(Rock Lake, Canada)

In this country there is neither measure nor balance
To redress the dominance of rocks and woods,
The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds.

No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention,
No word make them carry water or fire the kindling
Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.

Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens:  one wants a vacation
Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice;
Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.

It took three days driving north to find a cloud
The polite skies over Boston couldn't possibly accommodate.
Here on the last frontier of the big, brash spirit

The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles;
The colors assert themselves with a sort of vengeance.
Each day concludes in a huge splurge of vermilions

And night arrives in one gigantic step.
It is comfortable, for a change, to mean so little.
These rocks offer no purchase to herbage or people:

They are conceiving a dynasty of perfect cold.
In a month we'll wonder what plates and forks are for.
I lean to you, numb as a fossil.  Tell me I'm here.

The Pilgrims and Indians might never have happened.
Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas;
The pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.

Around our tent the old simplicities sough
Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in.
We'll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn.

Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long

Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives

The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains

Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:

Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury

And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors

Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,

For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains

On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools

To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind

One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,

Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;

You defy godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.

Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.

The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.

Last summer's reeds are all engraved in ice
as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart's waste
grow green again? Who'd walk in this bleak place?

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious april walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower;
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock; each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here -- a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into ****** motley --
A treason not to be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

skip me, shun me
never touch me,
don't give in to my rushed lusting

bend me, break me
just forsake me,
leave me to my wild chasings

lose me, leave me
don't believe me,
when I say you'd get me screaming

haunt me, flaunt me
mock and taunt me,
tell the world you'll never want me

grab me, stab me
never have me,
tell me how you cannot stand me

fry me, tie me
crucify me,
leave me cuffed up; hang and dry me

beat me, bruise me
over-use me,
*****, abuse and tear into me

throw me, *******
get below me,
show me how you'll never stroke me

rip me, **** me
tongue and take me,
come inside and rearrange me

cut me, gut me
shame and **** me,
rip my heart out while you **** me

kick me, ditch me
pull-unstitch me,
spread my limbs and leave me twitching

tie me, lye-formaldehyde me,
out of sight and out of mind me,
live your life while I am dying,
pray no one will ever find me.

You look good with the lights real low
You look good when the music's slow
Tell me how you speak such prose
When all you do is say hello

You smell sweet in the summer rain
And you sound hot when you spit disdain

You curve my mind when you bend your back
and you give me what my body lacks

You feel like butter on my skin
You taste like cake when it's baked real thin

You look real cute when you're smoking soft
You look so nice when your clothes are off

Turn me into what you see
Cuz I can't tell what you see in me

I'm falling here into your hair
Soft and light like kindling fare

It's odd and sweet how you look so sour
When I come home too late an hour

It's crazy how you drive me sane
It's hazy how you clear my brain

Baby I'm just lying here
Wishing you were coming near
Hoping that you'll head my way
From your dimension out in space

Dazzle though, you have your place
and I'll just lie in shadows wait

Fractured prism glitter gleam
like a trick of light off a crystal peak;
You're nothing but a fleeting dream
A puff of smoke;
Dispersing steam

will you live with me in poverty?
will you stay with me till broke?

will you take my hand and walk with me?
will you hate that I still smoke?

will you let me buy my cigarettes
when it’s them or food to eat

will you let me dodge my student debt?
will you help me steal and cheat?

will you let me write on anything?
even our own ***?

will you hold me down and call my name?
will you be my worst regret?

will you tie your fingers in my hair
on the nights that I can’t sleep

can you watch strange films with me?
can you stand my brazen cheek?

will you run away when I get scared?
will you stay here when I go?

will you judge my nasty vices dear?
will you laugh at all my jokes?

can I bite your neck all night
can I wear your clothes


do you mind that I can’t cook a thing?
do you mind that I can’t even sing?
do you care that I can’t stand myself?
do you think that I’m an easy fling?


Will you leave me when I do too much
or will you hold me while I shake

will you let me wear more ink than cloth?
will you hunt the demons that I’ve got?

will you help me **** my darlings true?
will you love me when my beauty’s through?

will you hold my skin while it rots off?
will you drink my blood when it’s got clots?

will you cut me open when I’m dead?
will you share for free what I have said?

will you keep my heart in a glass jar?
will you sell my teeth at a bizarre?

will you read my bones to know your fate?
will you let my innards dress your cake?

Will you take all that I’ve ever done
and show it to the midnight sun
can you leave me lying on the ice
so I never know true paradise

For I want to wander this ****** place
until your body’s in decay
and when you can’t stand another day
I’ll deliver your sweet coupe de grace