3. SHADOW BANQUET (12/30-31/86)

A group of businessmen in tuxedos
And women in formal wear at this banquet,
Seated on folding chairs, at folding tables
Placed at right angles, draped with worn white cloths

Are served by waitresses, black-skirted, white-bloused,
Who ladle boiled potatoes, turnips, carrots
Cooked mushy, out of dented kitchen pots.

This outrage makes us jovial and festive.

A woman to my right, in tan array,
With wry smile, stretches out her hand in greeting.

I see she is barefoot; so are we all:
This escalates our sense of celebration.

I still recall her wiggling painted toenails.
Somewhere we are still smiling, holding hands.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  4. TO THE HILLSIDE (12/5-86-01/02/87)

You stand waiting on the dark left-sloping hillside
In silhouette, backlit by golden light,
Your arms outstretched as if you would hold me,
Your face obscure; yet I know who you are.

Sharp radiance around you betrays not
A single fold of garment, hint of feature.
How have I merited this much vision?

When I saw you waiting, peace and well-being
Flooded me, pain and sorrow fell away.

Still pain comes often, crushing: let it come.
I know your strength, and that you are present.
Why you wait for me is a great mystery.

It becomes clear that pain will overwhelm me.
Then I will come to you on your hillside.                                  [Home]

 

 

 

  6. EVEN AS WE SLEEP (01/18-19/87)

Sleep pervades the library of the brain,
Returning to vast dim stacks the books containing
The chapters of the heartaches of the day.

The state of slumber accepts all who cross
Unguarded borders of its sanctuary:
The home of dream-dappled oblivion.

Rest, then, from devising unnecessary
Schemes to circumvent possible appearance
Of doom or its manifest messengers:

Tomorrow burns below the East horizon;
Will leap the world, just as the fiery lion,
Springing uncoiled, fearless from the shadows,

Will arch high through the day toward its prey:
Forever-receding West, elusive night.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  9. RELATIVE (02/04-05/87)

Closed eyelids pull the dark down over me;
This dark inside is not blank, but reveals
In here and out there adumbrated forms,
Discernible, soundless, ever-moving.

In here and out there it is all the same:
Tomorrow, yesterday, late in the evening,
I sense today and always corridors,
Dimly-defined with stick-thin broken lines

And arcs, reptilian scales in nighttime snow;
Faint unlit hallways leading everywhere:
Outside from inside, inside from outside,
Omnidirectional, constantly changing,

Where nearly palpable myriad swarms
Assemble, disassemble, reassemble.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  10. A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE (02/16-17/87)

We move again toward that which awaits us:
Reluctantly we rise and are driven
As slowly as aeons, as fast as light,
And until we can escape, we are lost.

We have moved this way before, you and I,
Toward goals we refuse to acknowledge.
We are moving in all directions at once,
Set in motion by a cataclysm

Such as an earthquake or a falling leaf,
Destroyed by virus, reborn by protozoa,
Sprung clanging together and apart
As muffled gongs vibrate in turbid fluids,

And as we both are driven, we are sinking
In rapids, pools and shallows of our progress.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  11. UPSTAIRS (03/17/87)

My tired eyes are windows revealing
The attic of my mind: looking outside,
An overcast gray sky may be discerned,
And small twig ends of leafless tree branches.

Dark warped pine crossbeams, slanting, enfold
In failing day a limitless supply
Of random cobwebs engineered by spiders
Who trickle down on monofilament.

The baggage in here is disordered, dusty,
Looming constantly in teetering heaps,
Attenuated light dulling colors.

The floor is strewn with dog-eared, crack-spined books,
Most read, only a few left unopened.
These latter should prove interesting indeed.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  12. FIGHTING IN THE SHADE (03/18/87)

I launch my arrows into mortal combat
And all around me clouds of whizzing spearheads
As dark as those of ancient Xerxes' armies
Hiss whispers of ultimate disorder.

These arrows, ever flying, never fall.
Outnumbered, we stand fighting in the shade
In ranks on Ares' bloody dancing-floor,
Trading causes like changing uniforms,

Tripping over splayed ranks of the fallen,
Fearing the inevitable defeat.

I have kept track of these winged messengers,
Bees zipping into history. One arrow,
Still unaccounted for, will pierce the past
And force remembrance only of the future.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  13. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (04/07/87)

Beside me in the silent Mississippi
Swirl brown opaque whirling currents southward:
Broad turgid rumpled sheets, between tenuous
Embankments, glittering in spring morning sunlight.

I stand down the slope by the crumbling verge
Remembering the gray December day
When childhood sped across this bridge downstream,
A low-slung trestle cantilevered west,

Where four decades have squeezed through this nexus
Of dilapidated cotton warehouses
And rusted railway sidings below Memphis.

The gray-haired child returns among magnolias;
The river carries fallen dogwood blossoms,
And memories spring up like dandelions.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  14. CATHEDRAL (04/15/87)

Lying prone, massive on the ground, gray rock
Arms outstretched, body buttress-corseted,
Your head contains the brain of sanctuary;
Your feet point skyward west in shoes of towers.

To climb the footworn steps toward your nave,
To enter spectra of clerestory
Flung in the gloom of transept, speckling niches,
Basking beneath ornate sanguine rose windows,

Surrounded by a feast of aspirations,
We enter a compound where leaping spirit
Reposes captured under tall groined vaults.

What exists here stored up by straining stone
Containing vast volumes of murmured prayer?

Celebration of life beyond the mind.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  16. BIRDS (06/15-20/87)

Startled from crackling grasses, pheasants buzz
In braces, rising high above their cover,
Freckled wing feathers spatulate, feeling
The relative solidity of air.

