Its teaspoon of darkness; nor we why we sip
So thirstily from the pond made with a sharp stylus.
What is this? A monk and a girl in the corn?
He can no more keep his seed from rising
Than the kernel prevent the corn from coming up.
The resting hog is content, tied by one leg,
At least for now. She is far down on the earth;
And no longer remembers small boys or boiling water.
Joseph needs a lantern as he and Mary
Travel silently through the night. The donkey
Is about to put its hoof down in that darkness.
The hatching and shadowiness are everywhere.
The lion, standing by the pollarded willow,
Protects the old St. Jerome while he reads.
THE CARDINAL’S CRY
The cardinal’s cry could be heard at Gettysburg.
Some stars have no choice but to set in the west.
It’s always night in the grain-bin of birth.
Vintners made strong red wine from the battlefields
Where the Romans died; and we know that hundreds
Of mothers loved the buffalo-killers’ hands.
Every poem is a cover over something naked.
Emily Dickinson’s poems are shawls woven
From the lengthened hair of the ignorant and insane.
Ducks are swimming in and out of the reeds
In the marshy lakes of the amygdala.
A hunter shoots at everything that flies by.
The tumbling of clowns is part of the abundance
That gives birth to death, along with bitter
Berries, charcoal, and the first snow.
The muddler you are reading has lied to you
Often because he didn’t want to see how many
Things cannot be saved even if Abraham returns.
THE OLD ST. PETER BY REMBRANDT
Noah’s ship does not sail with its elephants forever.
The crying of the monkeys breaks off and starts again.
Even shame does not last a whole lifetime.
“It was dark,” Peter said. “We were alone. We had
A single candle which shone on the steel breastplate
Of the Roman soldier. The whole town was asleep.”
We are bubbles on the lips of our friends.
Each time they turn their heads, we drift toward the Pole;
We pass into the Many and return.
Who can say, “With God, the rest is nothing”?
Who can say, “I am a grandchild of the unfaithful”?
Who is able to wait one month to drink water?
We fell into weeping yesterday at five o’clock.
We wept because slavery has returned; we wept
Because the whole century has been a defeat.
Oh Peter! Peter! The night behind you is black.
A beam of light falls on your outworn face.
What can you do but lift up your hand for forgiveness?
CHICAGO MUSEUM OF ART
WHY IS IT THE SPARK’S FAULT?
The soul is in love with marshy ground and snails,
With mud, darkness, wind, smoke and fire.
The cucumber and melon lead us back toward Heaven.
Why is it the spark’s fault if the moment a hammer
Hits hot iron the spark curves toward earth?
In July even lightning cannot help itself.
Italian fiddlers are always ready to play
Near the enclosed bed of the Prodigal Son
While a plump woman cuts a pear with a small knife.
Let’s keep disaster remembered in our poems.
Our memory feeds on ruin just as cows
Stand around drinking from river water.
Who stands for the melon? Seth, Abraham,
And Shem. The lightness of grasshoppers suggests
They are taking in some fiddle music from the grass.
Please forgive me if I know so many words
And say so little. The Word catches in my throat,
Because some force does not want me to follow Abraham.
AUGUSTINE ON HIS SHIP
Each time we lower a violin near the Nile River,
The low G string cries; it’s like the cry a ribbon
Makes when a raven carries it into his nest.
No one knows what the jaguar’s whisker feels
Immersed in the bathwater of St. Francis.
We each have to be careful talking of our betters.
How can the literalists with their heavy voices
Speak through the thin bill of the thrush, or the spark,
Alone in wet cow dung, call to its friends?
So much flesh muffles the slow bones
Of the beaver that it’s difficult for light
To pass from the tip of the tail to the skull.
Perhaps that’s why Rimbaud whose gold tooth
Was so delicately tuned to the Milky Way
Of language could still die as a slave trader.
Every fall the Kraken comes up and brushes
With his Gnostic arms the hull of the ship
On whose planks Augustine walks at night.
