It Takes Practice Not To Die

THE TEST

He who would climb the heights of tone
and scale the peaks beyond the listening ear
must first walk over water
and learn to stand on air, alone.

He who would swim the waves of light
and dive past shores into a sunless glow
must first merge with his shadow
and melt through solid glass, like night.

Where eyes are fins and sound is leap,
the rhythmic force performs its own ballet;
when dreams are fired in clay,
they burn a path through timeless sleep.

DIARY

Returning miles of space,
can you find the precise hour,
travel through that day,
locate the very moment
ago, there?

The mind goes back and forth,
stops at what time stations,
Monday morning, January 7th,
winter, and ten years
after then.

The trunk arrives, departs:
hotel, depot, airport, pier,
with sticker seals to mark the sights
and tag the route,
remember where?

With tickets, menus, souvenirs,
a life's receipts in black and white
to trace the course of wind and tide,
the way back home
from why and when.

And buses, taxis, subways, cars,
for how-long, how-far conversations,
so much, so many, who and what,
with love, regards and yes, again,
name, place, date, pen.

ITEM: BODY FOUND

It was a silent evening, I remember,
through the river's mist it comes to me—
a star pierced the air; white with speed
it leaped across the sky, slipped and fell;
I heard its cry, it echoed in the sea,
the swift wild cry of the scornful ember.

Alone I stood there, never had I need
of fellow rebel more, I, a rebel.

Down the dark beach I ran, I stripped; time
was an eyeless reach across immensity
and I plunged deeply. They blamed it on the tide,
the night; they had not seen infinity
like a vast unchanging vista wide
before me. If you go too far you'll drown,
they said. Ah no, only those grasp the sublime
who challenge the dream, before going down!

LANDSCAPE: WITH BREAD

Let us admit it is attractive
and represents something we think
we need: to live beautifully
and find goodness in it.
Everything points in that direction:
from beelines to star routes,
our dreams flower in the cells of night,
our days are joined to the sun.
Open or closed, our eyes possess
the world: all that appears
fulfills the desert gardens
and the glitter of gold. Yet,
whether we ever can reach
the source where image and reality
meet, or survive the force
of fire turning to ecstasy—
the immediate need we can not deny
is, simply, to exist...
meanwhile, perfecting the wish
for astral honey and blossoms of light.

O TO BE AN OSTRICH

The ostrich
like Shakespeare
believes there is nothing
good or bad
but thinking
makes it so.

All problems
he has found
by taking his head
out of the ground
and looking
for them.

The solving
obviously
is a matter of foot
going faster than thought
to avoid
being caught.

Such logic
of conscience
may well be envied—
for who can dispute
what can not be questioned
or proved?

THE BARREN FIG TREE

In these long years of war I have seen
drought, and the truth is, Father, that I
am sick to death of it. Can a man
set his house in order just to die?
You speak of hope and honor in our day
and I say hurrah for those not born,
for there won't be enough fig leaves saved
to cover their nakedness, or corn
to stop their cries. There is no water
and no sign of rain, only briar
and thorn, dunghill and dust, while the poor
groan like beasts on a desolate moor.

You should have seen it, Father, the day
they attacked, a day as dark as night,
with clouds of fire both front and rear. They
ran like horses, climbed walls, broke ranks, spied
out of windows, their faces pained, black,
while the earth bled till the moon shone red.
Well, old men have their dreams, and young men
their visions, but that day won't come back
until the mountains fall and the hills
cover us, if those are here still.
I've seen green land turn to salt, and worms
rot under clods, while men talk peace terms.

THE SOWER

Sixty seasons I have sowed, man and boy,
and I tell you, Matthew, that a seed
can not grow in the heart. No, one may
as well throw it away or feed
the chickens with it. For a fact, love
is something that only the devil
understands. I'd rather put my trust
in stones and reap a quick crop, for ill
or good. That way, you have no roots and
get what you can in a few short suns.
Or take cactus plants, at least a man
sees the thorns and expects to be stuck,
unless he's a fool—some choke on wool.
As for good ground, Matthew, that's just luck;
I've seen other fellows' orchards full,
year after year, where no one's lifted
a hand or a hoe except to pull
the ripe fruits down. Some men are gifted.

