Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor,

for the eternal idleness of the imagined return,

for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom

of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin!

When I press summer dusks together, it is

a month of street accordions and sprinklers

laying the dust, small shadows running from me.

It is music opening and closing, Italia mia, on Bleecker,

ciao, Antonio, and the water-cries of children

tearing the rose-coloured sky in streams of paper;

it is dusk in the nostrils and the smell of water

down littered streets that lead you to no water,

and gathering islands and lemons in the mind.

There is the Hudson, like the sea aflame.

I would undress you in the summer heat,

and laugh and dry your damp flesh if you came.

all the girls you’ve ever loved, i think i loved them too.

interlude for the grand sonata

every mouth you’ve ever kissed

was just practice

all the bodies you’ve ever undressed

and ploughed into

were preparing you for me.

i don’t mind tasting them in the

memory of your mouth

they were a long hallway

a door half-open

a single suitcase still on the conveyor belt

was it a long journey?

did it take you long to find me?

you’re here now,

welcome home.

We used to like talking about grief

Our journals and letters were packed

with losses, complaints, and sorrows.

Even if there was no grief

we wouldn’t stop lamenting

as though longing for the charm

of a distressed face.

Then we couldn’t help expressing grief

So many things descended without warning:

labor wasted, loves lost, houses gone,

marriages broken, friends estranged,

ambitions worn away by immediate needs.

Words lined up in our throats for a good whining.

Grief seemed like an endless river —

the only immortal flow of life.

After losing a land and then giving up a tongue,

we stopped talking of grief

Smiles began to brighten our faces.

We laugh a lot, at our own mess.

Things become beautiful,

even hailstones in the strawberry fields.

Lager Heidenau, about Zagubica:

in the mountains. Aug.-Sept. 1944

Beneath, the nether worlds, deep, still, and mute.

Silence howls in my ears, and I cry out.

No answer could come back, it is so far

from that sad Serbia swooned into war.

And you're so distant. But my heart redeems

your voice all day, entangled in my dreams.

So I am still, while close about me sough

the great cold ferns, that slowly stir and bow.

When I'll see you, I don't know. You whose calm

is as the weight and sureness of a psalm,

whose beauty's like the shadow and the light,

whom I could find if I were blind and mute,

hide in the landscape now, and from within

leap to my eye, as if cast by my brain.

You were real once, now you have fallen in

to that deep well of teenage dreams again.

Jealous interrogations: tell me; speak.

Do you still love me? will you on that peak

of my past youth become by future wife?

— But now I fall awake to real life

and know that's what you are: wife, friend of years,

— just far away. Beyond three wild frontiers.

And Fall comes. Will it also leave with me?

Kisses are sharper in the memory.

Daylight and miracles seemed different things.

Above, the echelons of bombers' winds:

skies once amazing blue with your eyes' glow

are darkened now. Tight with desire to blow,

the bombs must fall. I like in spite of these,

a prisoner. All of my fantasies

I measure out. And I will find you still;

for you I've walked the full length of the soul,

the highways of countries! — on coals of fire,

if needs must, in the falling of the pyre,

if all I have is magic, I'll come back;

I'll stick as fast as bark upon an oak!

And now that calm, whose habit is a power

and weapon to the savage in the hour

of fate and danger, falls as cool and true

as does a wave: the sober two times two.

i do not want to have you

to fill the empty parts of me

i want to be full on my own

i want to be so complete

i could light a whole city

and then

i want to have you

cause the two of

us combined

could set it

on fire

Pepper blacks the pan so never shake it near me.

Wait for the flagrant animation in my bedroom, in my bed base.

In mountaineering situations sleep swaddled, wake ecstatic

my frantic menus in your mind.

I taste of them all. Refuse to refuse me.

Waste your time on my errands.

Squeeze your lime on my lemons.

Turn up wearing the whole bird not just the feathers.

Tonight is a drunk man,

his dirty shirt.

There is no couple chatting by the recycling bins,

offering to help me unload my plastics.

There is not even the black and white cat that balances elegantly on the lip of the dumpster.

There is only the smell of sour breath. Sweat on the collar of my shirt.

A water bottle rolling under a car.

Me in my too-small pajama pants stacking juice jugs on neighbors’ juice jugs.

I look to see if there is someone drinking on their balcony.

I tell myself I will wave.

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Perhaps I'm a cruel artist. I always depict

In great details, lovingly, all the defects

On the faces and bodies of my models.

I use my eyes and brushes to thread

The jagged gaps of their stiff smiles. I pamper

Each pimple, hump, massage each incrustation.

I cajole my models into poses that are awkward,

Dangerous, unhygienic, sometimes mortifying.

I don't care to paint smooth, poreless skin but collect

All manners of rashes and eruptions. Inspired,

I've forced a hundred bodies — impossibly old,

Extremely young — onto appalling heaps,

Democratically naked, viscous with sweat, spit and etc.,

Just so I could render the human condition

Most accurately and movingly.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —

No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

for Lurline McGregor

Ah, ah cries the crow arching toward the heavy sky over the marina.

Lands on the crown of the palm tree.

Ah, ah slaps the urgent cove of ocean swimming through the slips.

We carry canoes to the edge of the salt.

Ah, ah groans the crew with the weight, the winds cutting skin.

We claim our seats. Pelicans perch in the draft for fish.

Ah, ah beats our lungs and we are racing into the waves.

Though there are worlds below us and above us, we are straight ahead.

Ah, ah tattoos the engines of your plane against the sky — away from these waters.

Each paddle stroke follows the curve from reach to loss.

Ah, ah calls the sun from a fishing boat with a pale, yellow sail. We fly by

on our return, over the net of eternity thrown out for stars.

Ah, ah scrapes the hull of my soul. Ah, ah.

she being Brand

-new;and you

know consequently a

little stiff i was

careful of her and(having

thorogouhly oiled the universal

joint tested my gas felt of

her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she

kicked what

the hell)next

minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-

oh and her gears being in

A 1 shape passed

from low through

second-in-to-high like

greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was

happy to see how nice she acted right up to

the last minute coming back down by the Public

Gardens i slammed on

the

internalexpanding

&

externalcontracting

brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB

-ling

to a:dead.

stand-

:Still)

Perfectly round.

Perfectly black.

No . . . not entirely black.

He has that bluish-white at the edge of his eyes

And his beautiful lips

Open upon a smile of expensive pearls.

* * *

Round and dusky-headed,

Round bellied

Black baby, fearlessly

Offer your unpristine hand to the daylight,

Say hello, fearlessly, to your life.

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate,

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Today drifts into yesterday.

Difficult to remember

the food eaten, rooms cleaned.

Same with books. You read,

read, but recall only

that someone floated off,

finally, from years of solitude,

and danced naked in a bowler hat.

But the nose has a better memory,

whole lives waft back, the moments

that linger in limbo

pulled out by a random scent.

And you stand in the street

watching a cab drive off

leaving in its wake

the aroma of a man's cigarette

that even now revives

the way his fingers pressed

deep into your thigh,

the hairs on his wrist

suddenly stricken with sunlight.