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Is it true
thinking stands
at the
center of the world
at the
center of our reality
is all we
have our thoughts
words like
kayaks we paddle out on
close to the
water like a sports car
let’s row
out to that island of thinking
against the
tide of the already-thought
the force of
the dead waves
that drive
hard upon us
so a note of
terror is introduced
that we
might not make it
that we
certainly won’t make it
at which the
heart just laughs and rows
And the
lives that depend
on growing
grass in the desert
draining the
aquifers to keep
golf courses
green as it gets
naturally in
the east or Midwest
whose future
races will look back
in horror at
the profligacy
with which
we crucified the earth
but sooner
or later even the earth
has to die
at least the physical part
by which I
mean no excuse for
hastening it
along unless perhaps
it’s
brain-dead already and
in a
permanently vegetative state
and we are
only turning off the machines
You can walk
out of a room
and walk
right back in later
and
immediately know something for sure
like that
knowledge had been waiting
for your
return knowing
you would
return and that
you’d get it
all at once surprised
by the certainty
of your knowing
and dazzled
a little by its
sudden
appearance as if it
could lend
you some of its brilliance
and deftness
in passing
wherever
thoughts come from
stones in which
stutters a stream
I tried to
save you
but it didn’t
work
did I think
you
would save
me
and that’s
why
it didn’t
work
you couldn’t
either
you couldn’t
say why
you didn’t
want
to have to
try
easier to
let it
die that’s
why
how can
there
be sorrow
after Christ
and yet I
cry
On the day
you left me
I discovered
Nicanor Parra
I was torn
like a dog
through
garbage
one side of me
was dying for you
while the
other wanted to live
just to be
able to read more Parra
and to laugh
at each of his poems
while still
crying more
and more
feeling sorry
for you
knowing how much
you will
miss me
while I’ll always
have Parra
laughter and coffee con
leche please
How undo the
vine
of my
mistakes
now a
tangled mess
woven
tightly to the trellis
half-dead
with yet new tendrils
reaching out
frantically
for some new
foothold
long past
their flowering
my mistakes
stayed green
and thriving
though yes
brown now so
I can take
each leaf
and crumple it
in my hands
to dust
which I
refuse to do
Like a line
of chalk across
a blue board
the plane’s
trail like
the one the teacher
drew on the
first day of school
and can you
after fifty years
still draw a
straight line
morally
speaking that’s
our problem
we’re terrified
of making
mistakes possible
failure is
coming down
the pike
with me in mind
but no one
will be held accountable
because no
one will say ‘I was wrong’
while
everyone is most of the time
I get all
worked up
because you
won’t
make up your
mind
whether to
live or die
you keep
making
conditions
and then
getting
tired of the terms
and that
unconditional love
you keep
talking about
is what you
have to
bring to
life not what
you can
expect life
to bestow on
you
just for
being here
Now I have
lived long enough
and gone
through my personal piece
of
commonplace and amazing events
I can sit
out under the stars alone
and imagine
a million different
situations
going on at any one time
all over the
world I never feel
more alive
than when I watch
these random
pictures of things
going on in
the world in my mind
scenes of
totally unnecessary cruelty
next to
quiet scenes of ordinary life
like pages
turning in a story book
read by a
child fighting sleep
You have to
come to the end
of sex to
see that it has
nothing to
do with love
which can
only begin
where the
sex leaves off
where as
much as humanly
possible
human desire dies
into
something not physical
and not
about you
something
more important
than you
inconceivably
more
important than you
but which
has come to you
and has
given you all of itself
The way we
lie in the snow
to make angels is the way
the angels
lie in the clouds
to make
humans
and float
them down
to the
streets of the earth
perhaps more
obvious
in winter
outlined in snow
crusty
bundles making
their way
back to the place
they were
born those blue
fields
stretching so far out
with their
armies of angels
their armies
of men
All day I
searched
for the poem
that
stray cat I
did
the dishes
while I
waited I
danced
to my
favorite song
but then I
lost it
I forced
myself
to stop
crying inside
I couldn’t
find you
anywhere anyone
and now here
you are
poem right
under
my nose
actually
perched
there
like my glasses
Like the
roof of the world
falls in and
then it snows
the walls
still standing barely
but the
windows blown out
so grass
will grow indoors
come the
green time again
slowly
rebuilding the walls
each summer
but running out
of money for
a new roof by fall
and then it
snows on the grass indoors
just like I
told you it would
but we need
the snow to shut us up
in our
houses from which we run
screaming
into the fields to hear
if love or
spring is near
I tried to
explain my death to myself
by going out
and raking leaves
but myself
just doesn’t get it
you can’t
mean this dumb metaphor
of a million
lives swept away
and mine
just one among them
lives
beautiful but never to be known
if all you
have is a big yellow pile
of days to
be carried to the compost
here’s my
contribution to the life
of the
future in which I take
my millionth
part myself said
I don’t want
your pity
I just want
to live in New York City
that’s not
what I meant
you never
listen to me
I said I had
to abandon
a pile of
leaves half-raked
to write my
death for you
If you won’t
let the painter
into the painting
how will you
get
the painting
out of the painter
what paintings
would exist
without this
essential confusion
merely a
trope for the world
inasmuch as
painting seeks
a universal
audience of one
isn’t it
always some lack
that
painting speaks to
the lack of
you
the luck of
you (just say it)
the fuck of
you too
In the
stillness after the rain
Christ could
come again
or at least
the B train
that runs
past Mayakovski St.
which is
albeit a longer route
past the History
of Religion shop
with its
finest cheese and wines
it must be
the rain
has me
driveling again
listening to
the stillness
after the
rain waiting
for the
final drop
of love to
fall
stillest of
all
As a
meditative research project
I’ve decided
to grow zinnias indoors
through the
winter in my sunniest
window and
since they’re
in a movable
pot taking
them outside
on good days
if the
temperature allows
already about
twenty have sprouted
from seeds
saved for six years
into their
third set of (true) leaves
I wonder if
they’ll get full size
under these
household conditions
coddled and
watched against nature
forced to
bloom by opposite stars
While my tea
steeps
I write you
from the brink
of disaster
it’s a quiet
afternoon
often I am
falling toward
love but
suddenly I’m
rescued
who asked
you lord
to save me
you or your
minions who
operate
the levers
just teasing God
I love
teasing God
I say you’re
not all that
I mean it’s
not as if we’ve
never had Gods
before
never known
self-importance
I think if
you look
at the
general condition
of women in
the world
at any given
moment
you can get
a true picture
of the moral
development
of the human
heart
struggling
under the boot
of bullying
intellect
love gets as
far as the door
before it’s
pulled back in
another war
breaks out
among the
men as if
a woman
could be owned
as if the
earth itself
could be
owned and kept
The forks
with their legs crossed
cuddling next
to their husbands
the knives
their larger daughter
spoons
matronly with several
smaller
studious ones astride
in a drawer
in every house
in the world
but what animal
does it so
well so how
did it
happen the very thing
that would
heal our hell
is the thing
most hated
confused
curious thing of all
that the
heart is really a knot
tied so
tight have you ever
tried to
untie such a knot
in the
freezing cold
with your
bare fingers
as if your
life depended on it