INTERVIEW

Poet, who are you?

    Janus, god of gates and doors
    and all beginnings

    A weather cock
    facing in every direction

    A festive singer who can wear
    goatskins and bleat

Are you not made like other men?

    Twin of their image and echo
    fired in one clay

    Shadow of young men's mornings
    and ghost of old men's nights

    Parabola and paranymph
    of lovers only

By what signs can a poet he known?

    For whom zero is an opening
    or a hole to be filled

    Who can measure the earth
    with a piece of rope

    And place the sun on a disc of paper
    under a cracked roof

How does a poet live?

    As alchemist and archimage
    of twenty-six letters

    In constant employment
    to nature

    Free in every sense and word
    except for treason

Of what value is such work?

    To dip the pen of time
    in dew and smoke and blood

    To distinguish the creak
    of a cradle from a coffin

    To demonstrate that life
    is the abscissa of eternity

Does a poet have any faith?

    Whose only criterion
    is self-corroboration

    Who can find God
    in a barrel of wine

    And with the hands of a spider
    pilot a path to the stars

THIS SIDE THE FOG

1

Windless season without rain,
you bring the sea up from the rocks
across the cliffs, drifting clouds...

Gray weaves the night as day
and everything moves like sleep.

Trees climb a hill, lights swing
upon circles of darkness,
walls bend a road where you trespass.

You are the mover, the essence
of all things seen and unseen.

Windless you go and rainless,
without form, color, or motion—
in you, all time is one.

Fog or shadow of God maybe,
who walks and whispers so close to me?

2

Here on the shore's last link
against the landscape dream
I stand listening.

Intangible as air
and yet like mesh, a web
winds strands about my head.

I can not see or hear
beyond the moment's rim
that holds me to this pier.

Only a sixth sense
of faith or fear, whichever's meant,
sways in the balance.

3

Through the porthole of my mind
memory ships oars and glides
upon the sea outside.

Whose hand was on the tiller,
what buoy marked the shoals or
whether there was another

I do not know. A hazy twilight
lay over the gray water, and I
heard the distant horn of time

blow once or twice in warning,
while seagulls squatted on the beach,
windless without wings.

And I thought, will it be like that
on the coast of my setting, mast
and sun obscured by fact?

4

Beyond the eye's threshold
a light swings in the door,
blurred by the wind and blown

like smoke across the dunes
for ghosts who wander through
in search of missing clues.

Dimly they turn and return,
gathering broken sherds
they reefed against the world,

each sorting out his own
to piece the shells into a whole
and find the echo lode.

5

Blind as a crab in the sand,
waiting for the tide to slack,
I feel through my hands blank,

knowing nothing that they can not reach,
yet groping to believe these
signs of emptiness real.

Ground, sea, sky, all are merged
in the surrounding surf,
where everything's reversed,

where breath is radar to itself,
antennaed to gray silence,
and only I move, nothing else.

6

Along the coast a lone train
tolls the night, slowing its race
to a throttled brake

as a hand plows the mist
to draw a moving bridge
across the mainland's tip.

O magnetic eye that signals
when human daylight fails
and all's invisible,

who guides the current, the flow
of water, air and pole,
what dragon's head node?

CIVILIZED SPRING

His fists smash against the violet air:
the doors of evening must not close,
locking him out! Why, is his youth a beggar,
crippled and blind, or reduced so low
that he should drink spit from the cup
of pity? Snarling, he wipes his feet
on the mocking tongue that carpets the front
of a swank hotel, before the doorman beams
him with a eunuch eye. O.K., beat it!
And he warms his hands with his breath,
then slouches off, his feline hips
rolling smoothly under bluejean pockets.

An expensive whore, desire taunts him
down through the city's bright bazaar,
like the cool white tone of a saxophone
caught in the jewelrich stream of cars.
Shop windows hive the honey on his lips,
the perfume of live mannequins clings,
while towers squat like pyramids
behind a desert moon now green.

