Category: Uncategorized

I call the seahorse

After hours of reading alone—

Neo-Platonism

 

Clear stones in mind, circles and circles—

Bring your coordinates!

 

Outside branches

Barely green, night wind.

 

I urge

We float in sensible mist.

 

“No, I will not climb into that hole with you,” says heart to brain and thus begins daily Parcheesi.

**

I love Dante. I love him so much I once stole his bust from the English Department at Hobart College. I kept him for about fifteen years. Sometimes I’d light a cigar and blow smoke in his face. Then one morning, on a whim, I returned the bust. Put him right back on the bookshelf.

Properly, he smelled smoky.

**

Writing gets you in trouble. Not writing gets you in trouble. I’m told bird watching can get you in trouble what with the real estate laws.

**

Spoke once with Pentti Saarikoski via telephone. “Maybe one day we will meet in this mad world,” he said. Of the meeting, never. Of mad planet, quasi-Quisling Sasquatches running the show…

**

Lately I’ve been eating berries.

**

The study of aesthetics and anesthetic are not far apart.

**

Dear Wallace Stevens: my angel is very small, folds up really, suitable for all leave takings.

 

Anything becomes a poem. My old friend

Chews lustily speaking of Chekov

 

And I think he’s eating

Lawrence’s “mystic” fruit:

 

an apple

becomes mystic when I taste in it

 

the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth

and the insistence of the sun…

 

Now after rain, early spring, hop-scotching birds,

avian imperfect, mystic the wild ordinary.

 

Only the dead feel at home—“My father’s house has many mansions…”

“You have to understand,” the poet said, “life is a rented room, not much more.”

Sometimes I have to laugh

Thinking of piety, all those down payments

For what is essentially free. Death is it’s own house.

The windows are open, late Autumn, rain coming, the old curtains billowing.

Happy birthday. You sit alone

& play the scratched LP

That’s always been yours,

A dead singer’s uplift

Is all you’ve ever needed.

 

Memory is a trick—

Like rebellion

In youth

Visions & results

Remain far apart,

But at least

That  (you

think) is

Something one can

Count on.

 

Through a small window

Under the eaves

You see neighborhood

Children

Walking home

From school

Their rain jackets

Yellow as finches.

 

A compact life this year,

You & Miles Davis

In the attic—

Happy birthday.

Happy birthday.

& time to turn the record over.

 

 

Hilarious to be the blind boy who loves Brahms

Face pressed to fabric speaker of radio

Holding fast, seaward, first hint

Of big idea—cardamon pastry

In his hand—rain

At the window

 

1958 & grownups

Sleeping, Helsinki

Late Winter

Ships calling

From the harbor

 

His heart beating

As if he’d

Inherited it

From a gull

 

Picking mushrooms

A proper Scandinavian

Original food of poverty

Summer of baby coffins

 

Where are the songs?

I’ve one or two

Funereal cradle lullabys

Old Finland

 

Sometimes play them

On a guitar

Now end of Winter

Preparing for Spring

 

That is, my simple trousers

Hung well

On my stippled

Inefficient legs

& I was right with the world

 

Belonged

On the street

Had contributions—

Beside

The village pump

I sang a short song

 

The seahorse’s coordinates

Had their way with me then

No longer welcome

In the story teller’s circle

I was far at sea

Without friends by sundown

Silent laughter

History of marginalia

Scribes kicking one another

During the Mass

A stray cat walks in circles

Everyone has scars on his back

 

“What’s behind this writing?”

Says the instructor

Who scarcely knows what he asks

In my grandmother’s attic I found a silver toothpick

Buried in a small wooden box

Like Egyptian sarcophagi

For mummified crickets

Something funereal

 

Once there was a grand occasion

1906 the Great Caruso home

After San Francisco

Everyone raising a glass

At Del Pezzo’s

 

Strangers lovers

Grateful

To be alive

In the age of song

& the tenor handing out his souvenirs