark
high in the solitude of sheer animal peace
laid over sheer animal terror.
We ask the animal afflicted by its time,
its impoverished American meadow
that drove it to find birch from which to strip its easy feed
to abide with us.
It does not need us. We think it needs us.
We must forgive God God’s story.
The Day-Shift Sleeps,
the night-war wakes:
Torturers button their canvas shirts.
They straighten their cots.
They bite their toast.
They tidy their folders.
They smoke their smokes.
They tidy their blank, blank folders.
All the little chores
before going on a trip,
theirs is the zeal of children.
Foreign Song
To bomb them,
we mustn’t have heard their music
or known their waterless night watch,
we mustn’t have seen how already
the desert was under constant death bells
ringing over sleeping cribs and dry wells.
We couldn’t have wanted
this eavesdropping
of names we’ve never pronounced
praying themselves toward death.
I try to believe in us —
we must not
have heard
their music.
[Tuesday wind brings a letter
from a friend: Don’t be naïve. ]
Choir
I once believed in heavenly clarity —
do you know how good it feels to sing
of certainty, the wild apricot
of
flesh and land, body and prairie.
I reached to smoke down his next-to-last,
which he lit and made ready.
The poultry like a war ration
we ate all the way through.
What we wished, we said.
What we said, we found that night
by these, and no other,
means.
[Does the war want
us to unstitch its side and climb in, to become
its good surgeon?
Stupid poet, a war can’t know
what it wants.]
Beasts of the Field
Name those things, too,
you cannot bear the thinking of.
In blackberries and moths Adam drew up a study:
carpet bombs, drones, solitary.
So it behooved God not to create these.
[Savage, Sinner, Scapegoat, Peacekeeper,
Exdrone, Blue Streak, Fireflash.
Long March, Peacekeeper, Gladiator, Grail,
Theatre, Scrooge, Gimlet, Wasserfall,
Blue Eye, Peacekeeper, Patriot, Ash.]
Pistol
He put pistol shadow
where my husband’s hand had been,
pistol now in hand as shadow,
but unlike any good shadow
of linden or grass, portioned
according to fresh light as it passed,
no time could erase this portion,
no hand could loose such shadow.
Husband , I said, look at my hand.
He stared at what a stranger
had put by crime on skin, my land.
I put ideas, camphor, soils in hand
but the pistol only grew
and having little left to lose, I said
give me back my mind to know
if this is now my steely hand
in which he left such shadow.
Little Belief
By this river wall
this solvent light
it’s stark enough to say
I hate, I think,
I think in the quartz
the water sharpens back
how badly
I would like to have
a cutting tool,
a proven gun.
A heavy work
it must have been
to strip this river of film
so I can say,
there are humans
the worst of dogs
put to shame.
Mercy, have mercy on me.
Shooting Gallery
A shooting gallery!
I step right up:
ten paper men
smile at me
and circle round and round.
O my pellet!
It tears a hole
clean through!
My olde-tymey men,
such steadfast smiles
make happy practice!
I could get used to us.
Sighting
I did not see a god,
and the god I did not see was not
the god I was told
to see or call, alternately,
in the trade and settle of God’s country
where the farmer’s root crops
were gone, almost —
Shoot me, said the earth,
like a woman who would not
do it to herself. The ones who heard
convinced her why not, why not
even as they took their sticks
to her in the street.
Shoot me, said the earth. Shoot .
Little Goat
God is not light upon light, no more
than goat is need upon need,
although there, where it grazes, it is sun upon coat
within which ticks and stray-blown feed burrow
into the pocked skin of such foul scent
covering the underflesh heart that could eat
this farmer’s grain or the barren mountain’s bark
high in the solitude of sheer animal peace
laid over sheer animal terror.
We ask the animal afflicted by its time,
its impoverished American meadow
that drove it to find birch from which to strip its easy feed
to abide with us.
It does not need us. We think it needs us.
We must forgive God God’s story.
The Day-Shift Sleeps,
the night-war wakes:
Torturers button their canvas shirts.
They straighten their cots.
They bite their toast.
They tidy their folders.
They smoke their smokes.
They tidy their blank, blank folders.
All the little chores
before going on a trip,
theirs is the zeal of children.
Foreign Song
To bomb them,
we mustn’t have heard their music
or known their waterless night watch,
we mustn’t have seen how already
the desert was under constant death bells
ringing over sleeping cribs and dry wells.
We couldn’t have wanted
this eavesdropping
of names we’ve never pronounced
praying themselves toward death.
I try to believe in us —
we must not
have heard
their music.
[Tuesday wind brings a letter
from a friend: Don’t be naïve. ]
Choir
I once believed in heavenly clarity —
do you know how good it feels to sing
of certainty, the wild apricot
of
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