DIE KUNST DER FUGE

I don't know if any book explains
what I mean by "joy".
It is like those old objects in farmhouses
that people say are sad
while all the time they are shining!
It is part wind in high trees; partly
it is certain lights in autumn.
It is your face-clear or tired or
hair rumpled by sleep or love-your
brown eyes so close
all pygmy things
are a haze of atoms at the edge of seeing.

                                i.30.85
                                Roosevelt
                                for Mary

MY FATHER

My father can make anything from wood or paper.
He listens only to the important parts or
when I am not bragging.
He still worries
I am not hiding my weaknesses.

                                ii.19.85
                                Hopewell, NJ
                                US1 Worksheets
 
 

ALL MORNING

Why put off telling you?
All morning I've wanted you, and
it's getting worse.
Maybe it's the sun.
Rooms
in California
have
these enormous
windows.

                                iii.13.85
                                Berkeley
                                for Mary
 
 

DEGREES OF UNSOLVABILITY

Dear elder brother, my romantic brother
in Aristotle's house,
I write to say reason was never mine.
I give it up for economy.
I give it up for delight.
Memory is only a long story
ramified endlessly like an inelegant secret
in mathematics. I
give it up. Let
mind hold mornings filled with passionate love
and the Latin names of plants.

                                iii.14.85
                                Berkeley
                                for Charles Entrekin

1939, TOM CARNEY'S AUNT FLEEING ENGLAND

At the time we were still neutral.
On our ships, big American flags were
painted-spotlit at night. You
could sail through a battle,
and they'd stop for you.
In forty-five years, she never told us.

They fled by ship. France first.
Then for New York in a terrible storm.
They were thrown about in the hold-
dry beans in a rattle.
Arms and legs and ribs were broken.
In the lowest level, a father gave conditional absolution.
But they got through.
The ones could walk went up on deck.
It was just before dawn; and
one of the ship's funnels was torn clear away.
Not day; but they were suddenly aware
an unnatural brilliance filled the whole horizon.
A tanker, torpedoed! And
all its cargo of oil or naptha burning on the sea
with intense, white light.

"The crew were takin' men up from the water.
The U-boat brought a load of men terribly burned.
But we just kept lookin' at that light-
wonderful, white fire along the edge of the world
under just-before-dawn sky.
And, although we knew men were dyin' all around us in that strange light,
we stared and stared at it.
We knew it was pure and beautiful."

                                xii.8.85
 
 

LEARNING

                      The material quoted in the text is from De Contemptu Mundi
                        (Bernard of Morlaix, c. 1140) and is taken out of context
                        and turned to my purposes. The last line is a variation on
                        the motto of the Royal Society: Nullius in verba.

                   I describe things not because their muteness mocks our
                   subjectivity, but because they seem to be masks of God.
                                        - John Updike

Crashing off to my left continues.
A jay is shrieking.
Cold. Hands in pockets, sitting
on a log in a old grove of yellow tulip trees and sweetgums,
I think about plants whose names change with the seasons:
Jack-in-the-pulpit gone to lords-and-ladies;
jewelweed, to touch-me-not.
The man of God becomes worldly;
wealth holds startling dangers.
At dawn by Empty Box Creek, it was so still I
lit my unprotected pipe with two matches.
Only one or two crickets this morning in the beanfield.

Listen to an experienced man...
Trees and stones will teach you more
than you will ever hear from mouths of theologians.

In the newly mown field,
a box turtle's bones are left like arched, white spoons
in the cracked bowl of his shell.
Take no one's word for these things.

                                x.17.85
                                Assunpink Wildlife Preserve
                                i.21.86
                                Roosevelt

THE MURDERER'S HOUSE

People around here could tell you the date.
He said she climbed out on the porch roof to pee,
fell, and broke her neck.
But, people say, there was a pool of blood
inside at the foot of the stairs.
A song sparrow sings from the barn roof peak.
The weathered picket fence is spotted with lichen.
How long ago did he build it for her?
Or was it for the second woman?

