The text of this poem could not be published because of Copyright laws.

This woman on the telephoneSays she is a man, not a woman.The mask increases, eats the worm,Stripes for mouth and eyes and nose,The voice of the woman hollows—-More and more like a dead one,Worms in the glottal stops.She hatesThe thought of a baby—-Stealer of cells, stealer of beauty—-She would rather be dead than fat,Dead and…

Moles dead in the pebbled rut,Shapeless as flung gloves, a few feet apart —-Blue suede a dog or fox has chewed.One, by himself, seemed pitiable enough,Little victim unearthed by some large creatureFrom his orbit under the elm root.The second carcass makes a duel of the affair:Blind twins bitten by bad nature.The sky’s far dome is…

Breathing was easy in his airy holding.The sun sat in his armpit.Nothing went moldy. The little invisiblesWaited on him hand and foot.The blue sisters sent me to another school.Monkey lived under the dunce cap.He kept blowing me kisses.I hardly knew him.He won’t be got rid of:Memblepaws, teary and sorry,Fido Littlesoul, the bowel’s unfamiliar.A dustbin’s enough…

(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)The asteroids turn traitor in the air,And planets plot with old elliptic cunning;Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear.Red the unraveled rose sings in your hair:Blood springs eternal if the heart be burning.(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)Cryptic stars wind up the atmosphere,In solar schemes the titled…

(With heat such as no man could haveAnd yet keep kind)That all merit’s in being meatSeasoned how he’d most approve;Blood’s brothFilched by his hand,Choice wassail makes, cooked hot,Cupped quick to mouth;Though prime parts cram each rich meal,He’ll not spareNor scant his want untilSacked larder’s gone bone-bare.

in panic at the crop of catacombssprung up like plague of toadstools overnight:refectories where he reveled have becomethe holstery of worms, rapacious bladeswho weave within the skeleton’s white womba caviare decay of rich brocades.Turning the tables of this grave gourmet,the fiendish butler saunters in and servesfor feast the sweetest meat of hell’s chef d’ uvres:his…

Overhead the old umbrellas of summerWither like pithless hands. There is little shelter.Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blankDominion. The stars are no nearer.Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drinkThe liquor of indolence, and all thing sinkInto a soft caul of forgetfulness.The fugitive colors die.Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding…

Clapped shut, flatten this man out.The great gods, Stone-Head, Claw-FootWinded by much rock-bumpingAnd claw-threat, realized that.For what, then, had they enduredDourly the long hots and colds,Those old despots, if he satLaugh-shaken on his doorsill,Backbone unbendable asTimbers of his upright hut?Hard gods were there, nothing else.Still he thumbed out something else.Thumbed no stony, horny pot,But a…

The pears fatten like little buddhas.A blue mist is dragging the lake.You move through the era of fishes,The smug centuries of the pig-Head, toe and fingerCome clear of the shadow. HistoryNourishes these broken flutings,These crowns of acanthus,And the crow settles her garments.You inherit white heather, a bee’s wing,Two suicides, the family wolves,Hours of blankness. Some…

And a little flat, as if theyFloated on a glass that was invisible.Unlike swans,Having no reflections;Unlike you,With no strings attached.All cool, all blue. Unlike you —-You, there on your back,Eyes to the sky.The spider-men have caught you,Winding and twining their petty fetters,Their bribes —-So many silks.How they hate you.They converse in the valley of your…

Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.Nor do they send up fires where they fallOr any signal of distress or anxiousness.They are eaten immediately by the pines.Where I am at home, only the…

Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.Nor do they send up fires where they fallOr any signal of distress or anxiousness.They are eaten immediately by the pines.Where I am at home, only the…

This antique museum-cased ladyLies, companioned by the gimcrackRelics of a mouse and a shrewThat battened for a day on her ankle-bone.These three, unmasked now, bearDry witnessTo the gross eating gameWe’d wink at if we didn’t hearStars grinding, crumb by crumb,Our own grist down to its bony face.How they grip us through think and thick,These barnacle…

And suck of the grey seaTo the left, and the waveUnfists against the dunBarb-wired headland ofThe Deer Island prisonWith its trim piggeries,Hen huts and cattle greenTo the right, and March iceGlazes the rock pools yet,Snuff-colored sand cliffs riseOver a great stone spitBared by each falling tide,And you, across those whiteStones, strode out in you deadBlack…

I should have known better.Fifteen years between me and the bayProfited memory, but did away with the old sceneryAnd patched this shoddyMakeshift of a view to quitMy promise of an idyll. The blue’s worn out:It’s a ****rd estate,Inimical now. The great green rockWe gave good use as ship and house is blackWith tarry muckAnd periwinkles,…

Lit, but unpeopled, held its windowsOf wedding pastries,Diamond rings, potted roses, fox-skinsRuddy on the wax mannequinsIn a glassed tableau of affluence.From deep-sunk basementsWhat moved the pale, raptorial owlThen, to squall above the levelOf streetlights and wires, its wall to wallWingspread in controlOf the ferrying currents, bellyDense-feathered, fearfully soft toLook upon? Rats’ teeth gut the cityShaken…

Still ringing with bruit of insults and dishonorsAnd in fury left himGlowering at the coal-fire: ‘Come find me’—her last taunt.He did not comeBut sat on, guarding his grim battlement.By the doorstepHer winter-beheaded daisies, marrowless, gaunt,Warned her to keepIndoors with politic goodwill, not hasteInto a landscapeOf stark wind-harrowed hills and weltering mist;But from the houseShe stalked…

Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy,And apparently indestructible.The sea pulses under a skin of oil.A gull holds his pose on a shanty ridgepole,Riding the tide of the wind, steadyAs wood and formal, in a jacket of ashes,The whole flat harbor anchored inThe round of his yellow eye-button.A blimp swims up like a day-moon or tinCigar…

In square hermetic bottles, while the sunRuled decree of doomsday on the floor.The morning paper clocked the headline hourYou drank your coffee lke original sin,And at the jet-plane anger of God’s roarGot up to let the suave blue policeman in.Impaled upon a stern angelic stareYou were condemned to serve the legal limitAnd burn to death…

Air, and blur.The red tomato’s in, the green bean;The cook lugs a pumpkinFrom the vineFor pies. The fir tree’s thick with grackles.Gold carp loom in the pools.A wasp crawlsOver windfalls to sip cider-juice.Guests in the studiosMuse, compose.Indoors, Tiffany’s phoenix risesAbove the fireplace;Two carved sleighsRest on orange plush near the newel post.Wood stoves burn warm as…

The wax image of myself, a doll’s body.Sickness begins here: I am the dartboard for witches.Only the devil can eat the devil out.In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed of fire.It is easy to blame the dark: the mouth of a door,The cellar’s belly. They’ve blown my sparkler out.A black-sharded lady…

Nosy grower,Mole on my shoulder,To be scratched absently,To bleed, if it comes to that.The stain of the tropicsStill urinous on you, a sin.A kind of bush-stink.You may be local,But that yellow!Godawful!Your body oneLong nicotine-fingerOn which I,White cigarette,Burn, for your inhalation,Driving the dull cells wild.Let me roost in you!My distractions, my pallors.Let them start the queer…

Fire smelted his eyes to lumpsOf pale blue vitreous stuff, opaqueAs resin drops oozed from pine bark.The rafters and struts of his body wearTheir char of karakul still. I can’t tellHow long his carcass had foundered underThe rubbish of summers, the black-leaved falls.Now little weeds insinuateSoft suede tongues between his bones.His armorplate, his toppled stonesAre…

I should have known better.Fifteen years between me and the bayProfited memory, but did away with the old sceneryAnd patched this shoddyMakeshift of a view to quitMy promise of an idyll. The blue’s worn out:It’s a ****rd estate,Inimical now. The great green rockWe gave good use as ship and house is blackWith tarry muckAnd periwinkles,…

And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.It is touching, the way they’ll ignoreA whole family of prominent objectsSimply to plumb the deeps of an eyeIn its hollow of shadows, its fringe of reeds,And the owner past thirty, no beauty at all.Daylight would be more judicious,Giving…

red-mottled relics, shells, clawsas if it were summer still.That season has turned its back.Through the green sea gardens stall,bow, and recover their lookof the imperishablegardens in an antique bookor tapestries on a wall,leaves behind us warp and lapse.The late month withers, as well.Below us a white gull keepsthe weed-slicked shelf for his own,hustles other gulls…

Cell by cell from a quiet corner,Chewing at the grey paper,Oozing the glue drops,Whistling, wiggling my ears,Thinking of something else.It has so many cellars,Such eelish delvings!U an round as an owl,I see by my own light.Any day I may litter puppiesOr mother a horse. My belly moves.I must make more maps.These marrowy tunnels!Moley-handed, I eat…

Between steel palms of inclination, take it,Observing the wreck of metal and rare stone.This was a woman : her loves and stratagemsBetrayed in mute geometry of brokenCogs and disks, inane mechanic whims,And idle coils of jargon yet unspoken.Not man nor demigod could put togetherThe scraps of rusted reverie, the wheelsOf notched tin platitudes concerning weather,Perfume,…

They are departing in their transparent garments, turned asideFrom the scalpels and the rubber hands.The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful.The body under it is in my hands.As usual there is no face. A lump of Chinese whiteWith seven holes thumbed in. The soul is another light.I have not seen it; it does…

Stone farms foundering in it,Valleys of grass alteringIn a light neither dawnNor nightfall, out hands, facesLucent as percelain, the earth’sClaim and weight gone out of them.Some such transfiguring movedThe eight pilgrims towards its source—Toward the great jewel: shown often,Never given; hidden, yetSimultaneously seenOn moor-top, at sea-bottom,Knowable only by lightOther than noon, that moon, stars —-The…

in the impossible mind’s eye;horizons beat a retreat as we embarkon sophist seas to overtake that markwhere wave pretends to drench real sky.’‘Well then, if we agree, it is not oddthat one man’s devil is another’s godor that the solar spectrum isa multitude of shaded grays; suspenseon the quicksands of ambivalenceis our life’s whole nemesis.So…

This is newness : every little tawdryObstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,Glinting and clinking in a saint’s falsetto. Only youDon’t know what to make of the sudden slippiness,The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.There’s no getting up it by the words you know.No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.We have only come to look. You are…

Negro, masked like a white,Your darkAmputations crawl and appall—-Spidery, unsafe.What gloveWhat leatherinessHas protectedMe from that shadow—-The indelible buds.Knuckles at shoulder-blades, theFaces thatShove into being, draggingThe loppedBlood-caul of absences.All night I carpenterA space for the thing I am given,A loveOf two wet eyes and a screech.White spitOf indifference!The dark fruits revolve and fall.The glass cracks across,The…

In these palustral homes we onlyCroak and wither.Mornings dissipate in somnolence.The sun brightens tardilyAmong the pithless reeds. Flies fail us.he fen sickens.Frost drops even the spider. ClearlyThe genius of plenitudeHouses himself elsewhwere. Our folk thinLamentably.

