The Pro 1973
Lost my voice in New York City
never heard it again after sixty-seven
Now I talk like you
Now I sing like you
Cigarette and coffee to make me sick
Couple of families to make me think
Going to see my lawyer
Going to read my mail
Lost my voice in New York City
Guess you always knew
THE PRO
from the Nashville Notebooks of 1969:
I leave my silence to a co-operative of poets
who have already bruised their mouths against it.
I leave my homesick charm to the scavengers of
spare change who work the old artistic corners.
I leave the shadow of my manly groin to those who
write for pay.
I leave to several jealous men a second-rate legend
of my life.
To those few high school girls
who preferred my work to Dylan's
I leave my stone ear
and my disposable Franciscan ambitions
266
Summer-Haiku
For Frank and Marian Scott
Silence
and a deeper silence
when the crickets
hesitate
267
Poem 17
I perceived the outline of your breasts
through your Hallowe'en costume
I knew you were falling in love with me
because no other man could perceive
the advance of your bosom into his imagination
It was a rupture of your unusual modesty
for me and me alone
through which you impressed upon my shapeless hunger
the incomparable and final outline of your breasts
like two deep fossil shells
which remained all night long and probably forever
268
Poem 111
Each man
has a way to betray
the revolution
This is mine
269
You Do Not Have To Love Me
You do not have to love me
just because
you are all the women
I have ever wanted
I was born to follow you
every night
while I am still
the many men who love you
I meet you at a table
I take your fist between my hands
in a solemn taxi
I wake up alone
my hand on your absense
in Hotel Discipline
I wrote all these songs for you
I burned red and black candles
shaped like a man and a woman
I married the smoke
of two pyramids of sandalwood
I prayed for you
I prayed that you would love me
and that you would not love me
270
Hydra 1960
Anything that moves is white,
a gull, a wave, a sail,
and moves too purely to be aped.
Smash the pain.
Never pretend peace.
The consolumentum has not,
never will be kissed. Pain
cannot compromise this light.
Do violence to the pain,
ruin the easy vision,
the easy warning, water
for those who need to burn.
These are ruthless: rooster shriek,
bleached goat skull.
Scalpels grow with poppies
if you see them truly red.
271
Hydra 1963
The stony path coiled around me
and bound me to the night.
A boat hunted the edge of the sea
under a hissing light.
Something soft involved a net
and bled around a spear.
The blunt death, the cumulus jet –
I spoke to you, I thought you near!
Or was the night so black
that something died alone?
A man with a glistening back
beat the food against a stone.
272
The Poetry Place
This is for you
it is my full heart
it is the book I meant to read you
when we were old
Now I am a shadow
I am restless as an empire
You are the woman
who released me
I saw you watching the moon
you did not hesitate
to love me with it
I saw you honouring the wind-flowers
caught in the rocks
you loved me with them
At night I saw you dance alone
on the small wet pebbles
of the shoreline
and you welcomed me into the circle
more than a guest
All this happened
in the truth of time
in the truth of flesh
I saw you with a child
you brought me to this perfume
and his visions
without demand of blood
On so many wooden tables
adorned with food and candles
a thousand sacraments
which you carried in your basket
I visited my clay
I visited my birth
and you guarded my back
as I became small
and frightened enough
to be born again
273
I wanted you for your beauty
and you gave me more than yourself
you shared your beauty
this I only learned tonight
as I recall the mirrors
you walked away from
after you had given them
whatever they claimed
for my initiation
Now I am a shadow
I long for the boundaries
of my wandering
and I move
with the energy of your prayer
and I move
in the direction of your prayer
for you are kneeling
like a bouquet
in a cave of a bone
behind my forehead
and I move toward a love
you have dreamed for me
274
Dusko’s Taverna 1967
They are still singing down at Dusko's,
sitting under the ancient pine tree,
in the deep night of fixed and falling stars.
If you go to your window you can hear them.
It is the end of someone's wedding,
or perhaps a boy is leaving on a boat in the morning.
There is a place for you at the table,
wine for you, and apples from the mainland,
a space in the songs for your voice.
Throw something on,
and whoever it is you must tell
that you are leaving,
tell them, or take them, but hurry:
they have sent for you ––
the call has come ––
they will not wait forever.
They are not even waiting now
275
No. 63
Dance on the money
the heads of presidents
red toenails
this ‘poem’ is an I.O.U.
for 10,000 drachmas
on your step-smooth shoulders
My table rushes up
to give you a marble stage
black olives live forever
in the tired oil of your grace
Sinking under needles of bazouki
you threaten us with jobs in the Sahara
or a salary of halvah
oh the hair is real
that pilots the thighs
into the important satin theatre
ruined like Greece by overuse
but all we have of the Golden age
Your courting clothes sleeping in cedar
your grandmother still alive on Hydra
‘Don’t tell her that you saw me naked’
276
A Deep Happiness
A deep happiness has sized me
My Christian friends say
that I have received the Holy Spirit
It is only truth of solitude
It is only the torn anemone
fastened to the rock its root exposed
to the off-shore wind
O friend of my scribbled life
your heart is like mine –
your loneliness will bring you home
277
The Embrace
When you stumble suddenly
into his full embrace,
he hides away so not to see
his creature face to face.
Your yourself are hidden too
with all your sins of state;
there is no king to pardon you;
his mercy is more intimate
He does not stand before you,
he does not dwell within;
this passion has no point of view,
it is the heart of everything.
There is
