young and grows old,and the lumber pile does not grow younger, nor theweathered two-by-fours lose their darkness,but the old tree goes on, the barn stands without help somany years,the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.The horse swings around on one leg, steps, and turns,the chicken flapping claws onto the roost, its wings whelpingand…
Merchants have multiplied more than the stars of heaven.Half the population are like the long grasshoppersThat sleep in the bushes in the cool of the day;The sound of their wings is heard at noon, muffled, near the earth.The crane handler dies; the taxi driver dies, slumped overIn his taxi. Meanwhile high in the air an…
The heart leapsAlmost up to the sky! But lamentsAnd filaments pull us back into the dark.Night takes us. ButA pawComes out of the darkTo light the road. I’ll be all right.I follow my own fiery traces through the night.
They can pull the curtains around the bed tonight.The old man wants to know how the war ended.The young girl wants her breasts to cause the sun to rise.The thinker wants to keep misunderstanding alive.It’s all right if the earthly monk is buried near the altar.It’s all right if the singer fails to turn up…
Near their stoves hinted at it a thousand times.Ravens at night hide in an old woman’s shoe.A four-year-old speaks some ancient language.We have lived our own death a thousand times.Each sentence we speak to friends means the oppositeAs well. Each time we say, ‘I trust in God,’ it meansGod has already abandoned us a thousand…
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sunAppeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.It was hard to believe. The high school teacherWe’d met called it a pinhole camera,People in the Renaissance loved to do that.And when the moon had passed partly throughWe saw on a rock underneath a fir tree,Dozens of…
Right. Dragons copulate with their knobby tails.Some somnolent wealth rises unconcerned,Over there! In the world! Ponderous stubbornSorrow weighs down the flying Gospels.Some enormous obstacle blocks our way.The untempered soul grumbles in empty light.
Hang from the sleeves of evangelists;There are murdered kings in the light-bulbs outside movie theaters:The coffins of the poor are hibernating in piles of new tires.The janitor sits troubled by the boiler,And the hotel keeper shuffles the cards of insanity.The President dreams of invading Cuba.Bushes are growing over the outdoor grills,Vines over the yachts and…
The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.The soybeans are breathing on all sides.Old men are sitting before their houses on car seatsIn the small towns. I am happy,The moon rising above the turkey sheds.IIThe small world of the carPlunges through the deep fields of the night,On the road from Willmar to Milan.This solitude…
And drove west straight toward the Pacific?We were all the people there were.We followed Dylan’s songs all the way west.It was Seventy; the war was over, almost;And we were driving to the sea.We had closed the farm, tucked inThe flap, and were eating the honeyOf distance and the word ‘there.’Oh whee, we’re gonna flyDown into…