And staunch stone eyes that stareThrough lichen-lid and passing bird-footAt some steadfast markBeyond the inconstant greenGallop and flick of lightIn this precarious parkWhere vivid children twirlLike colored tops through timeNor stop to understandHow all their play is touch-and-go:But, Go! they cry, and the swingArcs up to the tall tree tip;Go! and the merry-go-roundHauls them round…

So the deaf and dumbSignal the blind, and are ignored.I like black statements.The featurelessness of that cloud, now!White as an eye all over!The eye of the blind pianistAt my table on the ship.He felt for his food.His fingers had the noses of weasels.I couldn’t stop looking.He could hear Beethoven:Black yew, white cloud,The horrific complications.Finger-traps—a tumult…

October’s the month for storage.Thie shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach:Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.I am at home here among the dead heads.Let me sit in a flowerpot,The spiders won’t notice.My heart is a stopped geranium.If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.They rattle like hydrangea…

Discharges itself from the tree with nowhere to go.My landscape is a hand with no lines,The roads bunched to a knot,The knot myself,Myself the rose you acheive—-This body,This ivoryUngodly as a child’s shriek.Spiderlike, I spin mirrors,Loyal to my image,Uttering nothing but blood—-Taste it, dark red!And my forestMy funeral,And this hill and thisGleaming with the mouths…

Sacrifices its opacity. . . .A window, holy gold.The fire makes it precious,The same fireMelting the tallow heretics,Ousting the Jews.Their thick palls floatOver the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-outGermany.They do not die.Grey birds obsess my heart,Mouth-ash, ash of eye.They settle. On the highPrecipiceThat emptied one man into spaceThe ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.It is a heart,This…

The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves.All night I have dreamed of destruction, annihilations —-An assembly-line of cut throats, and you and IInching off in the gray Chevrolet, drinking the greenPoison of stilled lawns, the little clapboard gravestones,Noiseless, on rubber wheels, on the way to the sea resort.How the balconies echoed! How the sun…

Lit, but unpeopled, held its windowsOf wedding pastries,Diamond rings, potted roses, fox-skinsRuddy on the wax mannequinsIn a glassed tableau of affluence.From deep-sunk basementsWhat moved the pale, raptorial owlThen, to squall above the levelOf streetlights and wires, its wall to wallWingspread in controlOf the ferrying currents, bellyDense-feathered, fearfully soft toLook upon? Rats’ teeth gut the cityShaken…

Past the yellow-paella eateries,Below the ramshackle back-alley balconies,While the cocks and hensIn the roofgardensScuttle repose with crowns and cackles.Kumquat-colored trolleys ding as they trundlePassengers under an indigo fizzleNeedling spumily down from the wires:Alongside the sibliant narhor the loversHear loudspeakers boomFrom each neon-lit palmRumbas and sambas no ear-flaps can muffle.O Cacophony, goddess of jazz and of…

In whose rift we lieBack to back. I hear an owl cryFrom its cold indigo.Intolerable vowels enter my heart.The child in the white crib revolves and sighs,Opens its mouth now, demanding.His little face is carved in pained, red wood.Then there are the stars – ineradicable, hard.One touch : it burns and sickens.I cannot see your…

I walk alone;The midnight streetSpins itself from under my feet;When my eyes shutThese dreaming houses all snuff out;Through a whim of mineOver gables the moon’s celestial onionHangs high.IMake houses shrinkAnd trees diminishBy going far; my look’s leashDangles the puppet-peopleWho, unaware how they dwindle,Laugh, kiss, get drunk,Nor guess that if I choose to blinkThey die.IWhen in…

In pink and lavenderOver a surface of gently-Graded turquoise tilesThat represent a seaWith chequered waves and gailyBear up the seafarer,Gaily, gaily,In his pink plume and armor.A lantern-frailGondola of paperFerries the fishpond SindbadWho poises his pastel spearToward three pinky-purpleMonsters which uprearOff the ocean-floorWith fanged and dreadful head.Beware, bewareThe whale, the shark, the squid.But fins and scalesOf…

Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curledAnd nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nursesChocolate fancies in rose-papered roomsWhere polished higboys whisper creaking cursesAnd hothouse roses shed immortal blooms.The garnets on her fingers twinkle quickAnd blood reflects across the manuscript;She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,Of festering gardenias in a crypt,And…

Skin worn down to the knucklebonesAt her tough trade; without time’s taintThe burnished ball hangs fire in her hands, a lensFusing time’s three horizons.Two enter to tap her sight, a green pairFresh leaved out in vows: ‘Come tellHow we shall do together,Well or ill.’ Gerd slants a look at each: most dear,Each to the other;…

October’s the month for storage.Thie shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach:Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.I am at home here among the dead heads.Let me sit in a flowerpot,The spiders won’t notice.My heart is a stopped geranium.If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.They rattle like hydrangea…

Mummy-cloths, smiling: I’m all right.When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetistFed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vaultBoomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.O I was sick.They’ve changed all that. TravelingNude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,I…

On the long bookshelf it stoodStolidly propping thick volumes of prose: spite-setApe of her look. Best ridHearthstone at once of the outrageous head;Still, she felt loath to junk it.No place, it seemed, for the effigy to fareFree from all molesting. Rough boys,Spying a pate to spareGlowering sullen and pompous from an ash-heap,Might well seize this…

Still ringing with bruit of insults and dishonorsAnd in fury left himGlowering at the coal-fire: ‘Come find me’—her last taunt.He did not comeBut sat on, guarding his grim battlement.By the doorstepHer winter-beheaded daisies, marrowless, gaunt,Warned her to keepIndoors with politic goodwill, not hasteInto a landscapeOf stark wind-harrowed hills and weltering mist;But from the houseShe stalked…