Smolders the coal in his chest, burns
the hole in his shoe through the pavement,
as he turns up alleys where rattling cans
overflow their Nile. Thickly, he quickens
his course, begins to run ... till breathless
and unspent, he whirls and twists and crashes
beyond the guarded walls, the harem tents
of night ... a purple fugitive, who gasps.

REPLY TO CRITICS

Tell them who scorn my ways
I lived without their praise
and will until I die.

Let them be cynical,
I have my own faith still
to question and deny.

The proud and stiff of neck,
the small who grub and peck,
both look too low or high,

while I but seek to know
the feel of things that grow
and, by my living, why.

INSOMNIA IN THE CITY

Three a.m. along the river
between the footfall and the snow,
watching the stars leap out and quiver
against the desolate scene below,
the flare of match one's beacon fire,
one's inner tower of warmth and cheer,
to keep night safe from its desire
and blow away the smoke of fear.

WHEN YESTERDAY COMES

I have not always been blind.
My eyes opened to the sun
like any child's, and I ran
and played in my waking hours
like schoolboys everywhere. Night
was my sleep and the dark powers
I knew from childhood on.

I do not speak of the mind's;
the others came later, when
natural fears gave way to man's
and I saw darker things still,
things beyond the wildest flight
of a boy's fancies. Who will
deny there are worse dragons?

But I did not see the sign
of what was to come until
I was blind as Samson. With
one stroke, I lost all desire,
hope, strength—for who needs his sight
when cold age pokes the heart's fire
with only a broken stick?

Now at my feet a dog whines
even in slumber; he sniffs
another's bone as he shifts
in his own darkness, hungry
for gain that requires no fight,
and in his dreams grows angry
at dream's inconsequent wish.

How can I reproach him, I
who am shepherd and watchman,
and as ignorant and dumb?
Both of us strain at a gnat
and swallow camels, the spite
of those who may look at
but not touch the other's ration.

Yet I make no mourn or cry
I have no tears to defend.
By now my shoes understand
how to find the door, the latch
and go without any fright
of stumbling up crooked paths
since all paths lead to the one.

Yes, yes, the words of the wise,
but I do not eat their bread
or cover my lips to swear
by the debts of the guilty,
for I can not see the light
that moves men to take pity
and neither can I forget.

When harvest is past, the ties
with summer are ended.
Even the flies know better
than to sit at a table
where vinegar and gall blight
the sense—their comfort, the chill
presaging winter's opiate.

I ask, who can see God's eye?
Then let him be sure to scour
both inside his cup and out,
for though the temple is lit
like gold and the altar white,
the heart of the hypocrite
shall betray his hands and mouth.

I sleep the sleep of death, ai!
An old man, I have no rod,
no plague to command, no cloud
to conceal my nakedness—
nothing but a toothless bite
as I wander in silence,
a harmless ghost walked by his dog.

FULL CIRCLE

The old tree weeps for its blossom,
the blossom for its fruit,
forgetting, when the frosts come,
the seed will weep for its root.

CONVERT

An eye for an eye
a tooth for a tooth—
this you taught me,
this was truth.

Now that I am wise,
you turn my cheek—
and leave me eyes
with which to weep.

NOT JUST ONCE

Sand and stars are not enough,
there must be proof,
such as stones capable of love
to raise up children.

A test beyond reason,
in order to move
the incredible mountain
and bring down the sun.

Something uncommon, a sign
of God in man,
not just once, but as many times
as the times demand.

Still nothing satisfies,
human or divine:
the hand that stopped Abraham
drove the nail through Christ's.

NOTES FOR THE FUTURE

Light destroyed in minds
        only the stars

Strength reduced to hands
        only the stones

        no other language but signs
        no other knowledge but chance

Time returned to fear
        only the hurt

Space defined by food
        only the hunt

        each one yoked from head to foot
        each one racked by claw and tooth

Ears inured to hope
        only the drum

Eyes condemned to ape
        only the dream

THE SLEEPWALKERS

With wide eyes open
they walk into a morning
where darkness shines,
their feet descending
a marble stairway in the mountain
flanked by stone lions.

