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.