By some unutterable chagrin,Maudlin from leaky eye to swollen nose.Two pinlegs stagger underneath the mass.Grievously purpled, mouth skewered on a groan,Past keeping to the house, past all discretion —-Myself, myself! —- obscene, lugubrious.Better the flat leer of the idiot,The stone face of the man who dosen’t feel,The velvet dodges of the hypocrite :Better, better, and…

Blunt in self-interestAs a sledge hammer, as a man’s bunched fist,Yet of devils the cleverestTo get your carousals told:You spun the cosmic web: you squint from center field.Last summer I came upon your Spanish cousin,Notable robber baron,Behind a goatherd’s hut:Near his small stonehenge above the ants’ route,One-third ant-size, a leggy spot,He tripped an ant with…

The bronze snake lay in the sunInert as a shoelace; deadBut pliable still, his jawUnhinged and his grin crooked,Tongue a rose-colored arrow.Over my hand I hung him.His little vermilion eyeIgnited with a glassed flameAs I turned him in the light;When I split a rock one timeThe garnet bits burned like that.Bust dulled his back to…

Of a single rose present to imagineThe garden’s remainder in full paint.The stone lion-head set in the wallLet drop its spittle of sluggish greenInto the stone basin. I snippedAn orange bud, pocketed it. WhenIt had opened its orange in my vase,Retrogressed to blowze, I next chose red;Argued my conscience clear which robbedThe park of less…

Name, house, car keys,The little toy wife—Erased, sigh, sigh.Four babies and a cocker!Nurses the size of worms and a minute doctorTuck him in.Old happeningsPeel from his skin.Down the drain with all of it!Hugging his pillowLike the red-headed sister he never dared to touch,He dreams of a new one—Barren, the lot are barren!And of another color.How…

Agile as a starThe tents of sun absorb.Treading circus tight ropesOf each syllable,The brazen jackanapesWould fracture if he fell.Acrobat of spaceThe daring adjectivePlunges for a phraseDescribing arcs of love.Nimble as a noun,He catabpults in air;A planetary swoonCould climax his career.But adroit conjunctionEloquently shallLink to his lyric actionA periodic goal.

through my window-square of black:figured in the midnight sky,a mosaic of starsdiagrams the falling years,while from the moon, my lover’s eyechills me to deathwith radiance of his frozen faith.Once I wounded him with sosmall a thornI never thought his flesh would burnor that the heat within would growuntil he stoodincandescent as a god;now there is…

That summer we wore black glasses to hide our eyes.We were always crying, in our spare rooms, little put-upon sisters,In the two, huge, white, handsome houses in Swampscott.When the sweetheart from England appeared, with her cream skin and Yardley cosmetics,I had to sleep in the same room with the baby on a too-short cot,And the…

In whose rift we lieBack to back. I hear an owl cryFrom its cold indigo.Intolerable vowels enter my heart.The child in the white crib revolves and sighs,Opens its mouth now, demanding.His little face is carved in pained, red wood.Then there are the stars – ineradicable, hard.One touch : it burns and sickens.I cannot see your…

Cried out for the mother’s dug.The dry volcanoes cracked and split,Sand abraded the milkless lip.Cried then for the father’s bloodWho set wasp, wolf and shark to work,Engineered the gannet’s beak.Dry-eyed, the inveterate patriarchRaised his men of skin and bone,Barbs on the crown of gilded wire,Thorns on the bloody rose-stem.

in the impossible mind’s eye;horizons beat a retreat as we embarkon sophist seas to overtake that markwhere wave pretends to drench real sky.’‘Well then, if we agree, it is not oddthat one man’s devil is another’s godor that the solar spectrum isa multitude of shaded grays; suspenseon the quicksands of ambivalenceis our life’s whole nemesis.So…

And suck of the grey seaTo the left, and the waveUnfists against the dunBarb-wired headland ofThe Deer Island prisonWith its trim piggeries,Hen huts and cattle greenTo the right, and March iceGlazes the rock pools yet,Snuff-colored sand cliffs riseOver a great stone spitBared by each falling tide,And you, across those whiteStones, strode out in you deadBlack…

Doing nothing. July’s juice rounds their nubs.This park is fleshed with idiot petals.White catalpa flowers tower, topple,Cast a round white shadow in their dying.A pigeon rudders down. It’s fantail’s whiteVocation enough: opening, shuttingWhite petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.Enough for fingernails to make half-moonsRedden in white palms no labor reddens.White bruises toward color, else collapses.Berries…

The bronze snake lay in the sunInert as a shoelace; deadBut pliable still, his jawUnhinged and his grin crooked,Tongue a rose-colored arrow.Over my hand I hung him.His little vermilion eyeIgnited with a glassed flameAs I turned him in the light;When I split a rock one timeThe garnet bits burned like that.Bust dulled his back to…

Nosy grower,Mole on my shoulder,To be scratched absently,To bleed, if it comes to that.The stain of the tropicsStill urinous on you, a sin.A kind of bush-stink.You may be local,But that yellow!Godawful!Your body oneLong nicotine-fingerOn which I,White cigarette,Burn, for your inhalation,Driving the dull cells wild.Let me roost in you!My distractions, my pallors.Let them start the queer…

but in speckled thickets, warted as a toad,spitefully skulks our warden,fixing his snarewhich hauls down buck, cock, trout, till all most fairis tricked to faulter in split blood.Now our whole task’s to hacksome angel-shape worth wearingfrom his crabbed midden where all’s wrought so awrythat no straight inquiringcould unlockshrewd catch silting our each bright act backto…

Agile as a starThe tents of sun absorb.Treading circus tight ropesOf each syllable,The brazen jackanapesWould fracture if he fell.Acrobat of spaceThe daring adjectivePlunges for a phraseDescribing arcs of love.Nimble as a noun,He catabpults in air;A planetary swoonCould climax his career.But adroit conjunctionEloquently shallLink to his lyric actionA periodic goal.

Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curledAnd nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nursesChocolate fancies in rose-papered roomsWhere polished higboys whisper creaking cursesAnd hothouse roses shed immortal blooms.The garnets on her fingers twinkle quickAnd blood reflects across the manuscript;She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,Of festering gardenias in a crypt,And…

Didn’t go down in such a hurry. How itLit things, that lamp of the Possible!Wet yetLay over the leaves like a clear cellophane,A pane of dragonfly wing, when they left meWith a hundred bushel baskets on the edgeOf the spinach patch.Bunch after bunch of greenUpstanding spinach-tips wedged in a circle—Layer on layer, and you had…

With the same trees and headstones.Is that all he can come up with,The rattler of keys?I have been drugged and raped.Seven hours knocked out of my right mindInto a black sackWhere I relax, foetus or cat,Lever of his wet dreams.Something is gone.My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelinDrops me from a terrible altitude.Carapace smashed,I…

methinks I shall absent me for a whilefrom rhetoric of these rococo queens.Item : chuck out royal rigmarole of propsand auction off each rare white-rabbit verb;send my muse Alice packing with gaudy scrapsof mushroom simile and gryphon garb.My native sleight-of-hand is wearing out :mad hatter’s hat yields no new metaphor,and jabberwock will not translate his…

Incoherent scraps of talkAnd high heels clicking up the walk;The doorbell rends the noonday heatWith copper claws;A second’s pause.The dull drums of my pulses beatAgainst a silence wearing thin.The door now opens from within.Oh, hear the clash of people meeting —-The laughter and the screams of greeting :Fat always, and out of breath,A greasy smack…

Nosy grower,Mole on my shoulder,To be scratched absently,To bleed, if it comes to that.The stain of the tropicsStill urinous on you, a sin.A kind of bush-stink.You may be local,But that yellow!Godawful!Your body oneLong nicotine-fingerOn which I,White cigarette,Burn, for your inhalation,Driving the dull cells wild.Let me roost in you!My distractions, my pallors.Let them start the queer…

At the window, those unborn, those undoneAssemble with the frail paleness of moths,An envious phosphorescence in their wings.Vermillions, bronzes, colors of the sunIn the coal fire will not wholly console them.Imagine their deep hunger, deep as the darkFor the blood-heat that would ruddlr or reclaim.The glass mouth sucks blooh-heat from my forefinger.The old god dribbles,…

of dilute lightquiver in thin streaksof bright tinfoilon mobile jet:pale flounderwaver bytilting silver:in the shallowsagile minnowsflicker gilt:grapeblue musselsdilate lithe andpliant valves:dull lunar globesof blubous jellyfishglow milkgreen:eels twirlin wily spiralson elusive tails:adroir lobstersamble darkly oliveon shrewd claws:down where soundcomes blunt and wanlike the bronze toneof a sunken gong.

Tearing off my voice, and the seaBlinding me with its lights, the lives of the deadUnreeling in it, spreading like oil.I tasted the malignity of the gorse,Its black spikes,The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.They had an efficiency, a great beauty,And were extravagant, like torture.There was only one place to get to.Simmering, perfumed,The paths narrowed…

Clapped shut, flatten this man out.The great gods, Stone-Head, Claw-FootWinded by much rock-bumpingAnd claw-threat, realized that.For what, then, had they enduredDourly the long hots and colds,Those old despots, if he satLaugh-shaken on his doorsill,Backbone unbendable asTimbers of his upright hut?Hard gods were there, nothing else.Still he thumbed out something else.Thumbed no stony, horny pot,But a…

Always from teh pulpit during serviceLeaned the devil prompting you to laugh.Behind mock-ceremony of your griefLurked the burlesque instinct of the ham;You never altered your amused beliefThat life was a mere monumental sham.From the comic accident of birthTo the final grotesque joke of deathYour malady of sacrilegious mirthSpread gay contagion with each clever breath.Now you…

remembering a thousand autumnsand how a hundred thousand leavescame sliding down his shoulder bladespersuaded by his bronze heroic reason.We ignore the coming doom of goldand we are glad in this bright metal season.Even the dead laugh among the goldenrod.The bronze boy stands kneedeep in centuries,and never grieves,remembering a thousand autumns,with sunlight of a thousand years…

of dilute lightquiver in thin streaksof bright tinfoilon mobile jet:pale flounderwaver bytilting silver:in the shallowsagile minnowsflicker gilt:grapeblue musselsdilate lithe andpliant valves:dull lunar globesof blubous jellyfishglow milkgreen:eels twirlin wily spiralson elusive tails:adroir lobstersamble darkly oliveon shrewd claws:down where soundcomes blunt and wanlike the bronze toneof a sunken gong.

Agile as a starThe tents of sun absorb.Treading circus tight ropesOf each syllable,The brazen jackanapesWould fracture if he fell.Acrobat of spaceThe daring adjectivePlunges for a phraseDescribing arcs of love.Nimble as a noun,He catabpults in air;A planetary swoonCould climax his career.But adroit conjunctionEloquently shallLink to his lyric actionA periodic goal.

Put up with until chagrin gives placeTo a wry complaisance—-Dug in first as God’s spursTo start the spirit out of the mudIt stabled in; long-used, became well-lovedBedfellows of the spirit’s debauch, fond masters.

