This wall is a great stairway, walls
are things that shoot up, keep out, line
the places where we mark the halls

that carry our names. The busts
of this one and that one, this history
is in the hard labor of hearts, thrusts

of piston and valve. I sit down
at the first house, dizzy at the ...Read more

Your eye moving
left to right across
the plowed lines

looking to touch down

on the first

shoots coming up

like a frieze

from the dark where

pale roots

and wood-lice gorge

on mold.

Red haze atop

the far ...Read more

Sisterhood of the Good Death, Bahia, Brazil
August 14, ca. 1850
Tomorrow, after we've led the procession
following Our Lady of the Good Death
back to our chapel, two hundred Sisters,
in our white eyelet headwraps and dresses
and the company of the Ancestors,
will dance a Glory samba, with our neighbors <...Read more

Here is how I control my heart: I string each thought one behind the next, like beads.
I wear the answers I am waiting to give. The jewelry becomes heavy as soil.
My long blink is a scream & a yes. There are things I have to say, but they do not yet know the questions they must ask. & a blink is no word; if they misunderstand-
...Read more

at 93, you determined to pick up and go-
and stay gone. the job nkrumah called you to,
to create, at last, your encyclopedia africana
(encompassing a continent chipped

like wood beneath an axe, a large enough
diaspora to girdle the globe, and a mere four
thousand years) was either well-deserved
...Read more

My wife's new pink slippers
have gay pom-poms.
There is not a spot or a stain
on their satin toes or their sides.
All night they lie together
under her bed's edge.
Shivering I catch sight of them
and smile, in the morning.
Later I watch them
descending the stair,
hurrying through the ...Read more

By the stream I dream in calm delight, and watch as in a glass,
How the clouds like crowds of snowy-hued and white-robed maidens pass,
And the water into ripples breaks and sparkles as it spreads,
Like a host of armored knights with silver helmets on their heads.
And I deem the stream an emblem fit of human life may go, <...Read more

I work a lot and live far less than I could,
but the moon is beautiful and there are
blue stars . . . . I live the chaste song of my
heart.
-Garcia Lorca to Emilia Llanos Medinor,
November 25, 1920

The moon is in doubt
over whether to be
a man or a woman.

There've been rumors, <...Read more

Nicholas turned eleven two
Months he ago a he ago
I after him a-running still

But quietly and far away


For the first time turned far away

Without me or without that day

Me seeing him on all the bright-

ness gone the day the snow had gone
...Read more

A gift is a risk. Let roses be the prodrome.
It's like it dropped a gold and a silver
ring with its name on it
in my brain. That was the gift

before the storm. It sent you a stumbling
block. Just scribble yes or no

on the form. Now every time the doorbell
rings I think someone's sent me one...Read more

Why not now go toward the things I love?
I have gazed the black flower blooming
her animal eye. Gacela oscura. Negra llorona.
Along the banks I follow her, astonished,
gathering grief's petals she lets fall like horns.

Like Jacob's angel, I touched the garnet of her hip,
and she knew my name, and I knew...Read more

Place its toothpicked pit in water, watch the grist
of its insides grow. Witness its populous bloom,
honeycombed with rough. Its cobblestones grip
the heart in its mitt, a closed fist thickened

and gritty as silt. The swamp of the plumb beat
adamant as weeds. The dish of which is salted

by ...Read more

not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;

here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space-

designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.



About this poem
"He Made ...Read more

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We'll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire to shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek ...Read more

I like to be alone in someone else's house,
practicing my cosmic long distance wink.
I send it out toward a mirror
some distracted bored cosmonaut dropped
on an asteroid hurtling vastly
closer to our star. No one watches
me watching thousands
of television hours, knitting
a golden bobcat out of
...Read more

All the world is one, like an angry deity's essence dropped in the ocean
becoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens Paris
advanced warplanes to Japan-what happens? Egypt, Yemen, Syria
What happens on the Lunar New Year
I want to know, Professor, are there names for these mercurial moves?
A lexicon & vibration ...Read more

Things you know but can't say,
the sort of things, or propositions
that build up week after week at the end of the day,

& have to be dredged
by the practical operators so that their grosser cargo
& barges & boxy schedules can stay.

The great shovels and beaks and the rolling gantries
of ...Read more

I sit and meditate-my dog licks her paws
on the red-brown sofa
so many things somehow
it all is reduced to numbers letters figures
without faces or names only jagged lines
across the miles half-shadows
going into shadow-shadow then destruction the infinite light

here and there cannot be ...Read more

Before you have kids, you get a dog.
Then when you get a baby, you wait for the dog to die.
When the dog dies,
it's a relief.

When your babies aren't babies, you want a dog again.

The uses of the body,
you see where they end.

But we are only in the middle,
only mid-way.
...Read more

Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
The little lesser hills which compass thee,
Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call
Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy
And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,
Above ...Read more