She’s rosy
Or ice cold
Jealous and envious
In bright shades of green
Changing every second
She can’t make up her mind
Flickering from one thought to the next
Moods shifting and sliding
Through bipolar extremes

Arctic ideas
Swirl in her head
She sings
In an eerie lament
Listen
She paints her world
Across the sky

The emotion shows transparently
Not hiding the vivid red anger
Or the tender deep ocean pain
Her soul is clear,
Untouched, and easy to read
Moving and running through the night
Flying brushstrokes unleashed in the darkness
Brighter than flames
The reckless fire burns higher
Reaching the stars
Atmospheres away
No longer hidden
By the harsh light of day

The echoes of silence whisper
Before you first kiss her
And the cruel love vender
Tempts you with splendor.
With a touch so tender
An elephant won’t remember.

What’s to remember?
After the three words she’ll whisper
With a look so tender
Directions to kiss her
And feeling of splendor
From this stomach butterfly vender.

The memory vender
Will cause you to constantly remember
The way she makes you feel splendor.
Sorrow is at a whisper
And it’s silent when you kiss her
And lock hands tight and tender.

Love is a butterfly beautiful and tender,
Sold carefully by a careless vender.
Pitching his sale every time you kiss her
With his silver tongue you won’t remember,
Love can hurt, cuts can be made out of a whisper
But even roses have thorns and sorrow its splendor.

How come I feel splendor
When my words touch tender
Like the hand of a whisper
And the feel good vendor
Sales. She’ll always remember
The way you make her feel when you kiss her.

So never forget to kiss her.
Because it makes her feel splendor
And will make you both remember
Through the touch so tender,
Why you sought out the cruel love vendor
And can’t keep your three words at a whisper

So kiss her tender,
Serenade her with splendor and be the vendor.
Make her remember the echoes of silence whisper.

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle's flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own -- but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it's late. And the truth is laborious.


Berkeley, 1980.


Trans. Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky

She tap, tap, tapped her cheap pen
on the yellowing paper.
The ****** paper stared back
a blank, unflinching glare.
Typical.
Frenetically, restlessly,
she set her own metronome faster
with the clicking of her pen
than the outdated clock sulking in the corner
could possibly keep up with.
Suddenly, decisively,
She pushed herself away from the desk.
The screech of the chair’s harsh legs
across a cold, unforgiving concrete floor
filled up the whole room with noise.
Noise was all around her,
empty noise,
invading her ears
her head
her brain.
Stop!
She needed them out.
The room was silent—
Save for her
and the sounds
of an old room
with a dying light
and a faded, ticking clock.
She closed her tired eyes and
drew deeply from the cigarette between her
thin, voiceless lips,
then smudged her little addiction out
leaving a burn stain at the top of her paper.
Might as well,
she figures,
not much good comin’ from this paper
anyways.
And anyways,
the flickering light
in this God-forsaken old office
wasn’t doing her any good, either.
She knew it was time to pack up,
head home,
but she needed this demon inside her
to work for her,
not against her.
‘Writers Anonymous’
that’s where she needed to be—
what she needed
to be a part of.
She had things to say.
And she couldn’t say them.
Flick, flick, bzzz.
The light sputtered,
limping dejectedly through it’s own current,
with a halfhearted commitment to shedding light.
Hanging over her head
just like the ideas
she couldn’t force her hand
to capture on paper.
They needed to be confined, here,
she knew.
These thoughts, buzzing around her head,
like the anxious flicking
and bzzing of the bulb dangling precariously above,
needed to be trapped in this paper,
immortalized externally,
a burden laid down
in incriminating ink before her.
That’s what she needed, she knew.
but no matter how often
or how hard
or how intense
she tap, tap, tapped her pen
on the rickety wooden desk
over the silent white paper
with the cigarette stain in the top corner—
those **** buzzing thoughts
cluttering up her brain
would keep sputtering through life.
Writers Anonymous.
That’s what she needed.

“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho’ fanned by Conquest’s crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail,
Nor e’en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse, from Cambria’s tears!”
Such were the sounds that o’er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
“To arms!” cried Mortimer, and couched his quiv’ring lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o’er cold Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air)
And with a master’s hand, and prophet’s fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
“Hark, how each giant-oak and desert-cave
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!
O’er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria’s fatal day,
To high-born Hoel’s harp, or soft Llewellyn’s lay.

“Cold is Cadwallo’s tongue,
That hushed the stormy main;
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon’s shore they lie,
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th’ affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country’s cries—
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land:
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with ****** hands the tissue of thy line.

“Weave, the warp! and weave, the woof!
The winding sheet of Edward’s race:
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year and mark the night
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro’ Berkley’s roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.

“Mighty victor, mighty lord!
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes:
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm:
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his ev’ning prey.

“Fill high the sparkling bowl,
The rich repast prepare;
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair
Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle bray,
Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And thro’ the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius, London’s lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight ****** fed,
Revere his consort’s faith, his father’s fame,
And spare the meek usurper’s holy head.
Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled Boar in infant-gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o’er the accursed loom,
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.

“Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.)
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done.)
Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:
In yon bright track that fires the western skies
They melt, they vanish from my eyes.
But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon’s height
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight,
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.
All hail, ye genuine kings! Britannia’s issue, hail!

“Girt with many a baron bold
Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old
In bearded majesty, appear.
In the midst a form divine!
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line:
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,
Attempered sweet to ****** grace.
What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings,
Waves in the eye of heav’n her many-coloured wings.

“The verse adorn again
Fierce War, and faithful Love,
And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest.
In buskined measures move
Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub-choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;
And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire.
Fond impious man, think’st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?
Tomorrow he repairs the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me: with joy I see
The diff’rent doom our fates assign.
Be thine Despair and sceptred Care;
To triumph and to die are mine.”
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain’s height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine--
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing ***** at her,
She leaning out of her *** toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--
And that was scary--
So when that snuffling ****** of a maid
Threw her, *** and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

there's one thing I will never forget,
when a man tells you things like
"I like good clothes, fast cars,
whiskey,
and you."
run as far as your heels will take you,
hell,
take the first train to
some city in the middle of nowhere
shed your fur coat and fishnets
for some red flannel and boots.
there is nothing more dangerous
than the fancy of a man.

my mother always told me that,
when she'd brush out my taut blonde curls
into thin, sleek waves.
she brushed my hair that way until
my ******* grew humble and my legs
felt more like fins, slicing through the cold winters
and hot summers like a pair of scissor blades
dancing on the wind,
like my growing dreams, as a poet, an old soul, and a woman.

I remember the first time I tasted sin
was in the back of that old bar in Arkansas
taking shots of whiskey and dancing
in the hot moonlight
my summer dress slipped off as we fell
off the dock
two bodies fumbling through the folds
of icy water, your hands pressing mine into your stomach, screaming
crisply through the dark of night
"can you feel the beating of my heart?"

mama took me to church and washed your name out of my mouth
with song and scripture, tied me to the altar
and wouldn't let me run.
now I'm always running, running from her, running to you,
my legs more like fins, once again
slicing through hotel sheets, hot baths, and
my dreams, lord, my dreams
simply aged nightmares
those complex beasts await me here
one more whiskey, love,
and I swear
I will find you.

Buying leeks
and walking home
    under the bare trees.