Good of the Cape light that scoursSand grit to sided crystalAnd buffs and sleeks the blunt hullsOf the three fishing smacks beachedOn the bank of the river’sBacktracking tail. I’d come forFree fish-bait: the blue musselsClumped like bulbs at the grassrootMargin of the tidal pools.Dawn tide stood dead low. I smeltMud stench, shell guts, gulls’ leavings;Heard…

And here we are, hung out over the dead dropUncle, pants factory Fatso, millionaire.And you out cold beside me in your chair.The wheels, two rubber grubs, bite their sweet tails.Is that Spain down there?Red and yellow, two passionate hot metalsWrithing and sighing, what sort of a scenery is it?It isn’t England, it isn’t France, it…

And staunch stone eyes that stareThrough lichen-lid and passing bird-footAt some steadfast markBeyond the inconstant greenGallop and flick of lightIn this precarious parkWhere vivid children twirlLike colored tops through timeNor stop to understandHow all their play is touch-and-go:But, Go! they cry, and the swingArcs up to the tall tree tip;Go! and the merry-go-roundHauls them round…

I should have known better.Fifteen years between me and the bayProfited memory, but did away with the old sceneryAnd patched this shoddyMakeshift of a view to quitMy promise of an idyll. The blue’s worn out:It’s a ****rd estate,Inimical now. The great green rockWe gave good use as ship and house is blackWith tarry muckAnd periwinkles,…

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid :A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.If he were I, he would do what I did.

Tearing off my voice, and the seaBlinding me with its lights, the lives of the deadUnreeling in it, spreading like oil.I tasted the malignity of the gorse,Its black spikes,The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.They had an efficiency, a great beauty,And were extravagant, like torture.There was only one place to get to.Simmering, perfumed,The paths narrowed…

Off Europe’s relic heapTo sweeten your neck of the New York woods.Soon each white lady will be boarded upAgainst the crackling climate.All morning, with smoking breath, the handymanHas been draining the goldfish ponds.They collapse like lungs, the escaped waterThreading back, filament by filament, to the purePlatonic table where it lives. The baby carpLitter the mud…

my extravagant heart blows up againin a rampage of champagne-colored rainand the fragments whir like a weather vanewhile the angels all applaud.Daring as death and debonairI invade my lion’s den;a rose of jeopardy flames in my hairyet I flourish my whip with a fatal flairdefending my perilous wounds with a chairwhile the gnawings of love…

Their musk encroaches, circle after circle,A well of scents almost too dense to breathe in.Hieratical in your frock coat, maestro of the bees,You move among the many-breasted hives,My heart under your foot, sister of a stone.Trumpet-throats open to the beaks of birds.The Golden Rain Tree drips its powders down.In these little boudoirs streaked with orange…

A tall metropolis of catacombsErected down the gangways of our mind.Green alleys where we reveled have becomeThe infernal haunt of demon dangers;Both seraph song and violins are dumb;Each clock tick consecrates the death of strangersBackward we traveled to reclaim the dayBefore we fell, like Icarus, undone;All we find are altars in decayAnd profane words scrawled…

Between steel palms of inclination, take it,Observing the wreck of metal and rare stone.This was a woman : her loves and stratagemsBetrayed in mute geometry of brokenCogs and disks, inane mechanic whims,And idle coils of jargon yet unspoken.Not man nor demigod could put togetherThe scraps of rusted reverie, the wheelsOf notched tin platitudes concerning weather,Perfume,…

Stone farms foundering in it,Valleys of grass alteringIn a light neither dawnNor nightfall, out hands, facesLucent as percelain, the earth’sClaim and weight gone out of them.Some such transfiguring movedThe eight pilgrims towards its source—Toward the great jewel: shown often,Never given; hidden, yetSimultaneously seenOn moor-top, at sea-bottom,Knowable only by lightOther than noon, that moon, stars —-The…

Good of the Cape light that scoursSand grit to sided crystalAnd buffs and sleeks the blunt hullsOf the three fishing smacks beachedOn the bank of the river’sBacktracking tail. I’d come forFree fish-bait: the blue musselsClumped like bulbs at the grassrootMargin of the tidal pools.Dawn tide stood dead low. I smeltMud stench, shell guts, gulls’ leavings;Heard…

through my window-square of black:figured in the midnight sky,a mosaic of starsdiagrams the falling years,while from the moon, my lover’s eyechills me to deathwith radiance of his frozen faith.Once I wounded him with sosmall a thornI never thought his flesh would burnor that the heat within would growuntil he stoodincandescent as a god;now there is…

Fire smelted his eyes to lumpsOf pale blue vitreous stuff, opaqueAs resin drops oozed from pine bark.The rafters and struts of his body wearTheir char of karakul still. I can’t tellHow long his carcass had foundered underThe rubbish of summers, the black-leaved falls.Now little weeds insinuateSoft suede tongues between his bones.His armorplate, his toppled stonesAre…

Was she arranging cups? It is important.Was she at the window, listening?In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.That is the valley of death, though the cows thrive.In her garden the lies were shaking out their moist silksAnd the eyes of the killer moving sluglike and sidelong,Unable to face the fingers, those…

And here we are, hung out over the dead dropUncle, pants factory Fatso, millionaire.And you out cold beside me in your chair.The wheels, two rubber grubs, bite their sweet tails.Is that Spain down there?Red and yellow, two passionate hot metalsWrithing and sighing, what sort of a scenery is it?It isn’t England, it isn’t France, it…

Between steel palms of inclination, take it,Observing the wreck of metal and rare stone.This was a woman : her loves and stratagemsBetrayed in mute geometry of brokenCogs and disks, inane mechanic whims,And idle coils of jargon yet unspoken.Not man nor demigod could put togetherThe scraps of rusted reverie, the wheelsOf notched tin platitudes concerning weather,Perfume,…

