English

Multiplying in a column M by F
do we get one or two as a result?
May the body stay glued to the soul,
may the soul fear the body.
Do I ask too much? I only wish
the crucible of tenderness would melt
memories, and I would sleep, my cheek
pressed against your back, as on a motorbike ...

Who kills my history knows
it is buried
in the same air ay breathe.
Only a hair is needed to keep you, mother.
Only a fit of bone.
Comfort, comfort, ay am my own.

Wanting simple, a sun like water, a flow and stir of air.
Warm stone, black-warm, dirt scent and bird.
Ay am put out to weather.

Animal eyed me here — heaving, breathing over —
felt by smell for me and loomed.
Air shifted my hair as it neared and sniffed
then left. Comfort, comfort me.

A thresh of sticks and vine, hand-carried

Here in life, they would understand.
How could it be otherwise? We had groped too,
unwise, till the margin began to give way,
at which point all was sullen, or lost, or both.

Now it was time, and there was nothing for it.

We had a good meal, I and my friend,
slurping from the milk pail, grabbing at newer vegetables.
Yet life was a desert. Come home, in good faith.
You can still decide to. But it wanted warmth.
Otherwise ruse and subtlety would become impossible
in the few years or hours left to us. " Yes, but ... "

You write for news and Venetian vellum.

I answer: From the sea today a mystery:
proportion"s carapaced nightmare: lobster.

You write for burnt glass.

I answer: When tides cross San Marco"s cobbles,
bare-shouldered women, bare-shouldered girls,
walk planks to the dark cathedral.

Herr Wilibald, my French mantle greets you!
My plumes and misgivings greet you!
Blue-black near the boiling vat, my carapaced neighbor
greets you! (Since dusk, his thin-stalked eyes, like sunflowers,

It wicked from his meat
in the thick of bedroom
gloom, a sweet and sour

sauce of breath and sweat;
of Scotch malt steamed
through all the pores, or

bourbon, a dozen jiggers,
fumes floating out all
the fissures, the flues

until air grew complicit,
redolent of pitch pine,
resins — and groggy

enough a child of six
could pass out cold;
sometimes vodka,

so clean, almost a lemon
scent, funneling in, but
a rancid stink coming out:

the body"s long exhale;

Ratso pigeons
strictly for the birds.

Morning vocalizing
to settle one"s nerves.

Practice makes perfect.
Hello high wire art,

and come back O
red-tail youth. Upstart.

Hair bulbs down there.
Feed and need.

Sunshine so justified
upon my wings and

I sing for my supper.
Puppy litter. Woof.

Kittykats. Chickees.
Big black bird indeed.

Red-tail now
agh family-size.

Bring it on! Heart
of stone gold carved,

Big Bad Daddy

Brown as the ground
yet not ground. As the dirt
yet not dirt though
dirty. Tooled
but not tools,
soled but not
solo or soiled
and in my hands
brown, suffering,
unsoled. Today,
as my oldest friend is cremated
and I dress,
two gaping mugs —
comedy, tragedy —
cordovan lipped,
mustachioed, grave,
wail by the bed.

Despite the geologists" knowledge and craft,
mocking magnets, graphs, and maps —
in a split second the dream
piles before us mountains as stony
as real life.

And since mountains, then valleys, plains
with perfect infrastructures.
Without engineers, contractors, workers,
bulldozers, diggers, or supplies —
raging highways, instant bridges,
thickly populated pop-up cities.

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen —
crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us
and when to vanish.

The flight attendants
go
from kore to semaphore

as a city falls into
discredited ether —

Gewick, gewick, oo-oo!

Shoulderless
stoic, take — from hands wisely
gloved —

a bony treat
through the hardware
in your face;

shrug your throat.

They have no sense of what they"re looking at,
Unless the object moves.
(Or so he"s read; who knows if that"s the case?)
A painted bird"s an empty analogue
To the oblivious cat.
And it is not his still familiar face
So much as that distinctive gait which proves
The master to his dog,
Who frolics for him like an acrobat.

His eyes need movement too, but make their own.
His most fixated gaze —
On one small figure in a Bruegel scene,
Or on the camber of his lover"s lip
He worships unbeknown,