The magazine in plain, brown bag between
thin mattresses in the old twin bed belonged
to her-the one outlived him. Lead story:
"I Got my Minister in Trouble--I
Gave Him VD." (Confessional Secrets, July, 1973.)
The old, metal roof groans in a high wind.
One time we thought we heard footsteps in the closed room.
People do have ghosts around here. The
other day, two crows were playing over the house,
tumbling over and over in the air.
It was so quiet you could hear
their wings as they caught themselves.
There are bluebirds all over the valley.
See there?

                                iv.4.86
                                Moyers. WV
                                for Stellie K. T. & Don Wagner

SUSHI

Under the world
is the lozenge of rice.
Over the rice
is the warm slice of eel.
Ocean of seaweed binds the world.
Sesame principalities
stuck all over it.
All at once!
Eaten by a demon!

                                iv.30.86
                                Joshu-Ya
                                Berkeley
                                for the sushi chef who
                                taped the napkin on
                                which this was written
                                to the wall.

"EVERYTHING THAT IS EXACT IS SHORT," SAID JOUBERT

Taste of an almond.

Light seen by the saint in his pewter plate.

How quickly, how often he changes subjects in his sermon!

Why do you think I write short poems?

Here is the Charlatan awaiting his chances.

This poem is much too long and full of lies.

Amen.

                                13.ii.86 -
                                10.iv.88
 
 

RIJKSMUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN, LEIDEN

Greatly blown up--
from Greek vase--nude,
drinking from immense amphora,
semireclining, she
perches one leg on knee opposite--
B.C. panties hanging from her ankle.
She is full of glee and unannotated on
a wall beyond the sarcophagi.
"Grieve not," she say, "for it be all glued down!"

                                13.i.87
                                Princeton
 
 

STONE COW

Pale lichen patches on gray-black stone-
a cow who does not go home-
a cow who lies forever in heather.
All the little stones
moving
        slowly
                down
                    each
                        year
                            with the snow
pass the stone cow.

The stone cow in heather thinks
a single thought over:
            lowering sky
and wind lowing.

                                7.ix.88
                                walking to Tom a' Choinich
                                Scotland
 
 

VARIATION ON LINES OF BASIL BUNTING

We see how clouds dance
under the wind's wing, and
leaves delight in transience.

Too, there was a thrush who, for
a moment in the syringa sang
and surely, Bunting, now is dust and light.

You hope your readers young and unabashed.
Alas, we age; and, like the Michaelmas
daisies, droop and dream and pass. This
being so, delight!
Delight, in transience, is left!

                                4.x.1989
                                Roosevelt
 
 

THE GIRL WHO INVENTED RILKE

Two black horses
run down a street,
toward a train, alone,
loose, in the morning light.
Their blackness like
rust in early damp, like
escaped coal fires that burned for years
deep in sealed tunnels.

Perhaps they are a dream of
a girl--like the girl who imagined
Rilke. She is only a child,
dressed in white, carries
blue, German flowers and,
like you, knows nothing of untethered horses
or why dark mines appear smoking,
hot in her dreams.

                                9.iv.89
                                Apeldoorn, Netherlands
                                voor Harry en Lies Bleeker

RIJKSMUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN II

Adam and Eve never felt like this.
Their heads are burning. Their
fever confuses them. They seem to be
in their twenties...and have just heard
about death and sex. The Snake
is badly painted and looks
like his mouth is stuffed with leaves;
the artist--a Turk--put
a bush in a bad place.
An angel with quizzical face and one finger on chin
leans on the doorjamb of Paradise--his
way blocked by a peacock. They
are watching the Snake and Adam and Eve.
"Goodbye! Goodbye! Get lost!"

                                23.viii.86 - 1.v.89
                                Leiden/Roosevelt
 
 

MIST CHANT, HORSE TRAIL, ASSUNPINK WOODS

mist
first leaves of poison ivy
mist
first buds of mayapple
mist
places where unopened tulip tree buds lie in the trail
mist
place where, when you look downhill, there is a cloud of new
    dogwood blossoms
mist
place where all jack-in-the-pulpits have deep purple stems
    except for three
mist
place where all big trees were killed by honey mushrooms
mist
sparse dung on the trail
mist
prints of shod hooves
mist
hoofprint sealed by spider web the color of
mist

                                1.v.89
 
 

DEAR OWNER-OF-THINGS

Nothing to see belongs to you.
I promise. I
promise not to laugh.

