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