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.
0 castles on the Rhine.
0 blond SS.
Don't believe everything you see in museums.
126 1
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 I945 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.
I 1 27
Braun, Raubal and him
Hitler and his ladies
(I have some experience in these matters),
these three humans,
I can't get their nude and loving bodies out of my mind.
T H E B U S
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.
uB 1
T H E R E S T I S D R O S S
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
1 129
H O W T H E W I N T E R G E T S I N
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 z963
P R O P A G A N D A
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.
O P I U M A N D H I T L E R
Several faiths
bid him leapopium 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 high.
He wanted a
blindfold of skin,
he wanted the
afternoon to begin.
One law brokennothing held.
The world was wax,
his to mould.
Nol He fumbled
for his history dose.
The sun came loose,
his woman dose.
Lost in a darkness
their bodies would reach,
the Leader started
a racial speech.
I 133
F O R A N Y O N E D R E S S E D I N M A R B L E
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 paraly�ing 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-the
y use him like a bride.
F O L K
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
1 34 I
I H A D I T F O R A M O M E N T
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
I 135
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
I N D E P E N D E N C E
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
Somebody has a flag I did not invent
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
I 1 37
T H E H O U S E
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
1 38 1
You put it on my table two hours ago
and I can smell it everywhere in the house
Darling I attach nothing to it
T H E L I S T S
Strafed by the Milky Way
vaccinated by a snarl of clouds
lobotomized by the bore of the moon
he fell in a heap
some woman's smell
smeared across his face
rusting in a trouser cuff
From five to seven
tall trees doctored him
mist roamed on guard
Then it began again
the sun stuck a gun in his mouth
the wind started to skin him
Give up the Plan give up the Plan
echoing among its scissors
The women who elected him
performed erotic calisthenics
above the stock-reports
of every hero's fame
Out of the corner of his stuffed eye
etched in minor metal
under his letter of the alphabet
he clearly saw his tiny name
Then a museum slid under
his remains like a shovel
I 139
O R D E R
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, I96J
D E S T I N Y
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,
repairing the lines from city to city?
Why don't you find me riding a horse through Cuba,
a giant of a man with a red machete?
Why don't you find me explaining machines
to underprivileged pupils, negroid Spaniards,
happy it is not a course in creative writing?
Come back here, little warm body,
it's time for another day.
Destiny has fled and I settle for you
who found me staring at you in a store
one afternoon four years ago
and slept with me every night since.
How do you find my sailor eyes after all this time?
Am I what you expected?
Are we together too much?
Did Destiny shy at the double Turkish towel,
our knowledge of each other's skin,
our love which is a proverb on the block,
our agreement that in matters spiritual
I should be the Man of Destiny
and you should be the Woman of the House?
Q U E E N V I C T O R I A A N D M E
Queen Victoria
my father and all his tobacco loved you
I love you too in all your forms
the slim unlovely virgin anyone would lay
the white figure floating among German beards
the mean governess of the huge pink maps
the solitary mourner of a prince
Queen Victoria
I am cold and rainy
I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station
I feel like an empty cast-iron exhibition
I want ornaments on everything
because my love she gone with other boys
Queen Victoria
do you have a punishment under the white lace
will you be short with her
and make her read little Bibles
will you spank her with a mechanical corset
I want her pure as power
I want her skin slightly musty with petticoats
will you wash the easy bidets out of her head