Poems

= **Eros** = The flowerlike animal perfume in the god’s curly hair —

don’t assume that like a flower his attributes are there to tempt

you or direct the moth’s hunger — simply he is the temple of himself,

hair and hide a sacrifice of blood and flowers on his altar <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 14px;">if any worshipper <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 14px;">kneel or not.

Hymn To Eros
O Eros, silently smiling one, hear me. Let the shadow of thy wings brush me. Let thy presence enfold me, as if darkness were swandown. Let me see that darkness lamp in hand, this country become the other country sacred to desire.

Drowsy god, slow the wheels of my thought so that I listen only to the snowfall hush of thy circling. Close my beloved with me in the smoke ring of thy power, that we way be, each to the other, figures of flame, figures of smoke, figures of flesh newly seen in the dusk.

In California: Morning, Evening, Late January
Pale, then enkindled, light advancing, emblazoning summits of palm and pine,

the dew lingering, scripture of scintillas.

Soon the roar of mowers cropping the already short grass of lawns, men with long-nozzled cylinders of pesticide poking at weeds, at moss in cracks of cement,

and louder roar of helicopters off to spray vineyards where braceros try to hold their breath,

and in the distance, bulldozers, excavators, babel of destructive construction.

Banded by deep oakshadow, airy shadow of eucalyptus,

miner's lettuce, tender, untasted, and other grass, unmown, luxuriant, no green more brilliant.

Fragile paradise

. . . ..

At day's end the whole sky, vast, unstinting, flooded with transparent mauve, tint of wisteria, cloudless over the malls, the industrial parks, the homes with the lights going on, the homeless arranging their bundles

. . . ..

Who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened, invaded, expended

and constantly nevertheless persists in beauty,

tranquil as this young moon just risen and slowly drinking light from the vanished sun.

Who can utter the praise of such generosity or the shame?

In Mind
There's in my mind a woman of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured and smelling of apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without ostentation-

but she has no imagination

And there's a turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both, dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta, who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.

Living
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves shivering in the sun, each day the last day.

A red salamander so cold and so easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet and long tail. I hold my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute

Losing Track
Long after you have swung back away from me I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore on the tide and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier: am I a pier half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion I lose track, the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before I know I'm alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black timbers of me, a light growth of green dreams drying.

Seeing For A Moment
I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon.

I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water.

Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things;

facing my mirror—no longer young, the news—always of death, the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling,

nevertheless I see for a moment that's not it: it is the First Things.

Word after word floats through the glass. Towards me.

Talking to Grief
Ah, Grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog who comes to the back door for a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you.

I should coax you into the house and give you your own corner, a worn mat to lie on, your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living under my porch. You long for your real place to be readied before winter comes. You need your name, your collar and tag. You need the right to warn off intruders, to consider my house your own and me your person and yourself my own dog.

The Secret
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.

I who don't know the secret wrote the line. They told me

(through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even

what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret,

the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find,

and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that

a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines

in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for

assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all.

Wanting The Moon
Not the moon. A flower on the other side of the water.

The water sweeps past in flood, dragging a whole tree by the hair,

a barn, a bridge. The flower sings on the far bank.

Not a flower, a bird calling hidden among the darkest trees, music

over the water, making a silence out of the brown folds of the river's cloak.

The moon. No, a young man walking under the trees. There are lanterns

among the leaves. Tender, wise, merry,

his face is awake with its own light, I see it across the water as if close up.

A jester. The music rings from his bells, gravely, a tune of sorrow,

I dance to it on my riverbank.