your summer dress I remember:
orange, green, a touch of turquoise
was it?
how it clashed so madly
with the dull buildings
dulled by a sky-full
of grey clouds
pressing inappropriately
around you
and your smile—dashed off
as you ran past in the light rain
bright as the sound
tyres make
on a smooth wet road.
The handmade espresso cup
is satisfying on my lips
and if I wished
I might imagine the touch
of those classical lips
on the woman’s face, painted
on the cup, quickly, just a few lines
with a thinnish brush.
Once, full-frontal, her nose
a straight line to her brow
between eyes which are dabs of black
run into a wash of sea-green.
The other, her face lying down,
looking over the curved hill
of her shoulder, described
with one stroke.
“Poor clay toy creature of Eternity”
– R. A. K. Mason
knowing the way
we didn’t move
knowing how
we didn’t do
knowing less
we pretended more
knowing why
we didn’t try
knowing true
we still lied
knowing what
we didn’t say
knowing when
we didn’t show
knowing where
we searched there.
Fast ride oil economy collapsing. I’ll have to walk
or saddle a donkey (dung and fun) to petition
Washington: careful of stealth.
An archaeologist’s brush, poetry and Plato:
my understanding of humanity. The Hagia Sophia:
lights you can jump to touch.
No person freed from working for someone else
ever complained―or only about the weather
and marauding armies.
Of Leonard Cohen: he slowed it down―no line
more important than the whole: a sexy prophet;
no time for constitutions.
They would make our world a Venus. Too late,
I’m abandoning the rich―their compliments
and donations―I shall eat my bread
with the class of a peasant. Let words live
for awhile. Domes and colonnades
can fall down as they will.
I have a miniature Degas:
a twenty dollar souvenir
from a world that’s far
from this desk, these walls.
There: you could believe
red was revolution,
cadmium yellow truly divine,
and where pale azure
mingling with gold
was a gasp of rapture!
—ah, my miniature Degas,
where are we now?
She said she hatched from a chrysalis
aaaaShe said she lost her wings
She said she was once a queen
aaaaShe said she wore a tiger’s hide
She said she could hold her breath for a very long time
aaaaShe said she had never committed a crime
She said she had been close to a comet
aaaaShe said she knew Verlaine
She said she was on the barricades
aaaaShe said she escaped on a horse
She said she never watches TV
aaaaShe said she loves her job
She said she doesn’t look back
aaaaShe said she could live forever
She said she had a contented heart
aaaaAnd we believed her.
Missionaries congregate
by a wooden seat
orientated to the east,
the radiant sun,
crowned willingly
by everyone, who fall
on this autumn morning
easily into worship.
Mindful perhaps
of a life-giving force,
though more likely
a humble bliss.
No priority given
to metaphysical claims,
only competing interests
on a wooden seat.
I hold no hand
in mine.
A hand is not
a stone.
There was no hand
before
it was held
by yours.
Now, the hand
is empty
and no more.
The hand
has been turned
to stone.
I no longer reach for belief
like a Romeo or a Juliet.
I just look back now
to the ruins of each
crumbling temple, each pigeon
perch, each fallen tower,
and from those snapshots
I get my eternal relief.
I would love an apple orchard,
with goats kept at bay by a fence,
with pigs, snout-ringed, allowed
to sample the windfall fruit
only, not my perfect darlings,
hanging ripe from heavy, drooping
branches, waiting for a hand
to appreciate them, like I surely
would, if an orchard were mine―
but I’m old, and it’s too late now
to plant stake-bound saplings in land
I do not even have a lease to own.
So, there’ll be no late evening
dalliance with the fruit of Eves,
just apples enough from one tree
planted, wisely, many years ago.