                                1.v.89
 
 

HOW TO KNOW POLLEN AND SPORES

Mainly, be aware that,
in fact, sex is tiny and intricate;
and some marine species use hooks.

Almost 45 and
I really
see
oak flowers--
first time--
a tree,
ten
    thousand
        green
            fountains.

Invisible spray
of procreation blows
everywhere in May in
currents incredibly complex,
with more multitudes of singular grace
than Bach's first suite for solo cello--
graces so tiny they
barely fall--O, O, each
on its own peculiar,
    convolute,
            verruculose
                    face.

                                6.v.1989
                                for Wayne Somers &
                                David Herrstrom

THE PATH BEHIND GAYLAND'S TRAILER

starts in dogwoods in the rain
and mounts slowly by a stream
to the tilting house locked up and surrounde
with an old drinker's bottles in shady spots-
and with moosewood, pitch pine
and oak that grew up through old
tractors, truck bodies, a roadgrader, a
wagon. Somebody, long ago, dropped a drive chain
down in a hollow stump. The rain
falls harder. A red slime mold
oozes from a log form-
ing tiny raspberry shapes. In
two places the brilliant yellow-orange of witch's butter.
In one place the gray, porous skull of a horse.
Back on my sister's land, a hole is opening
in the floor of the woods. Each
year it's bigger, threatening the fence
they built around it. Nobody
knows how deep it goes.
Nobody is allowed into it. My
sister repeats how she fears the memory
of tragic death wandering under her.

                                10.v.89
                                Stanley, Va.
                                for Stellie K. T. Wagner
 
 

VARIATION ON LINES OF CID CORMAN

Oh, those bees
busy at
azaleas.

Are they sure,
Corman? Or
alluring

flowers, do
they the sweet
honey make

amidst bus-
y, ancient
accident?

                                4.x.1989
                                Roosevelt
 
 

A NARROW GARDEN IN HEEMSTEEDE

Your garden is a tall,
thin woman stretched
at full length--her feet
at your house wall, her
knees at the rockgarden's slope.
She is so very quiet. She
never speaks. She lets
you dress her beautifully,
and neither thanks nor blames.
She is so quiet, so
still because with her long,
treebranch finger she ca-
resses wild ducks in the canal
and fears to frighten them.
There is only windsound in her
hair that falls in the water--
not like the hair of sorrow, not
like a promise, not
a greeting. These
we want from her.
She is like a child
who has never heard of secrets,
and she will never tell us.

                                20.iii.1990
                                voor Else Vellinga
                                en route Raleigh-Durham to Charleston
                                American Airlines flight 1209

GOTTLOB FREGE'S SPRING TRAINING

God was lobbing him back and forth --
God the pitcher,
God the catcher,
God standing by first base.
Then around the horn
and back to the pitcher.
God the umpire said, "Play ball!"
And Frege's mind was suddenly full
of open sentences:
For all pitchers,
for all batters,
for all balls,
for all bats,
there exists!
            There exists!
                    There exists!

                                31.iii.1992
 
 

ASSUNPINK SPRING

1.
Morning fog
coins of dew
a begging spider's
shallow bowl.

                            30.iv.1992

2.
Last year's brown grasses lean
listening for the old music.
Everywhere in the fields
are new green shoots--
their shouts so loud
old grasses hear nothing else.

                                30.iv.1992

3.
Among tall stalks of new Spring grass,
spiders have already hung their shallow bowls--
dew-white dishes aimed out of the universe.

                                29.iv.1992

DNA ARSON, O, SONORA, AND...

In this piece of the world's mind,
this dry desert cave, small, scant
particles (almost like
thought) will not be still,
will not behave. It is seed
they seek and seed they store,
but it is also more. It
is a breed of something purposeless-
something we can't see looking for.

What have you brought me?
I don't care what you have brought me.
What have you brought me?
I become what you have brought me.
I don't care what you take away.
I become something other than what you have taken away.
I do not care or celebrate.
In me, you
seek a celebration.
Find it...
then.

31.iii.1994
Tucson, AZ
2-14.xi.1994
Roosevelt