THE LAST TIME EVER

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1. Passport They did not recognize me in the shadows That suck away my color in this Passport And to them my wound was an exhibit For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs They did not recognize me, Ah. . . Don’t leave The palm of my hand without the sun Because the trees recognize me […]...
2. When A Woman Loves A Man When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, “I’ll never speak to you again,” She means, “Put your arms around me from behind As I stand disconsolate at the window.” He’s supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New […]...
3. Kafka's Hat With the rain falling Surgically against the roof, I ate a dish of ice cream That looked like Kafka’s hat. It was a dish of ice cream Tasting like an operating table With the patient staring Up at the ceiling....
4. Lover's Gifts XLIII: Dying, You Have Left Behind Dying, you have left behind you the great sadness of the Eternal In my life. You have painted my thought’s horizon with the sunset Colours of your departure, leaving a track of tears across the Earth to love’s heaven. Clasped in your dear arms, life and death United in me in a marriage bond. I […]...
5. January 2 The old war is over the new one has begun Between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday In New York light is the variable and structure The content according to Rodrigo Moynihan’s Self-portraits at the Robert Miller Gallery where The painter is serially pictured holding a canvas, Painting his mirror image, shirtless in summer, With […]...
6. Climbing High up in the apple tree climbing I go, With the sky above me, the earth below. Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair Which leads to the town I see shining up there. Climbing, climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the […]...
7. How Distant How distant, the departure of young men Down valleys, or watching The green shore past the salt-white cordage Rising and falling. Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen Simply to get away From married villages before morning, Melodeons play On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water Or late at night Sweet under the differently-swung stars, When […]...
8. My Soviet Passport I’d tear like a wolf at bureaucracy. For mandates my respect’s but the slightest. To the devil himself I’d chuck without mercy Every red-taped paper. But this… Down the long front of coupés and cabins File the officials politely. They gather up passports and I give in My own vermilion booklet. For one kind of […]...
9. The Price Of Parting Will they be there for you when you die? Will they hold your hands and cry until you’ve breathed Your last? Is it too much to ask? While love is free In tearful task the price of parting wears A mask of pain which none would feign To gladly greet. Yet love abed with death […]...
10. Has My Heart Gone To Sleep? Has my heart gone to sleep? Have the beehives of my dreams Stopped working, the waterwheel Of the mind run dry, Scoops turning empty, Only shadow inside? No, my heart is not asleep. It is awake, wide awake. Not asleep, not dreaming- Its eyes are opened wide Watching distant signals, listening On the rim of […]...
11. The Daughter Goes To Camp In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept Creeping over the smooth plastic To find your strong meaty little hand and Squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the Noble ribbing of the corduroy, Straight and regular as anything in nature, to Find the slack […]...
12. February 23 Light rain is falling in Central Park But not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West Where sun and sky are yellow and blue Winds are gusting on Washington Square Through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place But calm is the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue Which reminds me of something […]...
13. Sky Harbor The flock of pigeons rises over the roof, And just beyond them, the shimmering asphalt fields Gather their dull colored airliners. It is the very early night, A young brunette sits before the long Darkening glass of the airport’s west wall. She smells coffee burning And something else her old mother’s Bureau filled with mothballs. […]...
14. Monte Carlo Memories We took turns Watching seagulls there Walking on A tilted shore Of ancient waves And modern ships Sparkling in a Merchant’s breeze- Holding hands And getting wet In Monte Carlo Memories: You and I washing In a crystal sunset....
15. WHAT I DID IN THE MOONLIGHT I planted my grief In freshly turned earth A tree grows there now You should see the size of it I filled my wheel-barrow With all my pointless regrets I put them out by the curb A truck will pick them up on Thursday I spent some time following my cat She led me all […]...
16. Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me Last night The rain Spoke to me Slowly, saying, What joy To come falling Out of the brisk cloud, To be happy again In a new way On the earth! That’s what it said As it dropped, Smelling of iron, And vanished Like a dream of the ocean Into the branches And the grass below. […]...
17. Solidarity Song Peoples of the world, together Join to serve the common cause! So it feeds us all for ever See to it that it’s now yours. Forward, without forgetting Where our strength can be seen now to be! When starving or when eating Forward, not forgetting Our solidarity! Black or white or brown or yellow Leave […]...
18. Traveling Dream I am packing to go to the airport But somehow I am never packed. I keep remembering more things I keep forgetting. Secretly the clock is bolting Forward ten minutes at a click Instead of one. Each time I look away, it jumps. Now I remember I have to find The cats. I have four […]...