Holding hands, they cross
a sudden bridge, and pause
to view the clouds
below them. Silence
spills from frozen waterfalls
to stay the river's course.

Farther on, they come
to a garden whose golden stem
lifts her and him
in its calyx palm
and bursts the lovesweet dram
from their summer's bloom.

Now winged, they cruise
between glass walls to gaze
inside the zoo
of human cages,
those illusions of space and size
multiplied in mirrors.

Not to be deceived,
they glide down vertical waves
of light, where love,
having slipped time's gyve,
can happily ever after live
in the sea's bright grove.

Voices in the ear
form a separate soundtrack,
images blur
on a shifting screen,
while they uphold their safe dream world
on secret tides of air.

MEXICAN PROFILE

Buzzards in the air
and flies
peasants everywhere
earth size

Jungles by the sea
and sands
at each extremity
bare hands

Volcanos over towns
and hills
traditioned in the browns
the wills

Corn and bean for breath
and bones
remembered after death
the stones

Dark feet on the roads
and wheels
heavy are the loads
the heels

Burros led by whips
and shouts
in answer to the lips
and clouts

Adobes out of earth
and cathedrals
attendant on the birth
of eagles

DRY SANCTUARY

Even the desert has learned to protect itself,
to keep its inch of rain in stored defense;
against the mountain's strength and pressured air,
it does not stand, but daily creeps, aware.

Upon its needled hands and thorny feet,
it crouches, head bent, with lizard eyes
alert to scorching light and sand, then seeks
the deepened shadows against the coming of night.

Here kangaroo rat and road runner thrive;
the rattler coils his tail in sleepful ease,
while bayonet and dagger guard the hive
left by Indian and Spaniard in retreat.

Shrewdly, the yucca's panicle of white
is thrust above the ground, fully equipped
to meet the world on friendly terms that hide
poisoned stings, barbed walls, fists.

One could do worse than put out cactus leaves:
when harsh winds blow the wrong way and sleep
consumes itself, from inner wells they cool
their fruit and, even after a century, bloom.

RETURN TRIP

The recognition comes as it always does—
slowly. One feels a sense of surprise
to find not all has changed: the blue of miles
above the snow-rimmed clouds of old volcanoes,
the tireless browns still ploughed to greening fields,
the red tiled roofs that accent time between.

The twenty years move slowly into place.
With eye as brush and sun as palette, a full
perspective emerges: as long ago today,
as near to far. The wish reflects a view
almost transparent. Past and distance blaze,
caught in a foreground of light, then shift.
The darkness grays, thickens. One tastes
salt rain on the wind that blows through the mist.

THE CAVE

Drop by drop
the earth is born,
a billion years
from dark to dawn

Drop by drop
as rivers flow
past sunless cliffs
no wind has known

Where no grass blows
and no birds sing
there time drips slow
and patient, clings

Drop by drop
till waterfalls
are turned to stone

Here new stars form
and mountains rise
clear of the storms
that twist the sky

Drop by drop
while caverns tall
carve crystal bones

What dream lies walled
within this night,
what shape shall crawl
up to the light

Drop by drop
as silence grows
inside its vault
of carbon snow

When glaciers halt
before no zones,
when both the poles
at last are one

Drop by drop
the dawn shall come,
a billion years
from cave to sun

DARK ANGEL

Dark angel of the night, you come on folded wings
secret and silent, bringing sleep. To you belong
the rosemary and poppy, the final dream
from which the road turned in its lost beginning.

You have seen the frightened eyes of the city glow
upon bridges, along streets, behind roofed windows,
and you know how small a kilowatt burns in each
single, separate room, and how each one reaches
at last a diminishing point beyond which none
can see but you. Night is your hour and with it comes

the inevitable surrender, peaceful or
with clash of arms, with unfulfilled hopes, terrors,
the fingers still clutching at the vanishing day,
the throat strangled by the unuttered word it says,
the ear straining for the unheard response, the thought
immense in the dark. Only you, dark angel, born

of our love and pity, can see night's passing feet
around the earth, on rotating centuries
across the stars, journeying over the ruins
of forgotten time since we first left that home,
where the dream began, where the road turned, and the sun
swung in its orbit, bringing you, dark angel, down.

