Everything is going to be all right

How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window

and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?

There will be dying, there will be dying,

but there is no need to go into that.

The poems flow from the hand unbidden

and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The sun rises in spite of everything

and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

I lie here in a riot of sunlight

watching the day break and the clouds flying.

Everything is going to be all right.

A Sleepless Night

April, and the last of the plum blossoms


scatters on the black grass

before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,

the struck pine inhale

the first pale hints of sky.

An iron day,

I think, yet it will come

dazzling, the light

rise from the belly of leaves and pour

burning from the cups

of poppies.

The mockingbird squawks

from his perch, fidgets,

and settles back. The snail, awake

for good, trembles from his shell

and sets sail for China. My hand dances

in the memory of a million vanished stars.



A man has every place to lay his head.

How Poetry Comes To Me

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of the light

Lazybones

They will continue wandering,

these things of steel among the stars,

and weary men will still go up

to brutalize the placid moon.

There, they will found their pharmacies.



In this time of the swollen grape,

the wine begins to come to life

between the sea and the mountain ranges.



In Chile now, cherries are dancing,

the dark mysterious girls are singing,

and in guitars, water is shining.



The sun is touching every door

and making wonder of the wheat.



The first wine is pink in colour,

is sweet with the sweetness of a child,

the second wine is able-bodied,

strong like the voice of a sailor,

the third wine is a topaz, is

a poppy and fire in one.



My house has both the sea and the earth,

my woman has great eyes

the colour of wild hazelnut,

when night comes down, the sea

puts on a dress of white and green,

and later the moon in the spindrift foam

dreams like a sea-green girl.



I have no wish to change my planet.

Getting Away with It

We have already lived in the real paradise.

Horses in the empty summer street.

Me eating the hot wurst I couldn’t afford,

in frozen Munich, tears dropping. We can

remember. A child in the outfield waiting

for the last fly ball of the year. So dark

already it was black against heaven.

The voices trailing away to dinner,

calling faintly in the immense distance.

Standing with my hands open, watching it

curve over and start down, turning white

at the last second. Hands down. Flourishing.

Before

I always thought death would be like traveling

in a car, moving through the desert,

the earth a little darker than sky at the horizon,

that your life would settle like the end of a day

and you would think of everyone you ever met,

that you would be the invisible passenger,

quiet in the car, moving through the night,

forever, with the beautiful thought of home

Vernal Equinox

The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book;

And the South Wind, washing through the room,

Makes the candles quiver.

My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,

And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots

Outside, in the night.


Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love?

Awake

I lay down in my bed and went to sleep

but only after worrying that the pain

that came up in my chest, seemingly deep

inside it where my heart was, was a plain

signal that I might not survive the night

and could be lying cold beside my wife

when she got up, as she does, with the light,

to start another day in her own life,

while mine was over, unbeknown to us,

including me. As I was worrying

I went to sleep and woke up in four hours

to use the bathroom. Birds had begun to sing.

Two dogs were barking. Nothing perilous

had come to find us. What was ours was ours.

Pine tree tops

in the blue night

frost haze, the sky glows

with the moon

pine tree tops

bend snow-blue, fade

into sky, frost, starlight.

the creak of boots.

rabbit tracks, deer tracks,

what do we know.

White Apples

when my father had been dead a week

I woke

with his voice in my ear

I sat up in bed

and held my breath

and stared at the pale closed door



white apples and the taste of stone



if he called again

I would put on my coat and galoshes

Sheep in Fog

The hills step off into whiteness.

People or stars

Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.



The train leaves a line of breath.

O slow

Horse the colour of rust,



Hooves, dolorous bells -

All morning the

Morning has been blackening,



A flower left out.

My bones hold a stillness, the far

Fields melt my heart.



They threaten

To let me through to a heaven

Starless and fatherless, a dark water.