Flushed in the blue afternoon, above dark
Shadowed scrub and thorn thickets radiating
Discordant humming of stirred summer insects,
They fly adroitly into camouflage.

Not far across the bay in clumsy thunder,
Warping the sunlight in lethal heatwaves,
Birds of the minds of men groan from the runways,

Mocking the quiet grace of avian flight
With trailing soot of half-burnt kerosene,
Painting the tidal marsh with greasy rainbows.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  17. HIGH SUMMER (07/13-14-87)

Step out into the broth of mid-July:
All leaves lie limp in morning steambath heat;
All people struggle, torpid, through oppression:
The elderly agasp, the young sweat-soaked,
As clothing sticks to backs of all who wear it.

The sun burns sullenly through stinging haze,
Casting gold tints on murky foliage,
Brick buildings, undulating asphalt streets.

In baked front yards the blue hydrangeas droop;
Petunias, hollyhocks and honeysuckle
Compete with ragweed, jimson, timothy.

What foolish ends merit accomplishment
By those determined to propel themselves
Through summer's overwhelming viscous aspic?                   [Home]

 

 

 

  18. MIDSUMMER EVENING (07/17/87)

Small children scream delighted in the sunset
Among night-whistling birds in silhouettes
Of breathing trees in quickly-graying light.

Adults indulge the young, allowing them
The pleasure of late play on fragrant lawns,
Fresh-mown, amid neat shrubbery.

The summer sun has fled; the moon and stars
Slowly become apparent overhead.

Streetlights flick on, their radiant vapor
Garish, distant, diffused through twisting leaves
On faces and forms, ashen, harsh and dim.

Do these complacent beings realize,
Among fluorescent bursts of fireflies
That now is only now and not forever?                    [Home]

 

 

 

  23. GREENWOOD (09/08-10/87)

Come with me this September afternoon;
We will walk through a cemetery's lanes.

Chiseled, smooth granite headstones, gray, brown, rose,
Planted plumb but frivolously tilted
By freezes, thaws and casual root networks,
Rise in uneven ranks from neat-mown grass.

Stone angels, guardians of stone, weep stone
Above web-inhabited mausolea;
Marks boldly cut in rock, graven in bronze,
Succumb to dust, vanish in verdigris.

Beneath each name: poignant arithmetic.

Decayed bouquets lie mingled with live flowers
Beneath stolid trees. Iron spiked fences
Press history into the neighborhood.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  30. BETH (09/28/86)

Suddenly, brilliant feminine idea,
You stand before me, flawless, statuesque.
Back-length flax hair touch-close, dark eyes dilated,
Pink mouth curled worldly, an eyebrow raised.

Your lips move silently; I hear no speech,
Yet urgently you ask: Where have you been?
Before I can respond, I am awake,
Bleakly abed in dawn, remembering:

You happened to me all those years ago
When, woman among children, you came to me,
Sat on my lap, embraced me, then stood back.

Still lustrous, eighteen, smooth as satin,

You, ember in my memory, glow again:
I am as helpless now as I was then.                  [Home]

 

 

 

  33. CARTHAGE (12/12/87)

Painstaking digging in alluvial earth
Reveals your eyes: black holes in domes of bone.
The crumple of your armored skeleton
Explains that you succumbed in ancient wars.

Your bodies, hacked to pieces by short swords
Of densely-shielded legions on the plain
Are powder blown by mistral and simoom
Through funerary ruins of your causes.

Salubrious shores where sailing craft were beached
And minions gathered to the eagle standard
Are lapsed to silted pestilential swamps,
Damaged beyond repair by victory.

Your eyes, black holes peering from domes of bone,
Reflect the stares of millions more to come.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  42. HOREB (04/25-05/05/88)

Dead poppies punctuate the frying sand;
Their dried blood flakes beneath our stone-bruised feet,
As painfully we plod through midday heat
Undulant over broken desert land.

Seared scarps and hills of this desolate place,
The yellow powder air of vacant skies;
Our destiny in yet another guise
Deposits us against this mountain face.

Driven we limp through flint, propelled by hate
Through scree where vegetation never bloomed.
We stagger squinting, sweating: we are doomed.

A scrub acacia will enunciate
Through flames this message of our dreadful fate:
That we will burn and never be consumed.                   [Home]

 

 

 

  45 OUR FATHERS MARCH (05/30-31/88)

Memorial Day morning sunshine warms
Old Legionnaires as they debark from ancient
School buses. Hailing one another, they
Shake hands, pat backs, assemble by barricades,

Dress ranks, march carrying identifying
Banners and flags along Fourth Avenue
Behind military trucks, their paces
Firm, slapping black and brown shoes on macadam,

Swinging into distant glittering haze,
Red, white and blue dissolving in spring heat.
Their cortege carries memory to the future;
The neighborhood is transient emptiness.

Yet: just before police lines yield to traffic,
We sense relentless force of silent footfalls.                   [Home]

50. AUTOPSY (8/15/88)

Dead you were to me, yet still much alive
With open eyes as I deconstructed
You; your blank stare regarded me while I
Hesitantly stacked various segments

Of your bloodless corpse. It had to be this
Way. You realized it, I realized
It: resistance of butchered meat, your eyes
Purblind glass, watching as you lay recumbent.

Even as I performed this operation,
And despite my license to do so, I
Fretted with feelings that I must confess

This procedure as a crime and proclaim
My guilt before some indifferent court
Whose justice sentences me to remembrance.                   [Home]