rising behind them
every night. Again and again we put our
sweet ghosts on small paper boats and sailed
them back into their death, each moving slowly
into the dark, disappearing as our hearts
visited and savored, hurt and yearned.
HALLOWEEN
There were a hundred wild people in Allen’s
three-story house. He was sitting at a small
table in the kitchen quietly eating something.
Alone, except for Orlovsky’s little brother
who was asleep with his face against the wall.
Allen wearing a red skullcap, and a loose bathrobe
over his nakedness. Shoulder-length hair
and a chest-length, oily beard.
No one was within fifteen years of him. Destroyed
like the rest of that clan. His remarkable
talent destroyed. The fine mind grown more
and more simple. Buddhist chants, impoverishing
poems. There are no middle tones in the paintings
of children. Chekhov said he didn’t want
the audience to cry, but to see. Allen showing
me his old man’s bald scalp. A kind of love.
Aachen is a good copy of a mediocre building.
Architects tried for two thousand years to find
a way to put a dome on a square base.
ELEGY FOR BOB (JEAN MCLEAN)
Only you and I still stand in the snow on Highland Avenue
in Pittsburgh waiting for the blundering iron streetcars
that never came. Only you know how the immense storms
over the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers were the scale
I wanted. Nobody but you remembers Peabody High School.
You shared my youth in Paris and the hills above Como.
And later, in Seattle. It was you playing the aria from
Don Giovanni
over and over, filling the forest of Puget
Sound with the music. You in the front room and me
upstairs with your discarded wife in my bed. The sound
of your loneliness pouring over our happy bodies.
You were with your third wife when I was in Perugia
six months later, but in love with somebody else.
We searched for her in Munich, the snow falling again.
You trying to decide when to kill yourself. All of it
finally bringing us to San Francisco. To the vast
decaying white house. No sound of Mozart coming up
from there. No alleluias in you anymore. No longer
will you waltz under the chandeliers in Paris salons
drunk with champagne and the Greek girl as the others
stand along the mirrored walls. The men watching
with fury, the eyes of the women inscrutable. No one
else speaks the language of those years. No one
remembers you as the Baron. The streetcars have
finished the last run, and I am walking home. Thinking
love is not refuted because it comes to an end.
RÉSUMÉ
Easter on the mountain. The hanging goat roasted
with lemon, pepper and thyme. The American hacks off
the last of the meat, gets out the remaining
handfuls from the spine. Grease up to the elbows,
his face smeared and his heart blooming. The satisfied
farmers watch his fervor with surprise.
When the day begins to cool, he makes his way down
the trails. Down from that holiday energy
to the silence of his real life, where he will
wash in cold water by kerosene light, happy
and alone. A future inch by inch, rock by rock,
by the green wheat and the ripe wheat later.
By basil and dove tower and white doves turning
in the brilliant sky. The ghosts of his other world
crowding around, surrounding him with himself.
Tomato by tomato, canned fish in the daily stew.
He sits outside on the wall of his vineyard
as night rises from the parched earth and the sea
darkens in the distance. Insistent stars and him
singing in the quiet. Flesh of the spirit and soul
of the body. The clarity that does so much damage.
MORE THAN SIXTY
Out of money, so I’m sitting in the shade
of my farmhouse cleaning the lentils
I found in the back of the cupboard.
Listening to the cicada in the fig tree
mix with the cooing doves on the roof.
I look up when I hear a goat hurt far down
the valley and discover the sea
exactly the same blue I used to paint it
with my watercolors as a child.
So what, I think happily. So
every night. Again and again we put our
sweet ghosts on small paper boats and sailed
them back into their death, each moving slowly
into the dark, disappearing as our hearts
visited and savored, hurt and yearned.
HALLOWEEN
There were a hundred wild people in Allen’s
three-story house. He was sitting at a small
table in the kitchen quietly eating something.
Alone, except for Orlovsky’s little brother
who was asleep with his face against the wall.
Allen wearing a red skullcap, and a loose bathrobe
over his nakedness. Shoulder-length hair
and a chest-length, oily beard.
No one was within fifteen years of him. Destroyed
like the rest of that clan. His remarkable
talent destroyed. The fine mind grown more
and more simple. Buddhist chants, impoverishing
poems. There are no middle tones in the paintings
of children. Chekhov said he didn’t want
the audience to cry, but to see. Allen showing
me his old man’s bald scalp. A kind of love.
Aachen is a good copy of a mediocre building.
Architects tried for two thousand years to find
a way to put a dome on a square base.
ELEGY FOR BOB (JEAN MCLEAN)
Only you and I still stand in the snow on Highland Avenue
in Pittsburgh waiting for the blundering iron streetcars
that never came. Only you know how the immense storms
over the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers were the scale
I wanted. Nobody but you remembers Peabody High School.
You shared my youth in Paris and the hills above Como.
And later, in Seattle. It was you playing the aria from
Don Giovanni
over and over, filling the forest of Puget
Sound with the music. You in the front room and me
upstairs with your discarded wife in my bed. The sound
of your loneliness pouring over our happy bodies.
You were with your third wife when I was in Perugia
six months later, but in love with somebody else.
We searched for her in Munich, the snow falling again.
You trying to decide when to kill yourself. All of it
finally bringing us to San Francisco. To the vast
decaying white house. No sound of Mozart coming up
from there. No alleluias in you anymore. No longer
will you waltz under the chandeliers in Paris salons
drunk with champagne and the Greek girl as the others
stand along the mirrored walls. The men watching
with fury, the eyes of the women inscrutable. No one
else speaks the language of those years. No one
remembers you as the Baron. The streetcars have
finished the last run, and I am walking home. Thinking
love is not refuted because it comes to an end.
RÉSUMÉ
Easter on the mountain. The hanging goat roasted
with lemon, pepper and thyme. The American hacks off
the last of the meat, gets out the remaining
handfuls from the spine. Grease up to the elbows,
his face smeared and his heart blooming. The satisfied
farmers watch his fervor with surprise.
When the day begins to cool, he makes his way down
the trails. Down from that holiday energy
to the silence of his real life, where he will
wash in cold water by kerosene light, happy
and alone. A future inch by inch, rock by rock,
by the green wheat and the ripe wheat later.
By basil and dove tower and white doves turning
in the brilliant sky. The ghosts of his other world
crowding around, surrounding him with himself.
Tomato by tomato, canned fish in the daily stew.
He sits outside on the wall of his vineyard
as night rises from the parched earth and the sea
darkens in the distance. Insistent stars and him
singing in the quiet. Flesh of the spirit and soul
of the body. The clarity that does so much damage.
MORE THAN SIXTY
Out of money, so I’m sitting in the shade
of my farmhouse cleaning the lentils
I found in the back of the cupboard.
Listening to the cicada in the fig tree
mix with the cooing doves on the roof.
I look up when I hear a goat hurt far down
the valley and discover the sea
exactly the same blue I used to paint it
with my watercolors as a child.
So what, I think happily. So
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