so I could only laugh and press a warm coin
across her seasoned breasts:
but I remembered clearly then your insane letters
and how you wove initials in my throat.
My friends warn me
that you have read the ocean's old skeleton;
they say you stitch the water sounds
in different mouths, in other monuments.
"Journey with a silver bullet," they caution.
"Conceal a stake inside your pocket."
And I must smile as they misconstrue your insane letters
and my embroidered throat.
0 I will tell him to love you carefully;
to honour you with shells and coloured bottles;
to keep from your face the falling sand
and from your human arm the time-charred beetle;
to teach you new stories about lightning
and let you run sometimes barefoot on the shore.
And when the needle grins bloodlessly in his cheek
he will come to know how beautiful it is
to be loved by a madwoman.
And I do not gladly wait the years
for the ocean to discover and rust your face
as it has all of history's beacons
that have turned their gold and stone to water's onslaught,
I 9
for then your letters too rot with ocean's logic
and my fingernails are long enough
to tear the stitches from my throat.
W H E N T H I S A M E R I C A N W O M A N
When this American woman,
whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth,
comes thundering past my sitting-place
like a forest-burning Mongol tribe,
the city is ravished
and brittle buildings of a hundred years
splash into the street;
and my eyes are burnt
for the embroidered Chinese girls,
already old,
and so small between the thin pines
on these enormous landscapes,
that if you turn your head
they are lost for hours.
10 1
S O N G
The naked weeping girl
is thinking of my name
turning my bronze name
over and over
with the thousand fingers
of her body
anointing her shoulders
with the remembered odour
of my skin
0 I am the general
in her history
over the fields
driving the great horses
dressed in gold cloth
wind on my breastplate
sun in my belly
May soft birds
soft as a story to her eyes
protect her face
from my enemies
and vicious birds
whose sharp wings
were forged in metal oceans
guard her room
from my assassins
And night deal gently with her
high stars maintain the whiteness
of her uncovered flesh
I n
And may my bronze name
touch always her thousand fingers
grow brighter with her weeping
until I am fixed like a galaxy
and memorized
in her secret and fragile skies.
THESE HEROICS
If I had a shining head
and people turned to stare at me
in the streetcars;
and I could stretch my body
through the bright water
and keep abreast of fish and water snakes;
if I could ruin my feathers
in flight before the sun;
do you think that I would remain in this room,
reciting poems to you,
and making outrageous dreams
with the smallest movements of your mouth?
12 1
LOVERS
During the first pogrom they
Met behind the ruins of their homes
Sweet merchants trading: her love
For a history-full of poems.
And at the hot ovens they
Cunningly managed a brief
Kiss before the soldier came
To knock out her golden teeth.
And in the furnace itself
As the flames flamed higher,
He tried to kiss her burning breasts
As she burned in the fire.
Later he often wondered:
Was their barter completed?
While men around him plundered
And knew he had been cheated.
I 13
T H E W A R R I O R B O A T S
The warrior boats from Portugal
Strain at piers with ribs exposed
And seagull generations fall
Through the wood anatomy
But in the town, the town
Their passion unimpaired
The beautiful dead crewmen
Go climbing in the lanes
Boasting poems and bitten coins
Handsome bastards
What do they care
If the Empire has withered
To half a peninsula
If the Queen has the King's Adviser
For her last and seventh lover
Their maps have not changed
Thighs still are white and warm
New boundaries have not altered
The marvellous landscape of bosoms
Nor a Congress relegated the red mouth
To a foreign district
Then let the ships disintegrate
At the edge of the land
The gulls will find another place to die
Let the home ports put on mourning
14 I
And little clerks
Complete the necessary papers
But you swagger on, my enemy sailors
Go climbing in the lanes
Boasting your poems and bitten coins
Go knocking on all the windows of the town
At one place you will find my love
Asleep and waiting
And I cannot know how long
She has dreamed of all of you
Oh remove my coat gently
From her shoulders.
I 15
L E T T ER.
How you murdered your family
means nothing to me
as your mouth moves across my body
And I know your dreams
of crumbling cities and galloping horses
of the sun coming too close
and the night never ending
but these mean nothing to me
beside your body
I know that outside a war is raging
that you issue orders
that babies are smothered and generals beheaded
but blood means nothing to me
it does not disturb your flesh
tasting blood on your tongue
does not shock me
as my arms grow into your hair
Do not think I do not understand
what happens
after the troops have been massacred
and the harlots put to the sword
And I write this only to rob you
16 1
that when one morning my head
hangs dripping with the other generals
from your house gate
that all this was anticipated
and so you will know that it meant nothing to me.
I 17
P A G A N S
With all Greek heroes
swarming around my shoulders,
I perverted the Golem formula
and fashioned you from grass,
using oaths of cruel children
for my father's chant.
0 pass by, I challenged you
and gods in their approval
rustled my hair with marble hands,
and you approached slowly
with all the pain of a thousand-year statue
breaking into life.
I thought you perished
at our first touch
(for in my hand I held a fragment
of a French cathedral
and in the air a man spoke to birds
and everywhere
the dangerous smell of old Italian flesh) .
But yesterday while children
slew each other in a dozen games,
I heard you wandering through grass
and watched you glare (0 Dante)
where I had stood.
I know how our coarse grass
mutilates your feet,
how the
