The Companion

The moon is now tired

of rolling in the sky

like a hurt and broken bead.

I reach out

through the window of the rain

pluck it out

and place it on top of my half-read book.

It beats there,

like a pulse.

Walking in the Breakdown Lane

Wind has stripped
the young plum trees
to a thin howl.
They are planted in squares
to keep the loose dirt from wandering.
Everything around me is crying to be gone.
The fields, the crops humming to be cut and done with.

Walking in the breakdown lane, margin of gravel,
between the cut swaths and the road to Fargo,
I want to stop, to lie down
in standing wheat or standing water.

Behind me thunder mounts as trucks of cattle
roar over, faces pressed to slats for air.
They go on, they go on without me.
They pound, pound and bawl,
until the road closes over them farther on.

advancing summer-

the clothes still damp

in the trumpet tree's shadow

Quiet Girl

I would liken you

To a night without stars

Were it not for your eyes.

I would liken you

To a sleep without dreams

Were it not for your songs.

Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening

in the water, gurgling

over a low stove flame, before

the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced

for breakfast, before the birds,

my mother glides an ivory comb

through her hair, heavy

and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.

My father watches, listens for

the music of comb

against hair.

My mother combs,

pulls her hair back

tight, rolls itaround two fingers, pins it

in a bun to the back of her head.

For half a hundred years she has done this.

My father likes to see it like this.

He says it is kempt.

But I know

it is because of the way

my mother's hair falls

when he pulls the pins out.

Easily, like the curtains

when they untie them in the evening.

Filthy Radiance

And when we are dead,

and our incandescent skin has dimmed,

and hangs in blackened rags on honeycomb bones,

our electric limbs are stilled by soil,

and the flesh that we have loved so fiercely

has all gone into the darkened tomb,

our luminous leavings will linger here,

haunting the impassive dune,

testament to a time when the base matter of

our lustful bodies was transfigured,

and we laid ourselves open to possesion by light.

II

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.

Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,

you've been at your desk for hours.

I know what I dreamed:

our friend the poet comes into my room

where I've been writing for days,

drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,

and I want to show her one poem

which is the poem of my life.

But I hesitate,and wake. You've kissed my hair

to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,

I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .

and I laugh and fall dreaming again

of the desire to show you to everyone I love,

to move openly together

in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,

which carried the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.

~From Twenty- One Love Poems

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,and is gone--
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,as the sun
reaches out,as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--
or have you too
gone crazyfor power,
for things?

Never Again the Same

Speaking of sunsets,last night's was shocking.

I mean, sunsets aren't supposed to frighten you, are they?

Well, this one was terrifying.

People were screaming in the streets.

Sure, it was beautiful, but far too beautiful.

It wasn't natural.

One climax followed another and then another

until your knees went weak

and you couldn't breathe.

The colors were definitely not of this world,

peaches dripping opium,

pandemonium of tangerines,

inferno of irises,

Plutonian emeralds,

all swirling and churning, swabbing,

like it was playing with us,

like we were nothing,

as if our whole lives were a preparation for this,

this for which nothing could have prepared us

and for which we could not have been less prepared.

The mockery of it all stung us bitterly.

And when it was finally overwe whimpered and cried and howled.

And then the streetlights came on as always

and we looked into one another's eyes?

ancient caves with still pools

and those little transparent fish

who have never seen even one ray of light.

And the calm that returned to us

was not even our own.