233
Who Will Finally Say
234
Waiting to Tell the Doctor
235
It's Good to Sit with People
2 36
Do Not Forget Old Friends
238
Marita
239
He Studies to Describe
2 39
Index of First Lines
24 r
XI
I/ Let Us Com.pare Mythologies
F O R W I L F A N D H I S H O U S E
When young the Christians told me
how we pinned Jesus
like a lovely butterfly against the wood,
and I wept beside paintings of Calvary
at velvet wounds
and delicate twisted feet.
But he could not hang softly long,
your fighters so proud with bugles,
bending flowers with their silver stain,
and when I faced the Ark for counting,
trembling underneath the burning oil,
the meadow of running flesh turned sour
and I kissed away my gentle teachers,
warned my younger brothers.
Among the young and turning-great
of the large nations, innocent
of the spiked wish and the bright crusade,
there I could sing my heathen tears
between the summersaults and chestnut battles,
love the distant saint
who fed his arm to Hies,
mourn the crushed ant
and despise the reason of the heel.
Raging and weeping are left on the early road.
Now each in his holy hill
the glittering and hurting days are almost done.
Then let us compare mythologies.
I have learned my elaborate lie
of soaring crosses and poisoned thorns
I 3
and how my fathers nailed him
like a bat against a barn
to greet the autumn and late hungry ravens
as a hollow yellow sign.
P R A Y E R F O R M E S S I A H
His blood on my arm is warm as a bird
his heart in my hand is heavy as lead
his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
0 send out the raven ahead of the dove
His life in my mouth is less than a man
his death on my breast is harder than stone
his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
0 send out the raven ahead of the dove
0 send out the raven ahead of the dove
0 sing from your chains where you're chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your blood in my ballad collapses the grave
0 sing from your chains where you're chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your heart in my hand is heavy as lead
your blood on my arm is warm as a bird
0 break from your branches a green branch of love
after the raven has died for the dove
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T H E S O N G O F T H E H E L L E N I S T
(ForR.K.)
Those unshadowed figures, rounded lines of men
who kneel by curling waves, amused by ornate birds
If that had been the ruling way,
I would have grown long hairs for the corners of my
mouth . .
0 cities of the Decapolis across the Jordan,
you are too great; our young men love you,
and men in high places have caused gymnasiums
to be built in Jerusalem.
I tell you, my people, the statues are too tall.
Beside them we are small and ugly,
blemishes on the pedestal.
My name is Theodotus, do not call me Jonathan.
My name is Dositheus, do not call me Nathaniel.
Call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . .
"Have you seen my landsmen in the museums,
the brilliant scholars with the dirty fingernails,
standing before the marble gods,
underneath the lot?"
Among straight noses, natural and carved,
I have said my clever things thought out before;
jested on the Protocols, the cause of war,
quoted "Bleistein with a Cigar. "
And in the salon that holds the city in its great window,
in the salon among the Herrenmenschen,
among the close-haired youth, I made them laugh
when the child came in:
I s
"Come, I need you for a Passover Cake."
And I have touched their tall clean women,
thinking somehow they are unclean,
as sea leless fish.
They have smiled quietly at me,
and with their friends-
! wonder what they see.
0 cities of the Decapolis,
call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor
Dark women, soon I will not love you.
My children will boast of their ancestors at Marathon
and under the walls of Troy,
and Athens, my chiefest joy-
0 call me Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor
6 I
T H E S P A R R O W S
Catching winter in their carved nostrils
the traitor birds have deserted us,
leaving only the dullest brown sparrows
for spring negotiations.
I told you we were fools
to have them in our games,
but you replied:
They are only wind-up birds
who strut on scarlet feet
so hopelessly far
from our curled fingers.
I had moved to warn you,
but you only adjusted your hair
and ventured:
Their wings are made of glass and gold
and we are fortunate
not to hear them splintering
against the sun.
Now the hollow nests
sit like tumors or petrified blossoms
between the wire branches
and you, an innocent scientist,
question me on these brown sparrows:
whether we should plant our yards with breadcrumbs
or mark them with the black, persistent crows
whom we hate and stone.
But what shall I tell you of migrations
when in this empty sky
I 1
the precise ghosts of departed summer birds
still trace old signs;
or of desperate flights
when the dimmest flutter of a coloured wing
excites all our favourite streets
to delight in imaginary spring.
C I T Y C H R I S T
He has returned from countless wars,
Blinded and hopelessly lame.
He endures the morning streetcars
And counts ages in a Peel Street room.
He is kept in his place like a court jew,
To consult on plagues or hurricanes,
And he never walks with them on the sea
Or joins their lonely sidewalk games.
s I
S O N G O F P A T I E N C E
For a lovely instant I thought she would grow mad
and end the reason's fever.
But in her hand she held Christ's
