Eyelash on my lover's cheek:
It is for you the sparrows speak.
Notice when I brush you off
It bends their beaks from bold to meek.

Or else the summer nimbus swells
And rains and quiets—and quells
Their chirping hunger with the humid
Breeze we, in our slumber, smell.

What shy, tired words all softly utter
To the weeping of the gutter!
Hunger buried, moved to thirst,
Our eyes, our hearts, the sparrows flutter.

At the soot-shoed ridge where a foot falls south
Rise the brows of a hill,
Flows a fluid mouth,
Which foams as its lips kiss a stalwart crag,
Whose legs now still
And will ever drag
Up the slow glacis where a hillbrow breaks,
Whence the soft soil spills
And a tree bough rakes
At the cold dense clouds and the heavy haze,
Whose brisk bath fills
The barren white days
From the quaking cliffs to the balmy bays.

Again the clay, again the seed and womb
And cradle, pregnant by and with herself;
Again the shell: the ****** in bloom;
Again descendant from the leafy shelf.

The seedling, memory in shallow birth,
Sprung only from the tree she will become.
Roots where she bent her elbow from the earth:
The hardy hand that holds the apple's thumb.

Again the root, again the stem and breast
and pram; what loves the tree if not the sprout?
The hand-me-downs again are hemmed and dressed
Again the boughs will flourish up and out.

The poet, reaching skyward now as then,
Is just a little bough again, again.

I. Erosion

I could ***** a monument to death
And carve my name and epitaph in stone
But words are just as fleeting as my breath—
My monument is made of flesh and bone.

Indeed, like granite, filed by the rain,
Whose names and dates will ever be unfound,
We leave them lying here who we have lain
As headstones toppled wanton to the ground.

But while their names will wash away in years
And melt into the soil with their flesh,
We, left living, welcome weather's tears
And let the showers wash our bodies fresh.


II. Plots

What rope is this, tied round a plot of land
To separate the sacred from the plain
And make uncomfortable on which to stand
These grounds that, like all others, suffer rain?

The plots on which I make my daily rounds
Are no less sacred than the breathless fields;
The same grass grows in fair and fertile towns
As in the lands from which we draw no yields.


III. Ideals

What ideal immortalizes dying
With figurines that celebrate decay,
Which stand ironic of their subjects lying—
Staying while their subjects waste away?

What ideal shapes stone to mask the slough
And sculpts a youthful bust out of the sickly?
One human form is monument enough.
I hope it crumbles quickly.

I.
Dust ascends
almost up to
the lamp and

curls around:
absconds
like cold embers

II.
unseen.

As lips and flesh on chilling cheeks are cherried
   With the morning's touch,
   Although they wrinkle in the twilight's clutch,
So let day fade
   And night parade;
So let the sun be buried
   But march its fires on the moonlight's crutch;

And if the sun in summer sky burns sere
   But in the winter white
   Can't but reflect itself in icy light,
Then let it burn
   The eyes that spurn
   The turning of the year;
Then let its fires singe all ling'ring sight.

As lips and tongues in chilly cheeks defend
   Their shape in shallow plots;
   Seem capable of speaking as they rot,
So peace is sought
   Though war is fought
   Not till all battles end;
   Not till we cremate those we last forgot;

And if our sons in some strange sinking hour
   Find their hunger slain,
   But avarice and rivalry remain,
Then let our ashes'
   Cinders' flashes
   Dilate and devour
   That surfeit our expansion sustains.

keyboard's
ball-point pen's
tip's
right swing

sleep's
flirt

paper's
index finger's
knuckle's
loud tear
behind
pen's
collision

nerves'
nervous jolt

pen's
plastic's
veneer's
collision

another's
next
forgotte­n

Without the April wind to send their song,
The mourning doves of Middlesex are singing
And will be heard never again from long
Away, if graduation bells are ringing

And now November rains erode the nests
That mourning doves assembled in the gardens
From where their mild and wind-warm coos caressed
My ear, to quiet earth that cools and hardens

Learn
that feet may mar Juturna's spring
with trampled dust debris,
but wind will move the tarnished tide to sea;
that though she flies, the cooing dove
will never know to sing;
that no decree
from up above
can save our love;
that weakened, we
can't but a string
in Cupid's crowded quiver
shove

Know
that I step once into a river
but cannot again,
for waters now were not the waters then,
and I and myself past are different men;
that if you douse the flame of care
I'll greet you with a shiver;
that even when
the stream runs rare
or flame lacks air
in Neptune's den,
they still deliver
till there's not a thing
to spare

Were we split or shaken by qualms and quarrels,
Quaked from boughs in bushels no longer cherished;
Were we rocked from resting upon our laurels,
Laureates perished,

Sense would part from substance, go unattended,
Try to sense itself, but not sensing ever;
Substance lacking sense would be left unmended,
Parted forever:

Blue apart from sky, for the air was looted;
Red not rock nor flame nor a beating bloodline;
Grassless green, the sod and the seed uprooted;
Light without sunshine;

Heat without the sun's heavy tide of summer;
Sweet without a tongue nor a licking lapping;
Beat without the blow of the drum, nor drummer
Steadily clapping.

Could you bear to tear our ownselves asunder?
Rather, let us bend at the laurel lightly,
Quiver little to strain not the bough whereunder
Fasten us tightly.