("I almost went to bed ...") from "The Spice-Box of Earth"

Source: flickr.com via Anna on Pinterest

I almost went to bed

without remembering

the four white violets

I put in the button-hole

of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then

and you kissed me

shy as though I'd

never been your lover

April

To the fresh wet fields

and the white

froth of flowers



Came the wild errant

swallows with a scream

A color of the sky

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;



overflowing with blossomfoam,

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,



dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,



so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.

It's been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

Letters from Exile- IV

I woke up at 2 a.m. with a start.

It was raining outside—birds

were angry, the streets full

of fire-engines —and I thought of you

after years: where are you now,

and how are you living, so far away,

with your black and white t.v.

by the window that opens

up to tea stalls, your single-bed

in a square apartment, walls

calendared with gods and goddesses

all the way back to nineteen

ninety-six. Tell me, my beautiful

loss, my hyacinth, how are you living

in the valleys of Dehra,

in that house you have made

with a young man you love.
----------------
There is something so beautiful yet spare about these lines- 'my beautiful loss, my hyacinth'- it's ageless, a piece of the writer's soul, yet evokes such ordinary, everyday images. I used to read this poet's blog a long time ago and he is pricelessly talented.

VI (from Midsummer)

Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat's yawn,

Trees with dust on their lips, cars melting down

in its furnace. Heat staggers the drifting mongrels.

The capitol has been repainted rose, the rails

round Woodford Square the color of rusting blood.

Casa Rosada, the Argentinian mood,

croons from the balcony. Monotonous lurid bushes

brush the damp clouds with the ideograms of buzzards

over the Chinese groceries. The oven alleys stifle.

In Belmont, mournful tailors peer over old machines,

stitching June and July together seamlessly.

And one waits for midsummer lightning as the armed sentry

in boredom waits for the crack of a rifle.

But I feed on its dust, its ordinariness,

on the faith that fills its exiles with horror,

on the hills at dusk with their dusty orange lights,

even on the pilot light in the reeking harbour

that turns like a police car's. The terror

is local, at least. Like the magnolia's whorish whiff.

All night, the barks of a revolution crying wolf.

The moon shines like a lost button.

The yellow sodium lights on the wharf come on.

In streets, dishes clatter behind dim windows.

The night is companionable, the future as fierce as

tomorrow's sun everywhere. I can understand

Borges's blind love for Buenos Aires,

how a man feels the streets of a city swell in his hand.

Point

No hay espacio más ancho que el dolor

No hay universo como aquel que sangra
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

transated:
There is no space wider than that of grief

There is no universe like that which bleeds

Separation

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Not Forgotten

I love the way the black ants use their dead.

They carry them off like warriors on their steel

backs. They spend hours struggling, lifting,

dragging, so that even the dead will be of service.

It is not grisly -- as it would be for us --

to carry them back to be eaten. I think of

my husband at his father's grave --

the grass had closed

over the headstone and the name had disappeared. He took out

a pocket knife and cut the grass away; he swept it

with his handkerchief to make it clear. "Is this the way

we'll be forgotten?" And he bent down over the grave and wept.

By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.

For eleven years I have regretted it,

regretted that I did not do what

I wanted to do as I sat there those

four hours watching her die. I wanted

to crawl in among the machinery

and hold her in my arms, knowing

the elementary, leftover bit of her

mind would dimly recognize it was me

carrying her to where she was going.

The Rider

A boy told me

if he roller-skated fast enough

his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,



the best reason I ever heard

for trying to be a champion.



What I wonder tonight

pedaling hard down King William Street

is if it translates to bicycles.



A victory! To leave your loneliness

panting behind you on some street corner

while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,

pink petals that have never felt loneliness,

no matter how slowly they fell.

Please Understand (A Bachelor's Valentine)

When, next day, I found one of your earrings,

slightly chipped, on the steps leading up to

but also away from my house,



I couldn’t decide if I should return it to you

or keep it for myself in this copper box.

Then I remembered there’s always another choice



and pushed it with my foot into the begonias.