FUGITIVE

I need to live
where it is cold enough
to seek the sun

More like that tree
well seasoned to the rough
of snow and ice

That keeps its fire
inside of root and bark
till heat is done

O fugitive
from winter and the dark
see the moon rise

THE TRAP

Of memory and hope
I made my rope
and swung

not knowing its length
or how much strength
there hung.

Backward and forward
past into future
I climbed

higher and higher
despair and desire
combined.

Farther and farther
no present to bother
my flight

above now and here
beyond loss and fear
upright.

Ah, this was the way
to trap time and stay
its dread

yes, twisted inside
then knotted and tied
instead!

For being was this
both height and abyss
outflung

the head free of reason
the heart without season
full sprung.

Not creeping by squirm
an inch measured worm
begrimed

with darkening age
to a burnt out rage
consigned.

But swept on an ocean
of tides set in motion
by light

in a brilliance of air
with clear eyes aware
of sight.

Until the strands
between my hands
were red

and I came to a stop
to let time drop
down dead.

THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE

I speak of the ruin of that house
as the worst, for in it lived two blind
creatures, blind husband and blind wife,
each trying to lead the other out,
and finding a ditch by the door.

If there were trees, they heard them crash,
when the ground split under their hands
and knees. But it was not of the storm
or quake they thought, or of themselves—
but of the fruit, and how to avoid
both barb and thorn, each terrified
in his heart at his own helplessness
to save the best.

                                            Except in their speech
where they bitterly laid the blame
on one another for the loss and waste,
since neither had fulfilled the need
for a house that was deep and broad,
founded on rock; secure and strong
against fire and flood, rust and moth;
a house uncorrupt by thief or sword,
yet so full of treasure that it gleamed,
with light enough to see, mote and beam,
the hypocrites of their common doom.

I speak in pity of the ruin.

THEIR FIRST HUNT

I am afraid of that woman.
I have seen the scorpion tip
of her soft red mood
and felt the feathered grip
beneath the jess, the hood.

I am afraid of that man,
I have smelled the oestrous rut
that enjoys the sting
and heard the gun click shut
at the lift of the wing.

I am afraid, life,
of your poison and passion.
I am afraid, death,
of your sureness and speed.

WOLF!

As children we played "Wolf"
and howled its hot pursuit
along the canyons of our street,
wailing the bushy tail
that followed at our feet,
sidewalk to cellar,
lamp-post to door,
feeling the murderous paws
and ravenous breath
tingling the skin of our necks,
setting hair on end,
and circling each eye.
Wolf, are you ready?
Steady on the first floor,
he's coming up the stairs...
second floor, third floor,
he's stopping for some air...
top floor, roof, and now beware!
Rough coat, claws and jaws and tooth
will catch you and you and you and YOU!
Oh run-run-run from the WOLF!

That was spring...
the taste of first free days outdoors.

Wasting no time,
in haste and thirst
we came to summer,
swinging...
making our own kind of hay
and playing a new kind of game,
with dizzy drinks,
jazzy music,
hazy-crazy
cigarettes and kisses,
and aware of other dangers,
the wolfish ways of
friends turned strangers...

love,
as fierce,
as rapacious,
in spite of all the shoutings
and the warnings of approach,
with no one ready
when the roof blew in.
How we ran!

By autumn, to be sure,
we knew the tricks and character of sticks...

Nursing bruised heads
and burnt fingers,
we shook the straw
from our pockets
and settled down...
to play it safe
this time
we thought,
with a solid house,
genuine antique furniture
furniture
and homogenized children,
finding a good night's rest
harvest enough
for such sound dreams
as conscience feeds on...
not hearing the creaks
beyond our snores,
the furtive glide
outside our doors,
until one rainy day,
what a storm!

Then winter came...
and we knew then, there was no escape.

