Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibratingAir shaped not in a cylinder but in a coneWidening ever outward and bawaah spoutingInfinitely upward through an upturnedSwollen golden bell rimmedLike a gloxinia floweringIn Sax’s Belgian imaginationAnd in the unfathomable matrixOf mothers and fathers as a genius gravenHumming into the cells of the bodyOr cupped in the…
Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves,Or nowhere. And if Socrates leavesHis house in the morning,When he returns in the eveningHe will find Socrates waitingOn the doorstep. Buddha the stickYou use to clear the path,And Buddha the dog-doo you flickAway with it, nowhere or in eachSeveral thing you touch:The dollar bill, the buttonThat works the television.Even…
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,The secret courtesy that courses like ichorThrough the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,Impossible to tell in writing. ‘Bashõ’He named himself, ‘Banana Tree’: bananaAfter the plant some grateful students gave him,Maybe in appreciation of his guidanceThreading a long night…
You must have amazed that half-respectable streetOf triple-decker families and rooming-house housepaintersThe day that the bole-ankled oversized hams of your legsBobbed in procession up the crazy-paved front walkEmbraced by the arms of Mr. Poppik the seltzer manAnd Corydon his black-skinned helper, tendering your thighsThick as a man up our steps. We are not reptiles:Even the…
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or MalaysiansGossiping over tea and noodles on their breakOr talking money or politics while one fittedThis armpiece with its overseam to the bandOf cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blazeAt the…
Of biography, chance, physics—The unseasonable soul holds forth,Eager for form as a renownedPedant, the emperor’s man of worth,Hereditary arbiter of manners.Soul, one’s life is one’s enemy.As the small children learn, what happensTakes over, and what you were goes away.They learn it in sardonic softComments of the weather, when it sharpensThe hard surfaces of daylight: lightWinds,…
Clown’s eyes, Pope’s nose, a mouth for dirty stories,He made his bundle in the Great DepressionAnd now, a jovial immigrant successIn baggy pinstripes, he winks and wheezes gossip,Village stories that could lift your hairOr lance a boil; the small town dirt, the dope,The fishy deals and incestuous combinations,The husband and the wife of his wife’s…
Their clothes boyish and neat,New mittens or clean sneakers,Clean hands, hips not bad still,Buying ice cream, steaks, soda,Fresh melons and soap—or the bigBalding young men in work shoesAnd green work pants, beer bellyAnd white T-shirt, the porky walkBack to the truck, polite; possibleTo feel briefly like Jesus,A gust of diffuse tendernessCrossing the dark spacesTo where…
No supper my eyes dined.When I had no eyes I listened.When I had no ears I thought.When I had no thought I waited.When I had no father I madeCare my father. When I hadNo mother I embraced order.When I had no friend I madeQuiet my friend. When I had noEnemy I opposed my body.When I…
And troubles, clinging in stubborn coloniesLike pulpy shore-life battened on a jetty.Slashed by the little deaths of sleep and pleasure,They swell in the nurturing spasms of the waves,Sucking to cling; and even in death itself—Baked, frozen—they shrink to grip the granite harder.“Rid yourself of attachments and aversions”—But in her father’s orchard, already, he saysHe’d like…