19. Full Moon One night as Dick lay half asleep, Into his drowsy eyes A great still light began to creep From out the silent skies. It was the lovely moon’s, for when He raised his dreamy head, Her surge of silver filled the pane And streamed across his bed. So, for a while, each gazed at each […]...
20. Freedom he drank wine all night of the 28th, and he kept thinking of her: The way she walked and talked and loved The way she told him things that seemed true But were not, and he knew the color of each Of her dresses And her shoes-he knew the stock and curve of Each heel […]...
21. Neither Snow When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow, The distinguishable flakes Blowing sideways, Looked like krill Fleeing the maw of an advancing whale. At least they looked that way to me From the taxi window, And since I happened to be sitting That fading Sunday afternoon In the very center of the […]...
22. "Me thinks this heart…&quot Me thinks this heart should rest awhile So stilly round the evening falls The veiled sun sheds no parting smile Nor mirth nor music wakes my Halls I have sat lonely all the day Watching the drizzly mist descend And first conceal the hills in grey And then along the valleys wend And I have […]...
23. MY FATHER I had a father once, the records say. He has gone away down the long avenue Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist Of his breath, his firm signature no more. No more holding down his hat in the wind, Running to catch the last post, he has gone Beyond the wind-shaped stones on […]...
24. Coffee & Dolls It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner, Pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers And Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely. Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun, The old guys sat inside on summer lawn chairs, Watching tv. The applause from the talk shows and game shows Washed out […]...
25. THE INNOCENT EYE I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight and distantly I saw the iron railings of the school I’d taught in thirty years before. The same brick buildings, hop […]...
26. Child of the Romans THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna. A train whirls by, and men and women at tables Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils, Eat steaks running with brown gravy, Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee. The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna, Washes […]...
27. Happiness There’s just no accounting for happiness, Or the way it turns up like a prodigal Who comes back to the dust at your feet Having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what Was lost, and take from its place the finest Garment, which […]...
28. Falling Asleep Voices moving about in the quiet house: Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert. Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom Crowded with whispering trees; across the park A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: And I know that the clouds are moving across the […]...
29. Goodbye S. S Go away girl, go away And let me pack my dreams Now where did I put those yesteryears Made up with broken seams Where shall I sweep the pieces My God they still look new There’s a taxi waiting at the door But there’s only room for you...
30. The Building Higher than the handsomest hotel The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see, All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall Like a great sigh out of the last century. The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing up At the entrance are not taxis; and in the hall As well as creepers hangs a […]...
31. Snowy Night Last night, an owl In the blue dark Tossed An indeterminate number Of carefully shaped sounds into The world, in which, A quarter of a mile away, I happened To be standing. I couldn’t tell Which one it was – The barred or the great-horned Ship of the air – It was that distant. But, […]...
32. She Tells Her Love She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And put out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow....
33. Words For Departure Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten. When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements, The window-sills were wet from rain in the night, Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots As among grotesque trees. Nothing was accepted, nothing looked beyond. Slight-voiced bells separated hour from hour, The afternoon sifted coolness And people drew together […]...
34. The Charm Of 5:30 It’s too nice a day to read a novel set in England. We’re within inches of the perfect distance from the sun, The sky is blueberries and cream, And the wind is as warm as air from a tire. Even the headstones in the graveyard Seem to stand up and say “Hello! My name is…” […]...
35. Happiness A man and a woman lie on a white bed. It is morning. I think Soon they will waken. On the bedside table is a vase Of lilies; sunlight Pools in their throats. I watch him turn to her As though to speak her name But silently, deep in her mouth At the window ledge, […]...
36. The Emperor Of Ice-Cream Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. […]...
37. Kitanomaru Park 1/ Here’s a picture of us Taking an impromptu walk Side by side in the park Our park, you dubbed Underneath the darkened Canopy of drizzle-wet foliage Two-three Japanese frogs Suspended their croaks And returned the quiet To the nearby loch 2/ This is the very photo That framed your radiance That warmed the shuddering […]...
38. The Doctor Will Return The surgical mask, the rubber teat Are singed, give off an evil smell. You seem to weep more now that heat Spreads everywhere we look. It says here none of us is well. The warty spottings on the figurines Are nothing you would care to claim. You seem to weep more since the magazines Began […]...
39. Home Thoughts Oh something just now must be happening there! That suddenly and quiveringly here, Amid the city’s noises, I must think Of mangoes leaning o’er the river’s brink, And dexterous Davie climbing high above, The gold fruits ebon-speckled to remove, And toss them quickly in the tangled mass Of wis-wis twisted round the guinea grass; And […]...
40. Bronzes I THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr By in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment For dinner and matinees and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of […]...