English

1
The nineish summer-skinny imp-boy veers
the bicycle he has no notion yet of trusting
off the sidewalk, where the squashed mulberries
form many contusions. Riding as though and as though
on an animal (maybe his bike
should have gazelle eyes) he is hatching plans
somehow angelically pristine of doubt
between them and fruition. He dumps
the bike on this side of the jungle gyms,
while cottonwood foam blows up from the branch,
and wind imparts the grass two sibling greens,

It's a beautiful world, you said,
with these trees, marshes, deserts,
grasses, rivers and seas

and so on. And the moon is really something
in its circuits
of relative radiance. Include

the winged M, voluptuous
Venus, hotheaded Mars, that lucky devil
J and cranky Saturn, of course, plus

U and N and the wanderer P, in short
the whole solar family, complete with its
Milky Way, and count up all the other

systems with dots and spots and in
that endless emptiness what you've got

Wandered tonight through a city
as ruined as a body with broken
ribs and a bared heart. Looked for you

there with cookies in my pocket, searched
for a sigh, for movement in demolished
streets and alleys. Tonight

since I"d forgotten for a moment where you are,
I searched for you with hope in my bones.
But no matter how I lured you with my voice
and my eyes, walls of debris

grew up steadily around you, cellars seemed
to creep around you. I remained alone
with those cookies in my pocket

Did an argument break out in the kitchen that morning?
Was there smashing of pots and pans: you
want to eat somewhere else? Go on,

get out! Or were they set outside, shrewd,
meant to feed on dust and hunger or to tempt the doves
of peace? Nothing wrong with that as long as
the cook stays put by another fire. Hollow

vessels on grass socks, what do they want from this
puzzle of trees and clouds? Even the wind
seems to have forgotten how to whistle and wherever
you look, those who are gone cannot be seen.

In one who doesn't speak the story petrifies,
gets stumbled over, causes hurt. Then,

says the man who should know about the past, then
is a word you need to learn now. Then

lived lives had has
a name a body, sacrificial hands

so god might help us. Feel with your hands and feet
back along these countless steps and hear

the incessant bloodrush, its dark red

presence. That was what the man insisted,
in so many words, pointing to the ornate

temple corridor, an altar

Pale Melancholy, faithfully thou lov'st
The human soul when youth and passion fail;
How precious all things grow beneath thy smile!
Sad sister of the poet's lonely hours,
Thy clinging arms embrace us all, thy feet
Are in all paths, and Nature saddens 'neath
Thine eyes. The lotus and the poppy have
Thee in their dreamy veins; thine image dwells
For ever in the jewelled wine; thou art
The hungry beauty of Love's crescent eyes,
The tremor of white hands, the ashy gleam
Of noble brows, and thou dost startle Love's

Methought the stream of Time had backward rolled,
And I was standing on the fruitful plain
That lay between the sea and ancient Troy.
I saw one standing on the curving beach
Whose hoary locks were playthings for the wind
That freshening came across the swelling waves.
I listened to the mystic music of a voice
That chanted to their measured beat, in tones
Now whispering soft and low as rustling leaves,
Now rolling with the boom of tumbling waves,
Now clanging as the clash of brazen arms.

Eve coming slowly down, at peace we marked
From higher places the low sun decline
Across the bay, pouring o'er Monimet
A flood of ruddy light that made more rich,
Her decorous robe of crimson, — autumn's robe
Of berry-bearing plants and changing trees,
Responsive to that glory. Thence I gazed
With a more fond emotion; for the hills
Contained, or rather might conceal, that house, —
Mansion I fitlier call it. Gothic hall,
With colonnade like Reinsberg's own, contract
To a more private scale; and slated roofs

On native soil, pushing yet southernward,
Where the gay sand-dunes color Wellfleet's brow,
And earlier some few years adventuring brave,
Old Gosnold struck the land, searching this way
For treasure; and despatched a company,
Who viewed off Truro's height the Atlantic wave
Far reaching down the east its purple shades,
Chasing the green with red, and the low moon
Trail her soft radiance o'er the glimmering sea.
Then, too, the unceasing music of the surf,
Heard in our waking dream, disturbs the air

Dreaming the sea the elder, I must search
In her for tidings of the olden days, —
Oldest and newest. For how fresh the breeze
That blows along the beaches! and the cry
Of the small glancing bird who runs before,
And still before me, as I find my way
Along the salt sea's ooze, seems like the frail
Admonitor of all the birds: and mark,
Forever turning, that green-crested wave,
Curve of the gleaming billows, and the weed
Purple and green and glistering, the long kelp
Swaying for ages towards the foaming strand;