V
THE DIFFICULT WORD
The oaks reluctantly let their leaves fall,
And hesitatingly allow their branches to be bare;
And the bear spends all winter in separation.
The beauty of marriage is such that it dissolves
All earlier unions, and leads man and wife
To walk together on the road of separation.
The word is a difficult one. The thought frightens us
That this planet with all its darkening geese
Was created not for union but for separation.
Suppose there were a dragon curled inside each drop
Of water, defending its gold. It’s possible
That abundance has the same effect as separation.
We all knew nothing of this when we floated
In the joy of the womb; but when our lips touched
Our mother’s breast, we said, “This is separation.”
It is my longing to smooth the feathers
Of brown birds, and to touch the sides of horses
That has led me to spend my life in separation.
TESTIFYING TO THE NIGHT
Perhaps the turtle loves his sturdy back too much.
So much happens when no one is watching.
Our hopes for the universe did not include last night.
Last night I met Her again. In my dream I
Took a room in a German inn; and she was
There. No one else knew about it that night.
When the Queen of Hearts shows up, we throw
The rest of the cards down, and stand up.
We know that the game is over for that night.
We won’t have to worry about waking each other
Up at dawn. And we won’t bother about sleep.
Good ants carry us around the room all night.
When she comes, why not bet everything?
Sometimes we bet and we lose; and the dealer
Goes away with our head that night.
When one sings, it’s best to light candles
All around the singers’ feet. The candle is not lit
To give light, but to testify to the night.
THE STORYTELLER’S WAY
It’s because the storytellers have been so faithful
That all these tales of infidelity come to light.
It’s the job of the faithful to evoke the unfaithful.
Our task is to eat sand, our task is to be sad,
Our task is to cook ashes, our task is to die.
The grasshopper’s way is the way of the faithful.
Even though you are a literalist, accept
The invitation to go to Pluto’s wedding.
Haven’t you learned yet that the stars are faithful?
&nb
sp; For every planet, there are a million jellyfish
Shooting along who don’t know night from morning.
So is the sea full of the unfaithful or the faithful?
A storyteller has to remember every turn
Of language so that we all know the moment
When the King decides to betray the faithful.
Of loyalty I have forgotten, how often
I have exchanged places with the unfaithful.
For Gioia Timpanelli
HOW THIS WEALTH CAME TO BE
It’s hard to know how all this wealth came to the world.
Ishmael was not created from a fight with a whale.
The ocean is not deep enough to have created Melville’s soul.
The hungry one in us did not come from our seed.
Our old enemy is one of Adam’s grandfathers.
He stood around looking at the shadow of the first soul.
The Ark landed on Ararat; but all those
Who came off the Ark know that the voyage
Was not long enough to produce Abraham’s soul.
Oaks once darkened almost all of Great Britain,
Covering it with leaves. But squirrels rummaging
In a million acorns could not find Chaucer’s soul.
How many boulders had to be ground down
To produce one square inch of the Sahara?
Maybe the moon gave birth to Mandela’s soul.
There is a mystery about the birth of Jesus.
All the snow that fell to earth on Christmas Eve
Finally did shift the weight of Rome’s soul.
NOAH WATCHING THE RAIN
I never understood that abundance leads to war,
Nor that manyness is gasoline on the fire.
I never knew that the horseshoe longs for night.
All through my twenties I worked in the opal mines.
No one could open the door to Saturn’s house.
I had no choice but to live in my father’s night.
I am still a mouse nibbling the chocolate of sadness.
I am an Albigensian reading Bulgarian script.
I am a boy walking across England by night.
Each time we fold in the fingers of our left hand
We bring our ancestors close to each other again,
So they can lie on top of each other in the bed at night.
Soon our grandfather and grandmother will kiss
Once more. Then death will come in his Jewish hat,
And tell Noah to start praising the rainy night.
Even though I know that whenever I say the word
“Abundance,” I am laying up trouble for ourselves,
I have no other way to express my love for the night.
LISTENING
The goose cries, and there is no way to save her.
