puts down
roots and comes back again year after year.
RESPECT
For Albert Schweitzer
This morning I found a baby scorpion,
perfect, in the saucepan.
Killed it with a piece of marble.
THE LIVES OF FAMOUS MEN
Trying to scrape the burned soup from my only pan
with a spoon after midnight by oil lamp
because if I do not cook the mackerel
this hot night it will kill me tomorrow
in the vegetable stew. Which is twice
wasteful. Though it would be another way
of cutting down, I am thinking, as I go out to get
more water from the well and happen to look up
through the bright stars. Yes, yes, I say,
and go on pulling at the long rope.
GETTING OLD
The soft wind comes sweet in the night
on the mountain. Invisible except for
the sound it makes in the big poplars outside
and the feel on his naked, single body,
which breathes quietly a little before dawn,
eyes open and in love with the table
and chair in the transparent dark and stars
in the other window. Soon it will be time
for the first tea and cool pear and then
the miles down and miles up the mountain.
“Old and alone,” he thinks, smiling.
Full of what abundance has done to his spirit.
Feeling around inside to see if his heart
is still, thank God, ambitious. The way
old men look in their eyes each morning.
Knowing she isn’t there and how much Michiko
isn’t anywhere. The eyes close as he remembers
seeing the big owl on the roof last night
for the first time after hearing it for months.
Thinking how much he has grown unsuited
for love the size it is for him. “But maybe
not,” he says. And the eyes open as he
grins at the heart’s stubborn pretending.
HOW TO LOVE THE DEAD
She lives, the bird says, and means nothing
silly. She is dead and available,
the fox says, knowing about the spirits.
Not the picture at the funeral,
not the object of grieving. She is dead
and you can have that, he says. If you can
love without politeness or delicacy,
the fox says, love her with your wolf heart.
As the dead are to be desired.
Not the way long marriages are,
nothing happening again and again.
Not in the woods or in the fields.
Not in the cities. The painful love of being
permanently unhoused. Not color, but the stain.
ALMOST HAPPY
The goldfish is dead this morning on the bottom
of her world. The autumn sky is white,
the trees are coming apart in the cold rain.
Loneliness gets closer and closer.
He drinks hot tea and sings off-key:
This train ain’t a going-home train, this train.
This is not a going-home train, this train.
This train ain’t a going-home train ’cause
my home’s on a gone-away train. That train.
REFUSING
HEAVEN
[2005]
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three
roots and comes back again year after year.
RESPECT
For Albert Schweitzer
This morning I found a baby scorpion,
perfect, in the saucepan.
Killed it with a piece of marble.
THE LIVES OF FAMOUS MEN
Trying to scrape the burned soup from my only pan
with a spoon after midnight by oil lamp
because if I do not cook the mackerel
this hot night it will kill me tomorrow
in the vegetable stew. Which is twice
wasteful. Though it would be another way
of cutting down, I am thinking, as I go out to get
more water from the well and happen to look up
through the bright stars. Yes, yes, I say,
and go on pulling at the long rope.
GETTING OLD
The soft wind comes sweet in the night
on the mountain. Invisible except for
the sound it makes in the big poplars outside
and the feel on his naked, single body,
which breathes quietly a little before dawn,
eyes open and in love with the table
and chair in the transparent dark and stars
in the other window. Soon it will be time
for the first tea and cool pear and then
the miles down and miles up the mountain.
“Old and alone,” he thinks, smiling.
Full of what abundance has done to his spirit.
Feeling around inside to see if his heart
is still, thank God, ambitious. The way
old men look in their eyes each morning.
Knowing she isn’t there and how much Michiko
isn’t anywhere. The eyes close as he remembers
seeing the big owl on the roof last night
for the first time after hearing it for months.
Thinking how much he has grown unsuited
for love the size it is for him. “But maybe
not,” he says. And the eyes open as he
grins at the heart’s stubborn pretending.
HOW TO LOVE THE DEAD
She lives, the bird says, and means nothing
silly. She is dead and available,
the fox says, knowing about the spirits.
Not the picture at the funeral,
not the object of grieving. She is dead
and you can have that, he says. If you can
love without politeness or delicacy,
the fox says, love her with your wolf heart.
As the dead are to be desired.
Not the way long marriages are,
nothing happening again and again.
Not in the woods or in the fields.
Not in the cities. The painful love of being
permanently unhoused. Not color, but the stain.
ALMOST HAPPY
The goldfish is dead this morning on the bottom
of her world. The autumn sky is white,
the trees are coming apart in the cold rain.
Loneliness gets closer and closer.
He drinks hot tea and sings off-key:
This train ain’t a going-home train, this train.
This is not a going-home train, this train.
This train ain’t a going-home train ’cause
my home’s on a gone-away train. That train.
REFUSING
HEAVEN
[2005]
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three
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