A MIGRATING DIALOGUE
He was wearing a black moustache and leather hair.
We talked about the gypsies.
Don’t bite your nails, I told him.
Don’t eat carpets.
Be careful of the rabbits.
Be cute.
Don’t stay up all night watching
parades on the Very Very Very Late Show.
Don’t ka-ka in your uniform.
And what about all the good generals,
the fine old aristocratic fighting men,
the brave Junkers, the brave Rommels,
the brave von Silverhaired Ambassadors
who resigned in 41?
Wipe that smirk off your face.
Captain Marvel signed the whip contract.
Joe Palooka manufactured whips.
Li’l Abner packed the whips in cases.
The Katzenjammer Kids thought up experiments.
Mere cogs,
Peekaboo Miss Human Soap.
It never happened.
O castles on the Rhine.
O blond SS.
Don’t believe everything you see in museums.
I said WIPE THAT SMIRK including
the mouth-foam of superior disgust.
I don’t like the way you go to work every morning.
How come the buses still run?
How come they’re still making movies?
I believe with a perfect faith in the Second World War.
I am convinced that it happened.
I am not so sure about the First World War.
The Spanish Civil War – maybe.
I believe in gold teeth.
I believe in Churchill.
Don’t tell me we dropped fire into cribs.
I think you are exaggerating.
The Treaty of Westphalia has faded like a lipstick
smudge on the Blarney Stone.
Napoleon was a sexy brute.
Hiroshima was Made in Japan out of paper.
I think we should let sleeping ashes lie.
I believe with a perfect faith in all the history
I remember, but it’s getting harder and harder
to remember much history.
There is sad confetti sprinkling
from the windows of departing trains.
I let them go. I cannot remember them.
They hoot mournfully out of my daily life.
I forget the big numbers,
I forget what they mean.
I apologize to the special photogravure section
of a 1945 newspaper which began my education.
I apologize left and right.
I apologize in advance to all the folks
in this fine wide audience for my tasteless closing remarks.
Braun, Raubal and him
(I have some experience in these matters),
these three humans,
I can’t get their nude and loving bodies out of my mind.
THE BUS
I was the last passenger of the day,
I was alone on the bus,
I was glad they were spending all that money
just getting me up Eighth Avenue.
Driver! I shouted, it’s you and me tonight,
let’s run away from this big city
to a smaller city more suitable to the heart,
let’s drive past the swimming pools of Miami Beach,
you in the driver’s seat, me several seats back,
but in the racial cities we’ll change places
so as to show how well you’ve done up North,
and let us find ourselves some tiny American fishing village
in unknown Florida
and park right at the edge of the sand,
a huge bus pointing out,
metallic, painted, solitary,
with New York plates.
LAUNDRY
I took a backward look
As I walked down the street
My wife was hanging laundry
Sheet after sheet after sheet
She ran them down the clothesline
Like flags above a ship
Her mouth was full of clothespins
They twisted up her lip
At last I saw her ugly
Now I could not stay
I made an X across her face
But a sheet got in the way
Then the wind bent back
This flag of armistice
I made the X again
As a child repeats a wish
The second X I drew
Set me up in trade
I will never find the faces
For all goodbyes I’ve made
THE REST IS DROSS
We meet at a hotel
with many quarters for the radio
surprised that we’ve survived as lovers
not each other’s
but lovers still
with outrageous hope and habits in the craft
which embarrass us slightly
as we let them be known
the special caress the perfect inflammatory word
the starvation we do not tell about
We do what only lovers can
make a gift out of necessity
Looking at our clothes
folded over the chair
I see we no longer follow fashion
and we own our own skins
God I’m happy we’ve forgotten nothing
and can love each other
for years in the world
HOW THE WINTER GETS IN
I ask you where you want to go
you say nowhere
but your eyes make a wish
An absent chiropractor
you stroke my wrist
I’m almost fooled into
greasy circular snores
when I notice your eyes
sounding the wall for
dynamite points
like a doctor at work on a TB chest
Nowhere you say again in a kiss
go to sleep
First tell me your wish
Your lashes startle on my skin
like a seismograph
An airliner’s perishing drone
pulls the wall off our room
like an old band-aid
The winter comes in
and the eyes I don’t keep
tie themselves to a journey
like wedding tin cans
Ways Mills
November 1963
PROPAGANDA
The coherent statement was made
by father, the gent with spats to
keep his shoes secret. It had to
do with the nature of religion and
the progress of lust in the twentieth
century. I myself have several
statements of a competitive
coherence which I intend to spread
around at no little expense. I
love the eternal moment, for
instance. My father used to remark,
doffing his miniature medals, that
there is a time that is ripe for
everything. A little extravagant,
Dad, I guess, judging by values.
