Should I Travel?
Should I travel, displace myself from here to there,
when I am traveling each and every instant ,
scaling peaks in the mountains of time, losing
myself over and over and then returning
to someone who is someone else as well as myself?
Let Phnom Penh be, and Angkor Wat and China, too,
and Sydney and Patagonia and Durban, Chennai,
for my journey is here and my garden, mystery,
and this sense of traveling while staying in place,
is not a commodity, no thing for buying and selling
I traveled when I was young, went here and there,
before I discovered this voyage in a single place
that is vast beyond my imagining. I find it hard
to put down in words how I don’t take myself
literally but do take myself gently by the hand.
I am going where I am going and where I’m going
is here and near and far and I am the only ticket
that I need to get aboard and go abroad in my
own environs that I try to paint for my pleasure
and discover they and I slip away both together
The Burrow
I am more reclusive than I ever
dreamed that I could be – far more
I hide in the burrow of poetry
not because I don’t love the sun
but because shadows terrify me
especially my own which seems an abyss
into which I could fall without ever
coming to the end of my falling
it’s a limited life, hiding here in this
so shallow excavation of earth, poetry,
but it’s the best I have been able to do
I’m aware, too, that trees and tall buildings,
houses, other people, even birds in the sky
and ships far out on the bounding main
are quite at ease with their shadows
and don’t know what I call my abyss
I come up on cloudy days before rain
which sends me back into my burrow
I’m afraid I compose my best songs
without light or shadow, when I’m snug
Buttons
In the vast ornate antechamber of dream
I unbutton my self and remove it
I try carefully to fold it but it refuses
to hold a pleat and becomes a small cloud
A hint of breeze comes to float it off
leaving me more naked than naked
The faculty of loneliness has deserted me
I shatter suddenly to be a flock of birds
Compound entity flying through night
to light in the branches of an inky oak
We are the leaves of burgeoning spring
and attach by slender stems to the wood
Nothing lingers of the birds we were
Nothing lingers of the words I was
Waking is the most peculiar passage
I come back from not having been
I have to learn myself all over again,
finger each button as a perfect stranger
Ancient Baby
Leila has a new baby
whom she calls “my ancient baby
because the instant she was born
she had always been”
not just before she was born
but before Leila herself was born
before Leila’s mother and father were born,
before before before before
“a dew drop of eternity
for now is always
and this labor took me
somewhere else from which I doubt
I’ll ever be able to come back.
Can a bee return from honey?”
“See her sleeping, brother, waiting
for a name to rain down on her.”
Nothing
What the exiled man never says
because he is a rational man,
a man of moderation, someone whose
manners are civilized, even suave,
is that there are moments
when he doesn’t believe
in the catastrophe that destroyed
his native city, where he was young,
the place where he was a child,
where he discovered the world
and found it good as it found him good,
the place where he first loved…
It is whole, alive and well,
as in a smiling trance, he walks
along the avenue to the square,
enjoys a young woman’s beauty
It strikes even him as absurd
that he doesn’t believe, because
he was there, because he saw the fire
and tasted the ash, saw dead bodies
lying on their backs, like mice
that had encountered small misfortunes,
(there was one very tall man who
appeared to be doing the backstroke,
but was frozen in mid-stroke),
because he had seen his own house
destroyed by a bomb and burning,
because he had escaped by accident
scrambling across the border
in a misty morning to be born
as another person into a new life
and most absurd of all is that
he can remember and also not
believe at the same time, so that ease
and unease make an uncanny blend,
so that he feels at home and not there.
No point ever in saying anything
about this, even just after sex,
because if you didn’t know it,
then you couldn’t know it, shouldn’t
So where he was most intimate
with himself he was most alone
and when his little daughter would ask
what he was thinking – “Nothing”.
As Gray As Ash
A man as gray as ash,
I walk green breezy woods
Fallen trunks speak to me
of what they were and when
“Once we were green and huge,
we caught sun in our nets
Once we stood and we swayed,
we defied wind and storm
Our now was forever,
deep our roots delved dark earth
We slept through the winters
untroubled by the snow
We woke up in the spring
with rage to make life new
And all that we were, sir,
is best forgotten now
And all that we were, sir
is past ripe to rotting”
I lose a flake of ash
here and there but walk on
by dark rushing river
that holds water and time
The breezes that touch me
are both caress and claw.
Cardinal’s bright in bush,
talisman of flame.
I loose myself in speech
I lose myself in song
Ash once was wood of dreams,
now burnt by becoming
To be lighter and less,
ready for wingless flight
This summer took so long
coming, swiftly is gone
as the trout keep rainbows
in the river’s deep holes.
A man as gray as ash
I walk green breezy woods
Beware that you see me
long after I am gone
Lost Mind
A poet lost his mind
still he persevered in writing poems
When his mind returned
he did not notice it
Pink As A Tongue
A hue
pale and pink
as a tongue
lingers
on the western
horizon.
How did
we learn to speak?
Specificity: World Trade Center 9-11-2001
specificity of twisted metal,
shattered slabs of concrete,
what once were floors, now
become the weight of death
in a huge savage funeral pyre
still smoking months after
with the flesh of thousands
those two tall slim volumes
reaching up to touch the sky
were destroyed from the sky,
stricken out of powder blue sky,
so they collapsed like books
unable to hold worlds, words
which fragmented to letters
which shattered to shards
so sharp that even thinking
of them cuts, drawing blood
from our foreheads, so we
bleed without understanding,
just the same way we breed,
birth being death’s beginning
thousands died and could
receive no decent burial,
smoked as the heap smoked,
sometimes sent its stench
out to sea, sometimes north
into the city, news more
elemental than a newspaper
Prometheus
I want a mind
of my own
I want a heart
of my own
so I can give
myself away
for free
for freedom
I want a liver
of my own
to remain
uneaten
I want to speak
against freezing shame
in tongues
of flame
1996