Not again,
not even with bricks
reinforced by steel
over a concrete shelter,
for our pressure is high,
our metabolism low,
and we can no longer
run...
We have set traps,
posted prizes,
sent out scouting parties,
and armed ourselves...
Waking at night
and trembling,
we cry, "Peter
Peter, please come,
we need you!"
knowing
only his toy gun
can save us.
How the wind comes through...

FINAL PERFORMANCE

A spinner in the green years, I trudge the snowdeep woods
to find the Rima trees where I was warm in silk through
those first winters. Then the unwinding thread,
from which I swung by two spare arms and legs,
hung in the air like a gay trapeze, each vine
humming to the brace and pull and reel of child's
spider ways, an upside down dancer with her feet
in the clouds and the heart in her mouth a feast.

A beginner in the green years, my thick wool thumbs push back
the broken twig, the empty nest, the closed gray flaps
to summer's ringling tent. Embarrassed, I lift
a rose still red and moist and soft. Again I twist
its thin stem toward the light and dare the sky
to seize my heels and trick time's crafty eyes
till I repair the web and climb to one last height
before I leap —— —— —— to catch the hands of night.

HOUSE OF THE POET

For the ultimate hoard
I keep my board bare,
no gold or lace
allowed to cover or adorn
that spare purpose.

Stripped of frivolity,
it serves as bench
and table, my words
a daily rite
quenching thirst and hunger.

Whether I gain more
by my frugality
than I here disown,
or lose as debtor,
only you, Lord, know.

But were I compelled
to acquit this ghost,
not as a prisoner
in the heart's dark cell,
but as host at the altar

of the mind's high temple,
I would count my fast
a feast in heaven,
and with one candle
cast the light of seven.

THE GHOST OF ANNE FRANK

The cocks have been crowing
for two thousand years,
so I understand that part of it
and even expected, was prepared
for what happened. This I swear.

As for tears, yours are mine,
since I am the cause of them,
and if I could, would take the blame
upon myself. I know, you think
in terms of innocence and guilt,

but that decision was long ago
made clear in an episode
of apples, bought in a hoax
for a song. I recognize it still,
one we will always whistle.

And feel I ought to ask
forgiveness for you. A turn of cheek,
if you like. Why not? Back
of every lie and denial
is the thing we all conceal:

the inner hurt that makes our fingers
seek revenge, to brand the other
fellow with our own scar,
as though, by doing so, ours
is eased. Let's admit it does

and, in comparison, sets
a better example, hurts less
than losing an eye. How many deaths
do we need to prove it?
And to begin to learn to live.

Love, you say, and I believe you,
yet there is self-love, too,
the fear of having to lose
not only a garden in the sun
but a chance to bloom anywhere once,

which is more natural,
and why I say all will fail
unless each individual
succeeds, for treason always starts
inside a single heart.

This is the fatal trap
that none of us can step
over or hope to escape,
because no one is safe:
first comes Abel, and then Cain.

So please understand me.
What you now do here
among yourselves to free and heal
yourselves from grief and anger
may yet preserve and defend the world.

Shalom. I pray for this release.
May you be blessed and walk in peace.

THE MISTAKE

In April, when she tried to take him there,
a farm where winter had not heard of spring,
where snow lay banked on rutted roads and winds
went shimmying up and down slick roofs and trees,
he took one look around and said, "God, let's
get out of here!" not seeing anything.

Luckily, night blanketed the backwoods
and they missed the bus, so they went inside
the house and she thought of cows in their stalls
and bread in the oven, of the simple life
collected here within its own crude warmth,
while he stood smirking, repeating, "You would."

The next year it was Washington. They went
by train and all the way she kept checking
tickets, bag, baggage, feeling she had left
something behind, and though he joined "the tour,"
she realized with a start that it was he
missing and lost to everything new.

Everywhere was "like the postcards" and nowhere
"was worth the time and trouble it took to get
back from." In fact, if not for the car
she bought for later trips, they might never
have seen the stars, how they moved together.
"Not all," he said, "not all," and they fell apart.