A melon strolling on two tendrils.O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Was she arranging cups? It is important.Was she at the window, listening?In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.That is the valley of death, though the cows thrive.In her garden the lies were shaking out their moist silksAnd the eyes of the killer moving sluglike and sidelong,Unable to face the fingers, those…

The sea’s collapse.Snowcakes break and welter. This yearThe gritted wave leapsThe seawall and drops onto a bierOf quahog chips,Leaving a salty mash of ice to whitenIn my grandmother’s sand yard. She is dead,Whose laundry snapped and froze here, whoKept house againstWhat the ****tish, rutted sea could do.Squall waves once dancedShip timbers in through the cellar…

They are departing in their transparent garments, turned asideFrom the scalpels and the rubber hands.The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful.The body under it is in my hands.As usual there is no face. A lump of Chinese whiteWith seven holes thumbed in. The soul is another light.I have not seen it; it does…

Bossing the ethereal blanks of their face-ovals.Their whiteness bears no relation to laundry,Snow, chalk or suchlike. They’reThe real thing, all right: the Good, the True . . .Salutary and pure as boiled water,Loveless as the multiplication table.While the child smiles into thin air.Six months in the world, and she is ableTo rock on all fours…

And faced me, back to a ledge of dirt, to rattleHer sallow rodent teeth like castanetsAgainst my leaning down, would not exchangeFor that wary clatter sound or gestureOf love : claws braced, at bay, my currency not hers.Such meetings never occur in marchenWhere love-met groundhogs love one in return,Where straight talk is the rule, whether…

Nosy grower,Mole on my shoulder,To be scratched absently,To bleed, if it comes to that.The stain of the tropicsStill urinous on you, a sin.A kind of bush-stink.You may be local,But that yellow!Godawful!Your body oneLong nicotine-fingerOn which I,White cigarette,Burn, for your inhalation,Driving the dull cells wild.Let me roost in you!My distractions, my pallors.Let them start the queer…

Sacrifices its opacity. . . .A window, holy gold.The fire makes it precious,The same fireMelting the tallow heretics,Ousting the Jews.Their thick palls floatOver the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-outGermany.They do not die.Grey birds obsess my heart,Mouth-ash, ash of eye.They settle. On the highPrecipiceThat emptied one man into spaceThe ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.It is a heart,This…

With your boldGecko, the little flick!All cogs, weird sparkle and every cog solid gold.And I in slippers and housedress with no lipstick!And you want to be shown about!Yes, yes, this is my address.Not a patch on your place, I guess, with the JavaneseGeese and the monkey trees.It’s a bit burnt-out,A bit of a wild machine,…

Didn’t go down in such a hurry. How itLit things, that lamp of the Possible!Wet yetLay over the leaves like a clear cellophane,A pane of dragonfly wing, when they left meWith a hundred bushel baskets on the edgeOf the spinach patch.Bunch after bunch of greenUpstanding spinach-tips wedged in a circle—Layer on layer, and you had…

Letters and their death rattleWhen I came too close to the wastebasketWhat did they know that I didn’t?Grain by grain, they unrolledSands where a dream of clear waterGrinned like a getaway car.I am not subtleLove, love, and well, I was tiredOf cardboard cartons the color of cement or a dog packHolding in it’s hateDully, under…

This antique museum-cased ladyLies, companioned by the gimcrackRelics of a mouse and a shrewThat battened for a day on her ankle-bone.These three, unmasked now, bearDry witnessTo the gross eating gameWe’d wink at if we didn’t hearStars grinding, crumb by crumb,Our own grist down to its bony face.How they grip us through think and thick,These barnacle…

Didn’t go down in such a hurry. How itLit things, that lamp of the Possible!Wet yetLay over the leaves like a clear cellophane,A pane of dragonfly wing, when they left meWith a hundred bushel baskets on the edgeOf the spinach patch.Bunch after bunch of greenUpstanding spinach-tips wedged in a circle—Layer on layer, and you had…

And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.It is touching, the way they’ll ignoreA whole family of prominent objectsSimply to plumb the deeps of an eyeIn its hollow of shadows, its fringe of reeds,And the owner past thirty, no beauty at all.Daylight would be more judicious,Giving…

remembering a thousand autumnsand how a hundred thousand leavescame sliding down his shoulder bladespersuaded by his bronze heroic reason.We ignore the coming doom of goldand we are glad in this bright metal season.Even the dead laugh among the goldenrod.The bronze boy stands kneedeep in centuries,and never grieves,remembering a thousand autumns,with sunlight of a thousand years…

because he would make love to meI am sending back the key;in his eye’s darkroom I can seemy X-rayed heart, dissected body :I am sending back the keythat let me into bluebeard’s study.

Between steel palms of inclination, take it,Observing the wreck of metal and rare stone.This was a woman : her loves and stratagemsBetrayed in mute geometry of brokenCogs and disks, inane mechanic whims,And idle coils of jargon yet unspoken.Not man nor demigod could put togetherThe scraps of rusted reverie, the wheelsOf notched tin platitudes concerning weather,Perfume,…

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid :A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.If he were I, he would do what I did.

of an anonymous clam,vernacular as the strutof a slug or a small preambleby snail under hump of home:metamorphose the molluskof vague vocabularywith the structural discipline:stiffen the ordinarymalleable maskto the granite grin of bone.For such a tempering task,heat furnace of paradoxin an artifice of ice;make love and logic mix,and remember, if tedious riskseems to jeopardize this:it…