If you’re the kind who desires fragile mementos

of these perilous journeys we take,



that’s where you’ll find it. But don’t knock

on my door. I’ll probably be sucking the pit

out of an apricot, or speaking long distance



to myself. Best we can hope for on days like this

is that the thunder and dark clouds will veer elsewhere,

and the unsolicited sun will break through



just before it sets, a beautiful dullness to it.

Please understand. I’ve never been able to tell

what’s worth more—what I want or what I have.

Happening Apart from What's Happening Around It

There is a vividness to eleven years of love

because it is over. A clarity of Greece now

because I live in Manhattan or New England.

If what is happening is part of what's going on

around what's occurring, it is impossible

to know what is truly happening. If love is

part of the passion, part of the fine food

or the villa on the Mediterranean, it is not

clear what the love is. When I was walking

in the mountains with the Japanese man and began

to hear the water, he said, "What is the sound

of the waterfall?" "Silence," he finally told me.

The stillness I did not notice until the sound

of water falling made apparent the silence I had

been hearing long before. I ask myself what

is the sound of women? What is the word for

that still thing I have hunted inside them

for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy,

the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still

in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper

down where a woman's heart is holding its breath,

where something very far in that body

is becoming something we don't have a name for.

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina

as he stood on the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell.

Trying to Raise the Dead

Look at me. I’m standing on a deck

in the middle of Oregon. There are

friends inside the house. It’s not my



house, you don’t know them.

They’re drinking and singing

and playing guitars. You love



this song, remember, “Ophelia,”

Boards on the windows, mail

by the door. I’m whispering



so they won’t think I’m crazy.

They don’t know me that well.

Where are you now? I feel stupid.



I’m talking to trees, to leaves

swarming on the black air, stars

blinking in and out of heart-



shaped shadows, to the moon, half-

lit and barren, stuck like an axe

between the branches. What are you



now? Air? Mist? Dust? Light?

What? Give me something. I have

to know where to send my voice.



A direction. An object. My love, it needs

a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening.

I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.



Say burning bush. Say stone. They’ve

stopped singing now and I really should go.

So tell me, quickly. It’s April. I’m



on Spring Street. That’s my gray car

in the driveway. They’re laughing

and dancing. Someone’s bound



to show up soon. I’m waving.

Give me a sign if you can see me.

I’m the only one here on my knees.

Late Autumn in Venice

Already the city no longer drifts

like a bait, catching the days as they surface.

The glassy palaces ring more brittly

against your gaze. And from the gardens



the summer hangs like a heap of marionettes,

headfirst, exhausted, done in.

But from the ground, out of old forest skeletons,

volition rises: as if overnight



the commander of the sea had to double

the galleys in the sleepless arsenal,

in order to tar the next morning breeze



with a fleet, which pushes out rowing

and then suddenly, all its flags dawning,

seizes the high wind, radiant and dire.

Human Beauty

If you write a poem about love ...


the love is a bird,



the poem is an origami bird.

If you write a poem about death ...



the death is a terrible fire,

the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames



you feed to the fire.

We can see, in these, the space between



our gestures and the power they address

—an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty,



a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm

from out of nowhere hit New York one night



in 1892, the crew at a theater was caught

unloading props: a box



of paper snow for the Christmas scene got dropped

and broken open, and that flash of white



confetti was lost

inside what it was a praise of

view

misty paddy field-
one crow
per cow

The moon and the yew tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary


The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.

The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God

Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility

Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.

Separated from my house by a row of headstones.

I simply cannot see where there is to get to.



The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,

White as a knuckle and terribly upset.

It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet

With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----

Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection

At the end, they soberly bong out their names.



The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.

The eyes lift after it and find the moon.

The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.

Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.

How I would like to believe in tenderness ----

The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,

Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.



I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering

Blue and mystical over the face of the stars

Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,

Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,

Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.

The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.

And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence

tooth fairy-
and a coin of dawn
on her pillow

New

January...
a piece of dawn
still in my tea