Lower
I lower my expectations
like a bucket into mystery
If You Eat The Buddha…
Before eight o’clock in the morning
in deep winter I was getting ready
to sprinkle raisins on my cereal –
they were wizened, almost human
One became under my eyes an old
and wrinkled miniature of the Buddha
I looked in wonder as each resolved
into a separate dried old wise man
Might my dead father be among them?
I searched until I saw a faint plume
of smoke rising up from one, line
so close to vanishing I doubted it
I took that Buddha in my fingers
and, sure enough, it was warmer
than any of the others, so warm
it hurt my tender fingertips
I dropped it on the mound of brown
eleven grain flakes, then followed
it with more Buddhas from the box,
then poured milk into the bowl,
and heard the faintest hiss as
my father’s pipe was extinguished.
Buddhas with milk and cereal I ate
as the sun turned cold ground red
Then I woke before eight o’clock
in deep winter, ruddy son rising
From “Lessons From Dreaming” 2001
Manhattan Projects
Skyscrapers, huge and dumb as parents, dwarf us
as we walk down Lexington in the rain.
Citicorp’s beveled white head glows orange
as it disappears into a low cloud bank.
I imagine liftoff, bright flames billowing
down the avenues, these towers airborne,
leaving ashen earth behind as they seek orbit.
Manhattan projects beyond itself, irrevocably.
1982
Canyons Of The Night
Canyons Of The Night
In the canyons
of the night,
there’s no roof
over your head,
no proof
beneath your feet.
Only rock walls
by your side,
and, far below,
the music
of running water.
You’d best be
stubborn
as a mule.
c. 1993
One Flesh
The living and the dead
are one flesh, not two;
time, the seamstress
Petrus
A rock
apprehended from within
is emptiness
shot through
with quaverings
that can never know
their own sum.
I Go To The Woods To Be A Part
Thaw comes in mid-December.¬ The river runs full,
a sheet of glass at twilight, smooth flowing, gold glowing…
Behind the naked trees, the sun begins
to go down on the horizon…the trees as if touched
on the sky by the twitch of a subtle draftsman’s pencil
that knew to suggest rather than to say…the sun, ruddy,
growing larger, that seems a Cyclops’ eye.¬ This “I”
that sees the sun, coins it in the sky as well as sees,
is polymorphous, perverse, apt to sire its own terror
even here in these woods that emerge brown and moist
and gentled from beneath the snow blanket.¬ The white dog
goes before me like my own ghost, now seen, now unseen…
I go to the woods to be apart, not simply away,
but in tatters and phrases, in elliptic accidents
of attention, eyes, ears, nose, skin loose from the yoke
of purpose.¬ I go to the woods to be a part,
part of the wind, the light, the sway of the trees,
the deft shyness of the occasional rabbit, the liquid
discretion of the river, mirroring, mirroring.
It seems the white dog who summons me with her insistence,
the tension in her flesh the house can not contain,
but when we emerge I am face-to-face with my self-deception:
the house can not contain me either, however meekly
I sit and stare into the fire’s fading embers.
We walk curves in the woods, guided like a boomerang,
now beside the river, where a duck and a green winged drake
bob, paddle on orange webbed feet,
now ranging away through a stand of pines, through a scrubby place,
up a face of rock and down the other side to enter
where the great trees grow that groan on icy nights
in the wind…there is a cardinal, like a dart of blood…
the dog flushes a small animal, seems to catch it…
there are two voices growling behind a rock, the dog emerges
shaking her head…an indistinct brown shape
scurries off…I laugh…the dog forgets her disappointment.
We come back from the woods, like musicians from a trio.
1979
Master Bernhard, Late Of A Private School
How like a wounded stag
whose blood stains dark his coat
as he flees through familiar forest
and yet can not shake the hurt
which holds close his heart,
does Bernhard his blackboard attend,
scribbling the ancient hieroglyphics
in pirouettes of chalk on slate
before the cold eyes of fiends
which shoot constant arrows of distaste.
How like a wounded stag
whose strength nears final ebb
does Bernhard bed himself down
as night comes on to seek in sleep
some new glow of the flickering coals
that are his life, his loyalty to things sublime,
things obscure: glades green to his eyes alone,
the spirals that falling leaves describe in autumn wind,
mere history, what others hoped and missed.
How like a wounded stag
does Bernhard lack insight to discern
what thrill his hunters get
from seeking his demise,
what delight his death could promise,
what they could want of these woods
that he, living, might be inclined to deny.
He summons up their faces, the one whose hair
is the color of sand, the one whose eyes seem always moist,
the one whose lips are pink and full as berries.
How like a wounded stag
who finds no comfort in the dark
does Bernhard dread the new day,
although he knows nothing precise of it,
only that his scholars will come,
each laggard limb eloquent of dismay,
to launch at him their taunts:
“What is the use of this?” and “This, above all, I do not like”
and “You can not mean to insist…” and “This is cruel”
and “What manner of fool would waste his life on this?”
How like a wounded stag
grown weary of his antlers’ weight
which once was his fiercest pride and joy,
does Bernhard note numbness in his neck,
which must support his head
and all that time and diligence have crammed within.
The hatred of boys who will become men
and do the works of men
is sensual like the lust of hunters
who track blood on snow for sport.
How like a wounded stag
who can not plan
and moves in arcs that start to close
to find a final spot,
does Bernhard long for release
not just from boys’ minds but from their eyes,
If knowledge brings sorrow,
how advocate joy of higher woe
to those attached to what’s below?
As Beast, Bernhard dies to instruct.
That Death Is Coming And Others Will Play
At forty, a man’s body
knows the secret inside
that death is coming
and others will play
sweet, lingering games
in the shade of the oaks.
Others will repeat the form
of the dance when his feet
are no more, flesh and blood
and bones to dust decomposed.
Everything is loss. So plays
the music of this first day
of May, mocking presence
with certainty of coming
absence, as if each white bell
ranged along the green rope stem
of each slight lily of the valley
were become huge, metal, all tolling
together an immense requiem,
one he hears and will not hear.
The lilies of the valley
are the ones right there
under the pin oak that is just
now leafing oblivious out.
1986
Insomnia
Ice, fire and emptiness,
the beaten blank of night
What drowned star beacons
in the bottom well of me?
1984