So many cheeps come from the nest by the river.
If God doesn’t listen, why are we listening?
Very deep water covers most of the globe.
Whenever I see it, I think of St. John.
There is no remedy for deep water but listening.
The King and Queen already know about love;
They search for each other through the whole deck.
While we play our hands, they are listening.
The day we die, we’ll each be like the fish
Abruptly jerked out of the water.
For him, it is the end of all listening.
Like thousands of others, I’m eating beet soup
In some Russian inn. People write letters
To me from heaven, but I’m not listening.
The hermit said: “Because the world is mad,
The only way through the world is to learn
The arts and double the madness. Are you listening?”
SO BE IT. AMEN.
There are people who don’t want Kierkegaard to be
A humpback, and they’re looking for a wife for Cézanne.
It’s hard for them to say, “So be it. Amen.”
When a dead dog turned up on the road, the disciples
Held their noses. Jesus walked over and said:
“What beautiful teeth!” It’s a way to say “Amen.”
If a young boy leaps over seven hurdles in a row,
And an instant later is an old man reaching for his cane,
To the swiftness of it all we have to say “Amen.”
We always want to intervene when we hear
That the badger is marrying the wrong person,
The grapes of our ruin were planted centuries
Before Caedmon ever praised the Milky Way.
“Praise God,” “Damn God” are all synonyms for “Amen.”
Women in Crete loved the young men, but when
“The Son of the Deep Waters” dies in the bath,
And they show the rose-colored water, Mary says “Amen.”
DAWN
Some love to watch the sea bushes appearing at dawn,
To see night fall from the goose wings, and to hear
The conversations the night sea has with the dawn.
If we can’t find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
Now you know why I spent my twenties crying.
Cries are required from those who wake disturbed at dawn.
Adam was called in to name the Red-Winged
Blackbirds, the Diamond Rattlers, and the Ring-Tailed
Raccoons washing God in the streams at dawn.
Centuries later, the Mesopotamian gods,
All curls and ears, showed up; behind them the Generals
With their blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.
Those grasshopper-eating hermits were so good
To stay all day in the cave; but it is also sweet
To see the fenceposts gradually appear at dawn.
People in love with the setting stars are right
To adore the baby who smells of the stable, but we know
That even the setting stars will disappear at dawn.
MY
SENTENCE
WAS A
THOUSAND
YEARS
OF JOY
(2005)
I
THE DARK AUTUMN NIGHTS
Imagination is the door to the raven’s house, so we are
Already blessed! The one nail that fell from the shoe
Lit the way for Newton to get home from the Fair.
Last night I heard a thousand holy women
And a thousand holy men apologize at midnight
Because there was too much triumph in their voices.
Those lovers, skinny and badly dressed, hated
By parents, did the work; all through the Middle Ages,
It was the lovers who kept the door open to heaven.
Walking home, we become distracted whenever
We pass apple orchards. We are still eating fruit
Left on the ground the night Adam was born.
St. John of the Cross heard an Arab love poem
Through the bars and began his poem. In Nevada it was
Always the falling horse that discovered the mine.
Robert, you know well how much substance can be
Wasted by lovers, but I say, Blessings on those
Who go home through the dark autumn nights.
A POEM FOR ANDREW MARVELL
Tell Tristan the tip of his tongue is beautiful.
Tell the lovers they are blessed. Tell me my poems
Are promises made a thousand years ago.
People who adore literature often say that fall
Is the best of all seasons. Erasmus loved Latin, heavy
Seas, masts breaking, ships going down.
Twice this morning I’ve kissed Marvell’s book.
He’s glad for the mourners—whose eyes are blessed
By grief
, who “weep the more and see the less.”
I know that these poems mean that I am beginning
To get rid of the traces. But at this rate, I’ll
Still be washing the floor when the flood comes.
Every drop of water has inside it the strange, mad
Longing to be the ocean. I don’t need
To say why every grassblade is so thin.
Robert, your take on the fall is right. Those studying
The Kabbalah gained so much from the story