Oh well, he’d say, and the whole
world might have been the address.
OPIUM AND HITLER
Several faiths
bid him leap –
opium and Hitler
let him sleep.
A Negress with
an appetite
helped him think
he wasn’t white.
Opium and Hitler
made him sure
the world was glass.
There was no cure
for matter
disarmed as this:
the state rose on
a festered kiss.
Once a dream
nailed on the sky
a summer sun
while it was h
igh.
He wanted a
blindfold of skin,
he wanted the
afternoon to begin.
One law broken –
nothing held.
The world was wax,
his to mould.
No! He fumbled
for his history dose.
The sun came loose,
his woman close.
Lost in a darkness
their bodies would reach,
the Leader started
a racial speech.
FOR ANYONE DRESSED IN MARBLE
The miracle we all are waiting for
is waiting till the Parthenon falls down
and House of Birthdays is a house no more
and fathers are unpoisoned by renown.
The medals and the records of abuse
can’t help us on our pilgrimage to lust,
but like whips certain perverts never use,
compel our flesh in paralysing trust.
I see an orphan, lawless and serene,
standing in a corner of the sky,
body something like bodies that have been,
but not the scar of naming in his eye.
Bred close to the ovens, he’s burnt inside.
Light, wind, cold, dark – they use him like a bride.
WHEELS, FIRECLOUDS
I shot my eyes through the drawers of your empty coffins,
I was loyal,
I was one who lifted up his face.
FOLK
flowers for hitler the summer yawned
flowers all over my new grass
and here is a little village
they are painting it for a holiday
here is a little church
here is a school
here are some doggies making love
the flags are bright as laundry
flowers for hitler the summer yawned
I HAD IT FOR A MOMENT
I had it for a moment
I knew why I must thank you
I saw powerful governing men in black suits
I saw them undressed
in the arms of young mistresses
the men more naked than the naked women
the men crying quietly
No that is not it
I’m losing why I must thank you
which means I’m left with pure longing
How old are you
Do you like your thighs
I had it for a moment
I had a reason for letting the picture
of your mouth destroy my conversation
Something on the radio
the end of a Mexican song
I saw the musicians getting paid
they are not even surprised
they knew it was only a job
Now I’ve lost it completely
A lot of people think you are beautiful
How do I feel about that
I have no feeling about that
I had a wonderful reason for not merely
courting you
It was tied up with the newspapers
I saw secret arrangements in high offices
I saw men who loved their worldliness
even though they had looked through
big electric telescopes
they still thought their worldliness was serious
not just a hobby a taste a harmless affectation
they thought the cosmos listened
I was suddenly fearful
one of their obscure regulations
could separate us
I was ready to beg for mercy
Now I’m getting into humiliation
I’ve lost why I began this
I wanted to talk about your eyes
I know nothing about your eyes
and you’ve noticed how little I know
I want you somewhere safe
far from high offices
I’ll study you later
So many people want to cry quietly beside you
July 4, 1963
ISLAND BULLETIN
Oh can my fresh white trousers
and the gardenia forest
and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
and my heroic tan
and my remarkable quaint house
and my Italian sun-glasses
can they do for me
what our first meeting did?
