Adam's Complaint
Some people, No matter what you give them, Still want the moon. The bread, The salt, White meat and dark, Still hungry. The marriage bed And the cradle, Still empty arms. You give them
People at Night
A night that cuts between you and you And you and you and you And me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing Through a crowd. We won’t Look for each other, either- Wander
Contraband
The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason. That’s why the taste of it Drove us from Eden. That fruit Was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder For use
Wanting The Moon
Not the moon. A flower On the other side of the water. The water sweeps past in flood, Dragging a whole tree by the hair, A barn, a bridge. The flower Sings on the
An excerpt from "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus"
iiGloria Praise the wet snow Falling early. Praise the shadow My neighor’s chimney casts on the tile roof Even this gray October day that should, they say, Have been golden. Praise The invisible sun
In Mind
There’s in my mind a woman Of innocence, unadorned but Fair-featured and smelling of Apples or grass. She wears A utopian smock or shift, her hair Is light brown and smooth, and she Is
Pleasures
I like to find What’s not found At once, but lies Within something of another nature, In repose, distinct. Gull feathers of glass, hidden In white pulp: the bones of squid Which I pull
Seeing For A Moment
I thought I was growing wings- It was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step Into the fire- It was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned As a child:
The Elves
Elves are no smaller Than men, and walk As men do, in this world, But with more grace than most, And are not immortal. Their beauty sets them aside From other men and from
The Ache Of Marriage
The ache of marriage: Thigh and tongue, beloved, Are heavy with it, It throbs in the teeth We look for communion And are turned away, beloved, Each and each It is leviathan and we
The Rainwalkers
An old man whose black face Shines golden-brown as wet pebbles Under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of dis- Proportionate size, in the rain, In the relaxed early-evening avenue. The small sleek
The Well
At sixteen I believed the moonlight Could change me if it would. I moved my head On the pillow, even moved my bed As the moon slowly Crossed the open lattice. I wanted beauty,
Variation On A Theme By Rilke
A certain day became a presence to me; There it was, confronting me a sky, air, light: A being. And before it started to descend From the height of noon, it leaned over And
Intrusion
After I had cut off my hands And grown new ones Something my former hands had longed for Came and asked to be rocked. After my plucked out eyes Had withered, and new ones
The Secret
Two girls discover The secret of life In a sudden line of Poetry. I who don’t know the Secret wrote The line. They Told me (through a third person) They had found it But