It was like that all summer, and even
a continent full of moons did not change
the difference between mountains and prairies,
and she wondered how the others managed,
the men and women living there. "Heavens!"
he said, "I've tried! Let's call it a mistake!"

"Let's," she answered, knowing she would stumble
over the same stones, up to the same door,
till she came to the last and final one:
single admission, standing room only—
which was natural, when it came to dying,
but no way to live, unless you had to.

REFLECTED IN BRASS

Mortar and pestle made of brass,
these and two solid candlesticks
were heavy fortune, her penance
for being peasant born and mixed
by impure stars to common metal
in a foreign land. But the level
to which she raised her hands in prayer
each Sabbath eve was holy: lips,
eyes, heart purified by the tares
that softly burned, the week eclipsed
of wrongs she placed upon her head
in blameless white, reflecting there
the migrant image of a light
that moved a wilderness of tents,
made rivers part and mountains cry
the voice of God. All this she meant
by keeping Sabbath in her home
and polishing the brass like gold.

MODERN PRIMITIVE

When morning breaks
at the edge of night
and the stone mind drops
to its plain of light

it does not help
to think of Newton.
What we really need
is a new invention

a mental jet
faster than the speed
of yawn and stretch
in the life we lead

or a time lift
on spatial pulleys
operated by
the lids of our eyes.

PERSONAL HISTORY

This calendar is one, unduplicate
and unrepetitive, being my own.
What system it may have I leave testate
in the genes of time as my memento
of the events, holidays, and seasons
that made the living so importantly
mine: a personal history of nones,
kalends, and ides, without chronology.

God knows I fought my own battles, made peace
with defeats and victories, wept and cheered.
A soldier without rank, I took my ease
where and when I could find it, having feared
and met the worst, and found the enemy
no braver than myself, as much in need
of saints and miracles, each pharisee
to his own convictions, though we bleed.

What headlines emphasized my days and nights
are filed within the archive of my skull,
a private record of scandals and crimes
no press would care to publish, were it called
to print even a single edition,
for the weather alone would defy all guess,
being unpredictable, rain or sun,
and variable as the heart's unrest.

Such rulings, documents, customs, arts
my life decreed, my life was witness to:
I felt, I thought, I celebrated, start
to finish, the world that entered through
these walls of flesh; and there its evidence
shall wait, in secret tissues of the bone,
until some future historian's pen
can disclose the infiniteness of One.

I THINK I AM

Being a supposition,
it is based on some ground.
As such, the connection
is important, if not profound,
because, without it,
we would no-doubt flit
as in a vacuum,
like birds,
not needing the support of words,
rising, in-fact, above them.

I protest the conclusion,
despite the evidence
that I am a valid one,
by necessity, if not consequence,
for while I argue and pursue
What I think is true,
in self-defense,
God does not suppose—
He knows—
and that makes the difference.

INSTINCT AND REASON

They would have us believe
that to defy authority
is to punish nature.
I would want to be sure

what they have in mind
and heart and hand, what signs
of body politics they mean,
before I could agree.

Each sense protests the fact:
a bird obedient to cat,
the innocence of thorns,
a night without awe...

And yet I would accept
a world less than perfect,
for the sake of eggs and kittens,
berries, stars, saints, children.

THE SUMMING UP

On the library of my heart they have fed,
the worms of my living,
and now, surfeited, they are dead,
leaving their husks on the pages still unread,
dry, harmless little things
that crumble and shred.

Ambition took the harder crust we dread,
the thick skin on the cover,
and gnawed with slow, relentless tread
the marquee lights for which it craved and glittered,
weaving letter by letter
a shroud embittered.

Love chose the softer, tender part, the bread
of my daily giving,
and made each ritual ahead
a carnage of communion as I bled,
praying for the blessing
I offered, instead.

Knowledge went directly to the core, the thread
that bound my life together,
and bored its way up through my head,
loosening by stages the gold and the red,
until every chapter
I had written, fled.

Now that I have finished with maggots and shed
their dust with some misgiving,
I am glad for the words not said,
for being spared the hungers other men have bred,
in my old age needing
but a tranquil bed.

