Who will never pierce the air with her beauty
She belongs here too
She too has her place
In the basement of the vast museum
Not that he could boast about it
Even to himself
Not that he would dare to call it
Some kind of Path
He will never untangle
Or upgrade
The circumstances
That fasten him to this loneliness
Or bent down with love
Comprehend the sudden mercy
Which floods the room
And dissolves it now
In the traditional golden light
My Metal Cup
GOOD GERMANS
You took me to your family
You warned me well before
that your father is a fascist
and your mother is a whore
I was kind of disappointed
I was bored to tell the truth:
your folks they’re just Good Germans
but you, you’re Hitler Youth
So I’m going to live in China
where you get a better deal
where your killer is a poet
and your comrade is a girl
– 1973
IF I COULD HELP YOU
If I could help you, buddy, I would
I really would
I’d pray for you
I’d make muscles appear on your back
I’d take you to a bridge
that people think is beautiful
if there were the slightest chance
that you’d like it
I’d get you that motorcycle
I’d put your songs on the jukebox
if you were a singer
I’d help you step across
that crack in your life
I’d die for you on the cross again
I would do all these things for you
because I’m the Lord of your life
but you’ve gone so far from me
that I’ve decided to embrace you here
with my most elusive qualities
You always wanted to be brave and true
So breathe deeply now
and begin your great adventure
with crushing solitude
THE REMOTE
I often think about you
when I’m lying alone in
my room with my mouth
open and the remote
lost somewhere in the bed
THE MIST OF PORNOGRAPHY
when you rose out of the mist
of pornography
with your talk of marriage
and orgies
I was a mere boy
of fifty-seven
trying to make a fast buck
in the slow lane
it was ten years too late
but I finally got
the most beautiful girl
on the religious left
to go with her lips
to the sunless place
the art of song
was in my bones
the coffee died for me
I never answered
any phone calls
and I said a prayer
for whoever called
and didn’t leave a message
this was my life
in Los Angeles
when you slowly
removed your yellow sweater
and I slobbered over
your boyish haunches
and I tried to be
a husband
to your dark and motherly
intentions
I thank you
for the ponderous songs
I brought to completion
instead of ----ing you
more often
and the hours you allowed me
on a black meditation mat
intriguing with my failed
aristocratic pedigree
to overthrow vulgarity
and set America straight
with the barbed wire
and the regular beatings
of rhyme
and now that we are gone
I have a thousand years
to tell you how I rise
on everything that rises
how I became that lover
whom you wanted
who has no other life
but your beauty
who is naked and bent
under the quotas of your desire
I have a thousand years
to be your twin
the loving mirrored one
who was born with you
I’m free at last
to trick you into posing
for my Polaroid
while you inflame
my hearing aid
with your vigorous obscenities
your panic cannot hurry me here
and my panic and my falling
shoulders
our shameless lives
are the grains
scattered for an offering
before the staggering heights
of our love
and the other side of your anxiety
is a hammock of sweat
and moaning
and generations of the butterfly
mate and fall
as we undo the differences
and time comes down
like the smallest pet of G-d
to lick our fingers
as we sleep
in the tangle
of straps and bracelets
and Oh the sweetness of first nights
and twenty-third nights
and nights
after death and bitterness
sweetness of this very morning
the bees slamming into
the broken hollyhocks
and the impeccable order
of the objects on the table
the weightless irrelevance
of all our old intentions
as we undo
as we undo
every difference
DELAY
“I can hold in a great deal; I don’t speak
until the waters overflow their banks
and break through the dam.”
Thus I was able to delay this book well beyond
the end of the 20th century.
MONTREAL AFTERNOON
Henry and I
cover our heads
and write a few poems
The prayer book is open
The radio is playing
Henry says: They’re not
playing that right,
it should be faster.
The kitchen door is open
It’s raining
Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your/father
It was a hunting accident
Rabbi Zerkin is speeding
toward us
through the wet city
with the woollen prayer-shawls
that he promised us
on the telephone
Henry says: In the year
sixteen hundred thousand
two hundred and twenty-nine
you will begin a commentary
on the Chumash
and in the year fourteen thousand
four hundred and forty-three
I will begin a commentary
on the Chumash
I’ll call mine Tzim Tzimay Ha Yerak
which means
The Contracted Greens of the Greenery;
then we will write a book together
called Acorns and Other Leaves
or
The Green Hills of Sunshine
We smoke Players Medium
drink cups of hot water
waiting for Rabbi Zerkin
Henry says: I’m sorry I killed your father
It was a hunting accident
But he’ll be back
So will Queen Elizabeth the First
READING TO THE PRIME MINISTER
NEED THE SPEED
need the speed
need the wine
need the pleasure
in my spine
need your hand
to pull me out
need your juices
on my snout
need to see
I never saw
your need for me
your longing raw
need to hear
I never heard
against my ear
your dirty word
need to have
you summon me
like moon above
the gathered sea
need to know
I never knew
the tidal tow-
ing come from you
need to feel
I never felt
your magnet pull-
ing at my self
now it fades
now it’s gone
hormonal rage
unquiet song
HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED
I stopped looking for you
I stopped waiting for you
I stopped dying for you
and I started dying for myself
I aged rapidly
I became fat in the face
and soft in the gut
and I forgot that I’d ever loved you
I was old
I had no focus, no mission
I wandered around eating and buying
bigger and bigger clothes
and I forgot why I hated
every long moment that was mine to fill
Why did you come back to me tonight
I can’t even get off this chair
Tears run down my cheeks
I am in love again
I can live like this
VOICE DICTATING IN A PLANE OVER EUROPE
Leonardos,
I am no longer lonely.
I will accept your friendship now
if you can say
something true about me.
That is correct,
I had a red cardigan sweater
which I used to wear
in the evenings.
The years have brought us together.
Straighten your seat back.
You are landing in Vienna
where
