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Only SkinAnd there was a booming above you |
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That night, black airplanes flew over the sea |
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And they were lowing and shifting like |
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Beached whales |
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Shelled snails |
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As you strained and you squinted to see |
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The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry |
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You froze in your sand shoal |
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Prayed for your poor soul |
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Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl |
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And when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke |
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My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke |
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And there was a silence you took to mean something: |
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Run, singFor alive you will evermore be |
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And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin' |
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Has gone east |
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While you're left to explain them to me |
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Released from their hairless and blind cavalry |
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With your hands in your pockets, stubbily running |
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To where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning |
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Well, what is this craziness? |
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This crazy talking? |
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You caught some small death when you were sleepwalking |
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It was a dark dream, darlin', it's over |
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The firebreather is beneath the clover |
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Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever |
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A toothless hound-dog choking on a feather |
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But I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever) |
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Down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb |
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That blooms but one day a year by the riverside - i'd bring it here: |
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Apply it gently |
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To the love you've lent me |
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While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed |
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And the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze |
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And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly |
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Gone treacly |
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Nearly slowed to a stop in this heat- in a frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath |
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Press on me: we are restless things |
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Webs of seaweed are swaddling |
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And you call upon the dusk |
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Of the musk of a squid |
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Shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib |
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Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes |
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I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it! |
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Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened |
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Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking |
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And when the fire moves away |
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Fire moves away, son |
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Why would you say |
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I was the last one? |
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Scrape your knee; it is only skin |
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Makes the sound of violins |
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And when I cut your hair, and leave the birds all of the trimmings |
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I am the happiest woman among all women |
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And the shallow |
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WaterStretches as far as |
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I can seeKnee-deep, trudging along |
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The seagull weeps; "so long" |
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I'm humming a threshing song |
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Until the night is over |
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Hold on!Hold on! |
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Hold your horses back from the fickle dawn |
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I have got some business out at the edge of town |
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Candy weighing both of my pockets down' |
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Til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them(and knowing how the common-folk condemnWhat it is I do, to you, to keep you warmBeing a woman, being a woman) |
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But always up the mountainside you're clambering |
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Groping blindly, hungry for anything: |
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Picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this? |
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Scrap of sassafras, eh sisyphus? |
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I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain |
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Little sister, he will be back again |
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I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain |
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Spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin' |
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Silently from all the blooming cherry trees |
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In tiny nooses, safe from everyone- nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done |
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Be a woman, be a woman! |
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Though we felt the spray of the waves |
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We decided to stay till the tide rose too far |
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We weren't afraid, cause we know what you are |
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And you know that we know what you are |
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Awful atoll |
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O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow! |
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Bawl, bellow: |
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Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow |
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Toddle and roll; |
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Teeth an impalpable bit of leather |
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While yarrow, heather and hollyhock |
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Awkwardly molt along the shore |
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Are you mine? |
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My heart?Mine anymore? |
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Stay with me for awhile |
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That's an awfully real gun |
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I know life will lay you down |
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As the lightning has lately done |
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Failing this, failing this, |
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Follow me, my sweetest friend |
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To see what you anointed in pointing your gun there |
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Lay it down! |
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Nice and slow! |
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There is nowhere to go, save up |
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Up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream |
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At the sight of my baby, out back: |
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Back on the patio watching the bats bring night in- while, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white |
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Wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped |
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Last week our picture window produced a half-word |
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Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird |
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We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake |
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And pant and labour over every intake |
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I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace |
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Then thought |
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I ought to take her to a higher place |
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Said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with youAnd though you die, bird, you will have a fine view" |
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Then in my hot hand |
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She slumped her sick weight |
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We tramped through the poison oak |
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Heartbroke and inchoate |
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The dogs were snapping |
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And you cuffed their collars |
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While I climbed the tree-house |
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Then how I hollered! |
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Well she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two |
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Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew(while, back in the world that moves, oftenAccording to the hoarding of these cluesDogs still run roughly aroundLittle tufts of finch-down) |
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And the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland |
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But his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless |
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While down in the lowlands the crops are all coming; |
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We have everything |
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Life is thundering blissful towards death |
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In a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness |
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You stopped by, |
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I was all alive |
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In my doorway, we shucked and jived |
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And when you wept, |
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I was gone: |
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See, I got gone when |
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I got wise |
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But I can't with certainty say we survived |
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Then down, and down |
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And down, and down |
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And down, and deeper |
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Stoke without sound |
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The blameless flames |
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You endless sleeper |
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Through fire below, and fire above, and fire within |
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Sleeped through the things that couldn't have been if you hadn't have been |
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And when the fire moves away |
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Fire moves away, son |
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And why would you say |
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I was the last one? |
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All my bones they are gone, gone, gone |
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Take my bones, |
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I don't need none |
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Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on! |
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Suck all day on a cherry stone |
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Dig a little hole, not three inches round |
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Spit your pit in a hole in the ground |
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Weep upon the spot for the starving of me! |
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Till up grow a fine young cherry tree |
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Well when the bough breaks, what'll you make for me? |
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A little willow cabin to rest on your knee |
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What'll I do with a trinket such as this? |
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Think of your woman, who's gone to the west |
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But I'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed! |
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Then i'll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head |
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Come across the desert with no shoes on! |
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I love you truly, or |
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I love no-one |
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FireMovesAway |
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Fire moves away, son |
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Why would you say |
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That I was the last one? |
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Last oneClear the room! |
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There's a fire, a fire, a fire |
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Get going, and |
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I'm going to be right behind you |
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And if the love of a woman or two, dear, |
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Couldn't move you to such heights, then all |
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I can doIs do, my darling, right by you |