With the same trees and headstones.Is that all he can come up with,The rattler of keys?I have been drugged and raped.Seven hours knocked out of my right mindInto a black sackWhere I relax, foetus or cat,Lever of his wet dreams.Something is gone.My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelinDrops me from a terrible altitude.Carapace smashed,I…

my extravagant heart blows up againin a rampage of champagne-colored rainand the fragments whir like a weather vanewhile the angels all applaud.Daring as death and debonairI invade my lion’s den;a rose of jeopardy flames in my hairyet I flourish my whip with a fatal flairdefending my perilous wounds with a chairwhile the gnawings of love…

And a little flat, as if theyFloated on a glass that was invisible.Unlike swans,Having no reflections;Unlike you,With no strings attached.All cool, all blue. Unlike you —-You, there on your back,Eyes to the sky.The spider-men have caught you,Winding and twining their petty fetters,Their bribes —-So many silks.How they hate you.They converse in the valley of your…

In elbow-scarves, beardsFrom the archaicBones of the great trees.Blue mists move overA lake thick with fish.Snails scroll the borderOf the glazed waterWith coils of ram’s-horn.Out in the openDown there the late yearHammers her rare andVarious metals.Old pewter roots twistUp from the jet-backedMirror of waterAnd while the air’s clearHourglass sifts aDrift of goldpiecesBright waterlights areSliding their…

We have lost track of it.They lie as if under waterIn a blue, unchanging light,The French window ajarCurtained with yellow lace.Through the narrow crackOdors of wet earth rise.The snail leaves a silver track;Dark thickets hedge the house.We take a backward look.Among petals pale as deathAnd leaves steadfast in shapeThey sleep on, mouth to mouth.A white…

(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)The asteroids turn traitor in the air,And planets plot with old elliptic cunning;Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear.Red the unraveled rose sings in your hair:Blood springs eternal if the heart be burning.(Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.)Cryptic stars wind up the atmosphere,In solar schemes the titled…

Overhead the old umbrellas of summerWither like pithless hands. There is little shelter.Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blankDominion. The stars are no nearer.Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drinkThe liquor of indolence, and all thing sinkInto a soft caul of forgetfulness.The fugitive colors die.Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding…

They are departing in their transparent garments, turned asideFrom the scalpels and the rubber hands.The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful.The body under it is in my hands.As usual there is no face. A lump of Chinese whiteWith seven holes thumbed in. The soul is another light.I have not seen it; it does…

Admonitory cliffs, and the sea explodingWith no bottom, or anything on the other side of it,Whitened by the faces of the drowned.Now it is only gloomy, a dump of rocks —-Leftover soldiers from old, messy wars.The sea cannons into their ear, but they don’t budge.Other rocks hide their grudges under the water.The cliffs are edged…

Past the yellow-paella eateries,Below the ramshackle back-alley balconies,While the cocks and hensIn the roofgardensScuttle repose with crowns and cackles.Kumquat-colored trolleys ding as they trundlePassengers under an indigo fizzleNeedling spumily down from the wires:Alongside the sibliant narhor the loversHear loudspeakers boomFrom each neon-lit palmRumbas and sambas no ear-flaps can muffle.O Cacophony, goddess of jazz and of…

Which allay the maliceOf knotted table and crooked chair,The new woman in the wardWears purple, steps carefullyAmong her secret combinations of eggshellsAnd breakable hummingbirds,Footing sallow as a mouseBetween the cabbage-rosesWhich are slowly opening their furred petalsTo devour and drag her downInto the carpet’s design.With bid-quick eyed cocked askewShe can see in the nick of timeHow…

my extravagant heart blows up againin a rampage of champagne-colored rainand the fragments whir like a weather vanewhile the angels all applaud.Daring as death and debonairI invade my lion’s den;a rose of jeopardy flames in my hairyet I flourish my whip with a fatal flairdefending my perilous wounds with a chairwhile the gnawings of love…

The ritual death each time botched among dropped capes, ill-judgedstabs,The strongest will seemed a will towards ceremony. Obese, dark-Faced in his rich yellows, tassels, pompons, braid, the picadorRode out against the fifth bull to brace his pike and slowly bearDown deep into the bent bull-neck. Cumbrous routine, not artwork.Instinct for art began with the bull’s…

And staunch stone eyes that stareThrough lichen-lid and passing bird-footAt some steadfast markBeyond the inconstant greenGallop and flick of lightIn this precarious parkWhere vivid children twirlLike colored tops through timeNor stop to understandHow all their play is touch-and-go:But, Go! they cry, and the swingArcs up to the tall tree tip;Go! and the merry-go-roundHauls them round…

The skaters freese within a stone tableau.Air alters into glass and the whole skyGrows brittle as a tilted china bowl;Hill and valley stiffen row on row.Each fallen leaf is trapped by spell of steel,Crimped like fern in the quartz atmosphere;Repose of scultpure holds the country still.What coutermagic can undo the snareWhich has stopped the season…

Speak, speak! Who is it?It is the bowel-pulse, lover of digestibles.It is he who has achieved these syllables.What are these words, these words?They are plopping like mud.O god, how shall I ever clean the phone table?They are pressing out of the many-holed earpiece, they are looking for alistener.Is he here?Now the room is ahiss. The…

Was she arranging cups? It is important.Was she at the window, listening?In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.That is the valley of death, though the cows thrive.In her garden the lies were shaking out their moist silksAnd the eyes of the killer moving sluglike and sidelong,Unable to face the fingers, those…

Lantern-jawed Reason, squat Common Sense,One courting doctors of all sorts,One, housewives and shopkeepers.The trees are lopped, the poodles trim,The laborer’s nails pared levelSince those two civil servants setTheir whetstone to the blunted edgeAnd minced the muddling devilWhose owl-eyes in the scraggly woodScared mothers to miscarry,Drove the dogs to cringe and whineAnd turned the farmboy’s temper…