English

Death is not the worst of it
for I have died before —
at the hands of gangs who guzzled their courage
or boy/men who cuddled then cudgeled me to death,
at the hands of healers who electroshocked my brains
as if they were frying eggs,
and at my own hands.
So death is not the worst of it
for I have known death —
gang death on the docks, sudden death in my bedroom,
slow death in the sanitarium, and chosen death on my chaise.

Because I have known death I have thwarted it.

1

De farmer say to de weevil:
" What you doin' on de square? "
De li'l bug say to de farmer:
" Got a nice big fambly dere;
Goin' to have a home, goin' to have a home. "

2

Farmer say to de boll weevil:
" You's right up on de square. "
Boll weevil say to de farmer:
" Mah whole fambly's there,
I have a home, I have a home. "

3

Boll weevil say to de lightnin' bug:
" Can I get up a trade wid you?
If I was a lightnin' bug,
I'd work the whole night through,

It's of a merchant's daughter,
In London town did dwell,
She was modest, fair and handsome
And her parents loved her well.
She was admired by lords and squires,
It was their hopes in vain,
For there was one, 'twas a farmer's son
Poor Mary's heart could gain.

Long time young William courted her
And fixed the wedding day,
Their parents all consented
But her brothers both did say,
‘There lives a lord shall pledge the word
And him she shall not shun,
For we will betray and then we'll slay

The farmer is busy, so busy, to-day,
Trying to gather in all his hay,
So off to the hayfield hurry away
And see what you can do.
Will you rake, and toss, and turn the hay?
Will you ride in the cart which takes it away?
Or pile up the rick as high as you may?
Or—will-you-only- play ?

In daytime hours
guided by instincts that never sleep,
the faintest signals come to me
over vast spaces
of etiquette and restraint.
Sometimes I give in
to the pressing call of instinct,
knowing the code of my kind
better than I know
the National Anthem
or the Lord's Prayer.
I am so driven by my senses
to abandon restraint,
to seek pure pleasure
through every pore.
I want to smell the air around me
thickly scented
with a playboy's freedom.
I want impractical relationships.

Apart from you, the
World is as unimportant
As it never was.

Your body grammar
Spells out a better portent
Than your language does.

Landscape, you apart,
Looks utterly transparent;
Still you stay opaque,

Indispensable
To me as air, apparent
With each breath I take.

No comparison
Seems too hackneyed to explain
What these portents mean:

Parted lips remain
Apart as flowers or shutters
Open to the sun;

Compulsive digits

I

Farewell to Winnipeg, the snow-bright city
Set in the prairie distance without bound
Profound and fathomless, encompassed round
By the wind-haunted country and wide winter.

Farewell to Winnipeg, the sun-bright city
Lapped in light summer leaves by turning waters,
Lost in a level land of endless acres,
Found in the endless memories of my heart.

As the pale face of some remembered darling
Calm under floods and bound about the brows
With dream-refracted light no daytime knows

I remember dancing in July on the banks of the Hudson in the City,
the way some of us, innocent then, reported the rumors
we had heard I remember you, a doctor, discussing your work
on the wards of San Francisco and the way we worried about
our friends and the way you stood in the elevator
pushing an i.v. stand, not really speaking—the calls
at night and the endless plans to move from the city and the fevers
you had and the pills by your bed and the vigil I kept until
you died. I remember the party for your birthday, the way

“Adieu, nous n'irons plus aux champs.”
—C
HARLES
G
ARNIER

Farewell to fields and butterflies
And levities of Yester-year!
For we espy, and hold more dear,
The Wicket of our Destinies.

Whereby we enter, once for all,
A Garden which such Fruit doth yield
As, tasted once, no more afield
We fare where Youth holds carnival.

Farewell, fair Fields, none found amiss
When laughter was a frequent noise
And golden-hearted girls and boys

Going towards Spain.

Farewell, thou fertile soil,
that Brutus first out found,
When he, poor soul, was driven clean
from out his country ground;
That northward lay'st thy lusty sides
amid the raging seas,
Whose wealthy land doth foster up
thy people all in ease,
While others scrape and cark abroad,