— to l.z.

this is your tree, river, lawn,

your big house, your america.

this is your life on another planet,

you slow down the car to lead me through foothills,

like a documentary of private life on the wide screen.

reprints by impressionists hang on the living room wall,

your daughter’s toys piled high on the floor,

daytime when your husband goes to manhattan,

and your child to kindergarten, the streets fall silent

except for conversation between vacuum and lawn mower,

on the treadmill, like a toy train

on its oval track you go around and around…

here i am surprised by a sense of strangeness,

not that you have already changed your nationality

or become someone’s wife, i am

surprised that your wanderings have so soon come to the end—

the dreamed-of happy land of our youth

already abbreviated into a comfort cage,

and on the thick velvet couch,

once we speak of china, your mouth curls in a smirk.

i am saddened that you have missed an epic change in time,

a myth of time upended amid reality;

every one of your years here,

is a day that we have spent back home.

twilight, i return to the hotel in queens,

put my coat on the back of the chair, before my eyes

that wild girl floats by, loving

freedom more than carmen depicted by mérimée, walking

among marchers in a parade, like a goddness painted by delacroix.

…memory retains nothing but the kite’s spool,

i know i can no longer take you home,

even blessings seem unnecessary.

no one to entrust a mission, deep in the night

i dream of myself one step over the pacific,

back to fire-bright smoke-thick battlefields,

loading crossbows and shooting down those toxic suns. 

not a drop last night, yet i woke

feeling hung over—at a hotel

before a steamed mirror, in shock, i

listened to the city’s river of traffic. here

i know a friend, who brushed his gifts aside

and scurried to capture cheap praises; a

classic literature professor, who loved his words more

than he did others; a girl, a music school grad

lost a love yet fell in love with this place,

had three jobs and precious little sleep,

—sadder than this was the passion drained away

from several generations in a flash, all of them

rushing ahead, cursing, complaining,

like countless rusty swords impelled to stick together—

a usual spring day, who amongst them

could discern my exacting wishes?

let them keep the best face on the past.

let me pass by without a visit and continue my journey—

throat dry, tongue scorched by soldering iron,

words swirl in dazed mind, so slow to come,

thus the need to pray year after year,

embrace rain showers repeatedly, landscapes and forked roads.

frail like tree shadow, in the puddles of the road

i feel the pain of being rolled over by wheels;

i am cold, because there is no light on the other side,

when people meet, lanterns are turned down low. 

Walking through the cemetery, the most fitting place

to think over a résumé, I try to recall the tarot card

that could calm me down. I know you all will return again

for the love that moves men beneath the stars’ clockwork.

And yet I’m here, seeing you all beyond the tranvía glass,

the chain of these events. Like when I was a boy,

I read your poems nestled in the night’s soul and I hear you

like a pilot dodging wood and granite crosses.

Since then we’ve been alone, no one’s shown up to join us,

and this squall, hollow day is the only consolation.

They’ve gone, the words I still can’t speak

and the squirrels that, given the chance, scamper among the oaks.

Take pity, I tell the lights glimmering beyond the pond

and the doves sleeping in the elderberry, bidding farewell

the carpenter’s hair, my friend, like someone lost in the dark.

From the craggy earth a wildflower grows in its own way.

The reign of lovers descends over abandoned houses

and June’s strawberries. The flash hardly lasted a minute,

but I shine because of you, my heart of hearts, in the cage

of the Empress and crickets.

As for us, afire with the mission of the Flood,

make the night a canto for bluest affections.

Dark as they are in the nightwatch marblework,

leave them the evening to speak the forgiveness

they’ve sought from those they could not find.

Choose there thy daily bread, they will give you

one thing: beauty, if you find them truly human,

and divorce like ebbing tides the anger from the terms.

They’re with God, they tie his laces; imagine it,

the shame, to boot them over the edge now.

Alone, for even less than asked, the dove leaves the Ark

and flies back with a hook in its mouth.

The widows’ truce returns to the tailor’s home

from the far edge of the floodwaters.

Nothing changes with the weight of precaution,

this is what we’ve come to believe.

It’s tough to consider where what wasn’t was,

how he will sort them out to persuade

each night’s gatekeeper of the Presence.

Boil water for both, for both the frost settles

over the olive trees and those that sew, sew until sunrise.

        the objects

their erect

        presence    

     their flickering form

or their shadow

to measure the body

or to neglect it

Morandi walks along the boundaries

navigates a field

of wild violets

and rises toward things

        the vase

            the bottle

               the empty cup

               again and again

        and again

plunge from shadow

     into light

glow in the open

and tremble

        for the hand

        trembles

and the eye

        trembles

before the vast

        silence

of the world

        Cannot

                 the bird

                 sing?

        Or can it –– the bird?

 Singing is

        but

        a sun

 Does

        the bird

        know its sun?

 Is knowing versed

        in what the bird

                 cannot

                 sing?

 Nonetheless

        the bird

        sings

        without knowing

 What

        then is knowing?

 If the bird

        without knowing

                 sings

 the river

        without knowing laughs

 the wind without knowing

                 filters

        its sweet sound

        among the

                 branches

 In what is knowing versed in?

 Does the bird

        perchance

        know

where sounds

        come from?

 Voice

        sound

        whistle

 Does the learner know?