Born January 22, 1946
Born January 22, 1946
Ashes of Auschwitz attended my bris
they stayed quiet and did not speak their names
a scent that I did not yet recognize
dark gray sky cantilevered from the past
I shone the splendor of coming to be
undergirded by the terror of it
conjoint unravelling of joy and doom
never ever to be broken apart
to love is to love, the question that is
its own answer, to live is to live
this fleeting instant, eternity’s crown,
this spark that vanishes free from a name
the wound of hope bleeds and can not be stanched
beyond faulting I mourn and I bless
Fit And Counterfeit
I am my own true fit and counterfeit,
true gold and fool’s gold, their opposition
not surviving this life’s intricacy,
neither driving out each other’s other
What am I to make of myself but ceaseless
forming of unresolvable formlessness,
sometimes shameless in its heated heaving
sometimes weighted with patient blind waiting?
In possessing myself, I dispossess
myself of myself, pass into passing,
leaving behind trinkets that mark a path
beyond my own way of remembrances
“Am I or am I not?” becomes the sea
of “was” or “was not,”, time’s own shoreless “be”
Slant
Slant is how best it goes when it knows not
wither or why it goes, truth or not ruth,
entertainment or catastrophe, yet
slant’s elusive as firmament’s first fire
was there a first photon or were all and awe
then self-entangled, then, as now , caught in
the net of nothing stretched impossibly
to bear being beyond themselves, ah, light
yes light, this light, slant, makes sight and shadow
the worrisome wisdom of our delight,
the fierce fervor of our burgeoning fright
as climate changes, so our climax, too
my self, illusion, to itself is slight
and slant as well, star, lost in its own night
In Brazilian Portuguese
In Brazilian Portuguese the samba
is the sonnet, lovely lazy lively
lilt slipping through shoulders, hips, lips, toes, hands
to be breath and so smooth how time flowers
Before there were any words, Jobim made
sun, sand, sea, saudade, me, and the girl
who was completely sound without need of flesh,
she of the slightest stirrings of our air
No knowing now, ever, how samba means
outside itself, except it lilts us let
go grip of grasping selves, dance with shadows
sculpted from blocking light of this, this… life
ah, sway, syncopated, counting deeper
sweeter than any beat, more…less regular
Litowa Moonlight
Forty years ago in Litowa moonlight
I saw myself a naked ape and laughed…
Fever of unknown origins had held me
four days in its sweaty embrace and loosed
my bowels innumerable times so
I staggered from the hut in search of wide
green leaves and staggered weakly back again –
this night as I returned I saw outline
of my dim shadow in African dust,
recognized the naked fellow alive
at the pleasure of chance as my own self
and began to laugh under the full moon
alone near the border with Mozambique
and how I laughed under that huge moon
In The Time Of Gaza, 2009
Compromised Land
Because promises can’t be relied upon,
I’m trying to trade in the Promised Land
for compromised land –I know glamor’s less
with this kind of earth, but we’re so many…
I will compromise with most anyone
about most anything – even in this
I’m less than absolute, but let us now
negotiate night after night while stars
that can’t hear bitter biting words progress
through the heavens and the constellations
change so we can’t be assured where we are –
let’s argue until the guns and tanks rust
I’m ready to settle compromised land,
let a new vocation find my right hand
We Should Not Seek
We should not seek instruction in cruelty
from our enemies: they have much to teach,
but the greater danger is that our joy
is in what avid learners we can be
How to turn away from such dread pursuit,
how to make peace with needing to make peace,
how to grasp how close glory and gory
live to each other, how to find splendor
in giving up the magnificent hopes
that have let us feel that we might matter –
cruelty and vanity, conspirators
in glistening armor, old, old allies
They urge that what’s slight in us, what’s tender,
slights us, so we must be pride’s defender
New Year’s Eve 2008
I’m having trouble losing myself in
anything at all – books, music, sex, crime,
drugs and dreams are of no use, I remain
some thing slung about my neck, a presence
like an albatross, more faithful even
than my shadow for I stay with me when
there is no light, I hug through all the days
and all the nights, I have nothing to say
There’s nothing rare in this extremity,
I can’t help imagining it’s common
even if most don’t choose to notice it,
how we keep ourselves clinging company
It’s New Year’s Eve and the old show rolls on
I’m found, this that collars me is no con
Let Me Explain What Evolution Shows
Let me explain what evolution shows:
lack of curiosity killed the cat –
the hunter must always keep on hunting,
pry under each rock, never trust, disdain
the obvious, overcome all smugness
with sheer restless energy that’s mental
and physical both; the cat that survives
must endure appearing foolish not just
to others but to himself – let them laugh
all they want, living’s no laughing matter
and when this cat sleeps his dreams do not rest
but sort follies in other dimensions
cat that’s not curious is goner cat
this is exactly the place that we’re at
So Quietly Did Fox Cross Yesterday
So quietly did fox cross yesterday
our path in wet woods, the white dog never
lifted her nose and I thought it was brown
silent apparition from a lost dream
But it so beguiled me, this noiseless fox,
it appeared over and over again,
just one fox become many mind foxes,
soft shades of brown, aristocratic tails.
Unforeseen encounter, intense pleasure,
antidote to the surprise of terror,
fox up on his paws, off on an errand
through fragrant pines in the mid-winter rain.
We’re just as likely to be lost as found
When dream of fox turns up on waking ground
I’m Already Older Than I Can Grasp
I’m already older than I can grasp
and getting older still, breath by breath and
beat by beat, nothing to be done, but go
on going on, try to find melody
In the succession of my own moments,
how they slip away and take me with them,
even as they leave me at once behind
and ahead, dazed and dazzled, old and new
Yes, there’s the riddle, that though I’m older,
I come in each instant alive anew,
fresh and free in my own slight company,
perhaps more frail but unbroken yet
I know my destiny, that not to be
is being’s end, soon, too soon – old story