with a groan, like those gods on the roof
that Samson pulled down.
1 6 1
B E N E A T H M Y H A N D S
Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.
Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.
I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.
I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.
I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.
A S T H E M I S T L E A V E S N O S C A R
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.
When wind and hawk encounter,
What remains to keep?
So you and I encounter,
Then turn, then fall to sleep.
As many nights endure
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure
When one is gone and far.
I L O N G T O H O L D S O M E L A D Y
I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.
There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:
As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.
Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.
But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.
N O W O F S L E E P I N G
Under her grandmother's patchwork quilt
a calico bird's-eye view
of crops and boundaries
naming dimly the districts of her body
sleeps my Annie like a perfect lady
Like ages of weightless snow
on tiny oceans filled with light
her eyelids enclose deeply
a shade tree of birthday candles
one for every morning
until the now of sleeping
The small banner of blood
kept and flown by Brother Wind
long after the pierced bird fell down
is like her red mouth
among the squalls of pillow
Bearers of evil fancy
of dark intention and corrupting fashion
who come to rend the quilt
plough the eye and ground the mouth
will contend with mighty Mother Goose
and Farmer Brown and all good stories
of invincible belief
which surround her sleep
like the golden weather of a halo
Well-wishers and her true lover
may stay to watch my Annie
sleeping like a perfect lady
I Gs
under her grandmother's patchwork quilt
but they must promise to whisper
and to vanish by morning-
all but her one true lover.
66 1
S O N G
When with lust I am smitten
To my books I then repair
And read what men have written
Of flesh forbid but fair
But in these saintly stories
Of gleaming thigh and breast
Of sainthood and its glories
Alas I find no rest
For at each body rare
The saintly man disdains
I stare 0 God I stare
My heart is stained with stains
And casting down the holy tomes
I lead my eyes to where
The naked girls with silver combs
Are combing out their hair
Then each pain my hermits sing
Flies upward like a spark
I live with the mortal ring
Of flesh on flesh in dark
S O N G
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how I kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover
F O R A N N E
With Annie gone,
Whose eyes to compare
With the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she's gone.
6s 1
L A S T D A N C E A T T H E F O U R P E N N Y
Layton, when we dance our freilach
under the ghostly handkerchief,
the miracle rabbis of Prague and Vilna
resume their sawdust thrones,
and angels and men, asleep so long
in the cold palaces of disbe\ief,
gather in sausage-hung kitchens
to quarrel deliciously and debate
the sounds of the Ineffable Name.
Layton, my friend Lazarovitch,
no Jew was ever lost
while we two dance joyously
in this French province,
cold and oceans west of the temple,
the snow canyoned on the twigs
like forbidden Sabbath manna;
I say no Jew was ever lost
while we weave and billow the handkerchief
into a burning cloud,
measuring all of heaven
with our stitching thumbs.
Reb Israel Lazarovitch,
you no-good Romanian, you're right!
Who cares whether or not
the Messiah is a Litvak?
As for the cynical,
such as we were yesterday,
let them step with us or rot
in their logical shrouds.
We've raised a bright white flag,
I 6g
and here's our battered fathers' cup of wine,
and now is music
until morning and the morning prayers
lay us down again,
we who dance so beautifully
though we know that freilachs end.
S U M M E R H A I K U
For Frank and Marian Sco tt
Silence
and a deeper silence
when the crickets
hesitate
O U T O F T H E L A N D O F H E A V E N
For Marc Chagall
Out of the land of heaven
Down comes the warm Sabbath sun
Into the spice-box of earth_
The Queen will make every Jew her lover_
In a white silk coat
Our
