I dreamed that I needed nobody
I faced my trap
I withheld my opinion on matters
on which I had no opinion
I humoured the rare January weather
with a jaunty step for the sake of heroism
Not very carefully
I thought about the future
and how little I know about animals
The future seemed unnecessarily black and strong
as if it had received my casual mistakes
through a carbon sheet
WHY DID YOU GIVE MY NAME TO THE POLICE?
You recited the Code of Comparisons
in your mother’s voice.
Again you were the blue-robed seminary girl
but these were not poplar trees and nuns
you walked between.
These were Laws.
Damn you for making this moment hopeless,
now, as a clerk in uniform fills
in my father’s name.
You too must find the moment hopeless
in the Tennyson Hotel.
I know your stomach.
The brass bed bearing your suitcase
rumbles away like an automatic
promenading target in a shooting gallery:
you stand with your hands full
of a necklace you wanted to pack.
In detail you recall your rich dinner.
Grab that towel rack!
Doesn’t the sink seem a fraud
with its hair-swirled pipes?
Doesn’t the overhead bulb
seem burdened with mucous?
Things will be better at City Hall.
Now you must learn to read
newspapers without laughing.
No hysterical headline breakfasts.
Police be your Guard,
Telephone Book your Brotherhood.
Action! Action! Action!
Goodbye Citizen.
The clerk is talking to nobody.
Do you see how I have tiptoed
out of his brown file?
He fingers his uniform
like a cheated bargain hunter.
Answer me, please talk to me, he weeps,
say I’m not a doorman.
I plug the wires of your fear
(ah, this I was always meant to do)
into the lust-asylum universe:
raped by aimless old electricity
you stiffen over the steel books of your bed
like a fish
in a liquid air experiment.
Thus withers the Civil Triumph
(Laws rush in to corset the collapse)
for you are mistress to the Mayor,
he electrocuted in your frozen juices.
GOVERNMENTS MAKE ME LONELY
Speech from the Throne
dissolves my friends
like a miracle soap
and there’s only the Queen and me
and her English
Soon she’s gone too
I find myself wandering
with her English
across a busy airfield
I am insignificant as an aspirant
in the Danger Reports
Why did I listen to the radio
A man with a yellow bolo-bat
lures my immortal destiny
into a feeding trough
for Royal propellers
and her English follows
like an airline shoulder bag
I’m alone
Goodbye little Jewish soul
I knew things
would not go soft for you
but I meant you
for a better wilderness
THE LISTS
Straffed by the Milky Way
vaccinated by a snarl of clouds
lobotomized by the bore of the moon
he fell in a heap
some woman’s smell
smeared across his face
a plan for Social Welfare
rusting in a trouser cuff
From five to seven
tall trees doctored him
mist roamed on guard
Then it began again
the sun stuck a gun in his mouth
the wind started to skin him
Give up the Plan give up the Plan
echoing among its scissors
The women who elected him
performed erotic calesthenics
above the stock-reports
of every hero’s fame
Out of the corner of his stuffed eye
etched in minor metal
under his letter of the alphabet
he clearly saw his tiny name
Then a museum slid under
his remains like a shovel
TO THE INDIAN PILGRIMS
I am the country you meant
I am the chalk snake
fading in the remote village
I am the smiling man
who gave you water
I am the shoemaker
you could not speak to
but whom you believed could love you
I am the carver of the moon-round breasts
I am the flesh teacher
I am the demon
who laughs himself to death
I am the country you meant
As the virgin places the garland
on the soft river
I can put a discipline
across your bellies
I do not know all my knowledge
and I know that this is my strength
I am the country
you will love and hate
I am the policeman
floating on Upanishads
The epidemic burns
village after village
in a tedious daily fire
The white doctors sweat
the black doctors sweat
I am the epidemic
I am the teacher
whom the teachers hate
I am the country you meant
I am the snake beaten out of silver
I am the black ornament
The ivory bridge
leaps over the thick stream
I bring it down with a joke
I whistle it into ruins
The sunlight gnaws at it
The moonlight gives it leprosy
I am the agent
I am the disease
The world stiffens suddenly
and gravity sinks its teeth
into village balloons
and water injures the red of blood
and pebbles surrender
their rough little mouths
and you secret loving names
turn up in dossiers
when I show in black and white
exactly where your thumbs
and tickets aim
THE MUSIC CREPT BY US
I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance
THE TELEPHONE
Mother, the telephone is ringing in the empty house.
It rang all Wednesday
Sometimes the people next door thought it was their phone,
A rusty sound, if ringing has a colour
as if, whatever the message, it would be obsolete,
news already acted on, or ignored
like an anecdote about McCarthy or
the insurance man about the cheque which has already been mailed.
or a wedding of old people
Did we ever use these battered pots, I wondered once
while rummaging in the basement. We must have been poor
or deliberately austere, but I was not told.
A rusty sound, a touch of violence in it
rather than urgency, as if the message demanded a last resource
from the instrument.
Harbour of floating incidental information
our telephone was feminine
an ugly girl who had cultivated a good nature
slightly promiscuous
A rusty sound, like the old girl,
never “fatale,” trying to spread for a childhood chum
just for auld lang syne.
Mother, someone is trying to get through,
probably to remind you of Daylight Saving Time
Someone must compose your number
to remind you of Daylight Saving Time
even though you’ve changed all the clocks you can reach
Answer the phone, dust
Answer the phone, plastic Message-Riter
Answer the phone, darlings who lived in the house
even before us
Answer the phone, another family
Someone wants to say hello about nothing
Answer the phone, you who followed your career
past the comfort of gossip
who listen to the banal regular ringing
and give your venom to it
enforce it with your hatred
until the walls are marked by its dentist’s persistence
like a negro’s house
with obscenities and crosses
You are a little boy
lying in bed in the early summer
the telephone is ringing
your parents are in the garden
and they rush to get it
before it wakes you up
you who used your boyhood