I am so good with fire yet I hesitate
to begin again
believing perhaps in some ordeal by property
I am standing by the Sunset Wall
proud
thin despite my luxury
In my journey I know I am
somewhere beyond the travelling pack of poets
I am a man of tradition
I will remain here until
I am sure what I am leaving
July 4, 1963
INDEPENDENCE
Tonight I will live with my new white skin
which I found under a millennium of pith clothing
None of the walls jump when I call them
Trees smirked you’re one of us now
when I strode through the wheat in my polished boots
Out of control awake and newly naked
I lie back in the luxury of my colour
Somebody is marching for me at me to me
I think the Aztecs have not been sleeping
Magic moves from hand to hand like money
I thought we were the bank the end of the line
New York City was just a counter
the crumpled bill passed across
I thought that heroes meant us
I have been reading too much history
and writing too many history books
Magic moves from hand to hand and I’m broke
Someone stops the sleepwalker in the middle of the opera
and pries open his fist finger by finger
and kisses him goodbye
I think the Aztecs have not been sleeping
no matter what I taught the children
I think no one has ever slept but he
who gathers the past into stories
Magic moves from hand to hand
Somebody is smiling in one of our costumes
Somebody is stepping out of a costume
I think that is what invisible means
July 4, 1963
THE HOUSE
Two hours off the branch and burnt
the petals of the gardenia curl and deepen
in the yellow-brown of waste
Your body wandered close
I didn’t raise my hand to reach
the distance was so familiar
Our house is happy with its old furniture
the black Venetian bed stands on gold claws
guarding the window
Don’t take the window away
and leave a hole in the stark mountains
The clothesline and the grey clothespins
would make you think we’re going to be together always
Last night I dreamed
you were Buddha’s wife
and I was a historian watching you sleep
What vanity
A girl told me something beautiful
Very early in the morning
she saw an orange-painted wooden boat
come into port over the smooth sea
The cargo was hay
The boat rode low under the weight
She couldn’t see the sailors
but on top of all the hay sat a monk
Because of the sun behind he seemed
to be sitting in a fire
like that famous photograph
I forgot to tell you the story
She surprised me by telling it
and I wanted her for ten minutes
I really enjoyed the gardenia from Sophia’s courtyard
You put it
on my table two hours ago
and I can smell it everywhere in the house
Darling I attach nothing to it
July 4, 1963
ORDER
In many movies I came upon an idol
I would not touch, whose forehead jewel
was safe, or if stolen – mourned.
Truly, I wanted the lost forbidden city
to be the labyrinth for wise technicolor
birds, and every human riddle
the love-fed champion pursued
I knew was bad disguise for greed.
I was with the snake who made his nest
in the voluptuous treasure, I dropped
with the spider to threaten the trail-bruised
white skin of the girl who was searching
for her brother, I balanced on the limb
with the leopard who had to be content
with Negroes and double-crossers
and never tasted but a slash of hero flesh.
Even after double-pay I deserted
with the bearers, believing every rumour
the wind brought from the mountain pass.
The old sorceress, the spilled wine,
the black cards convinced me:
the timeless laws must not be broken.
When the lovers got away with the loot
of new-valued life or love, or bought
themselves a share in time by letting
the avalanche seal away for ever
the gold goblets and platters, I knew
a million ways the jungle might have been
meaner and smarter. As the red sun
came down on their embrace I shouted
from my velvet seat, Get them, get them,
to all the animals drugged with anarchy and happiness.
August 6, 1963
DESTINY
I want your warm body to disappear
politely and leave me alone in the bath
because I want to consider my destiny.
Destiny! why do you find me in this bathtub,
idle, alone, unwashed, without even
the intention of washing except at the last moment?
Why don’t you find me at the top of a telephone pole,