THERE WILL BE TIME FOR MOSS

Inventories,
like spring cleaning,
annoy me,
and when it rains, I sleep.

Forgotten things
prove me absent-minded,
although I still keep
goods in storage at times.

Once I did pushups
and kept an earnest face,
collected books, maps, stamps,
and played the sweepstakes.

Now I rehearse dreams
the better to remember them
and navigate by leaves
between green and golden.

How I am or where,
no one knows for sure
except my mother;
she gets letters.

PERSPECTIVE

They go about
with curious wonder in their eyes,
like children half surprised
by what they doubt.

The time moves out...
they are more intimately wise
of what they once surmised;
they are devout.

THE QUESTION IS PROOF

If I ask why
you need not reply
the question is proof

Only my ear
can help me to hear
the rain on the roof

What thoughts I own
are shaped by my bone
and etched on my brain

Nothing more real
than the moods I feel
and what they explain

Warm hands or cold
the world that I hold
is all I can show

The more or less
I measure by guess
is all that I know

All that I see
with my eyes is me
and no other truth

Here with my feet
time walks on the street
in age as in youth

Unless you lie
in asking why
you have the reply

UNDER A THATCHED ROOF

With leaner hands I clutch December's sky
who held the barefist branch through wind and ice
in younger days. The breath of frost is gone,
my eyes no longer sting. Warmed by the sun,
my heart at last has thawed and finds a peace
it never knew before when storms raged free.

Soft the fingering fronds would teach me how
to seed my winter in a tropic ground
and save my years from being cut in two—
they sway before the wind with ease, they bow—
and yet I can not loose my hold, I blink,
I fear to lie in a hammock and swing.

CONDITIONAL REFLEX

If you had no choice
and there was nothing else to do
the caged intelligence could

If you had no voice
and only silence coming through
the caved subviolence would.

THE DARK CENTAUR

Between the goat
and the scorpion,
between the horn
and the sting,
the dark centaur stands.

He eyes the centuries
that hold him there
to a slow march,
half-man, half-beast,
his arrow still in hand.

The bow is gone,
long since fallen
among the angels,
when love and honor warred,
while Jacob wept.

Hunter and hunted,
marksman and mark,
he travels on
past island suns
where none has stepped.

You can see him
on a clear night
in the southern sky,
when the earth swings
and the ninth sign appears.

And if you listen,
you may also hear
a far-off wind
carry his cry
down the light-years:

"O blessed and damned,
in heaven and hell,
in passion and intellect,
all you who are twinned
even as I!

"Who controls his fate?
Say! Who can escape
being pierced or grazed
by its accident or chance?"
A shooting star replies.

WORLD OF TOMORROW

Whereless in a sea of space,
how shall we reckon with the dead
whose graves we marked on a shifting land
and left at a distance travelled by light?
What pilot navigates our course
through a finite but expanding void
no almanac explains or chart defines?

Sun, stars, birds, nothing avails
since Phoenician and Viking passed
with cross-staff, astrolabe and compass
to bring us to shores we have left behind.
We are speeding our unborn young
to harbors no heard voice guides us toward,
no radar yet detects, no octant sights.

Now new dimensions of mind
extend the geometric skull
of Ptolemy and Euclid, of occult
priest and philosopher, to measure time
not by the sun's zenith at noon
or the moon's eclipse, but by spectra
through which we can identify time's white.

Past and present, both are blind
to the future, while the Sphinx waits
for another Oedipus. O waste
of sand and wind, swept by an airborne tide!
Shall we find a snakeless Eden
and with the apples unforbidden
begin our second exodus, from Paradise?

This first edition was completed in May 1964.
The poems were set in 14 pt. Centaur
by Mackenzie & Harris, Inc.
and printed by Bradley Brownell
in the shop of Van Riper & Thompson, Inc.
on Curtis Colophon text.
Bound by the Santa Barbara Bindery
Designed and illustrated by
Wayne Thompson

Van Riper & Thompson, Inc.
703 Anacapa Street
Santa Barbara, California