Side by side, not
hand in hand: I watch you
walking in the summer garden—things
that can’t move
learn to see; I do not need
to chase you through
the garden; human beings leave
signs of feeling
everywhere, flowers
scattered on the dirt path, all
white and gold, some
lifted a little by
the evening wind; I do not need
to follow where you are now,
deep in poisonous field, to know
the cause of your flight, human
passion or rage: for what else
would you let drop
all you have gathered?

You keep me waiting in a truck
with its one good wheel stuck in the ditch,
while you piss against the south side of a tree.
Hurry. I’ve got nothing on under my skirt tonight.
That still excites you, but this pickup has no windows
and the seat, one fake leather thigh,
pressed close to mine is cold.
I’m the same size, shape, make as twenty years ago,
but get inside me, start the engine;
you’ll have the strength, the will to move.
I’ll pull, you push, we’ll tear each other in half.
Come on, baby, lay me down on my back.
Pretend you don’t owe me a thing
and maybe we’ll roll out of here,
leaving the past stacked up behind us;
old newspapers nobody’s ever got to read again.

Now we are like that flat cone of sand
in the garden of the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto
designed to appear only in moonlight.

Do you want me to mourn?
Do you want me to wear black?

Or like moonlight on whitest sand
to use your dark, to gleam, to shimmer?

I gleam. I mourn.

When they were wild
When they were not yet human
When they could have been anything,
I was on the other side ready with milk to lure them,
And their father, too, each name a net in his hands.

They will say it is feeling or mood, or the world, or the sound
The world makes on summer night while everyone sleeps—
Trees awash with wind, something like that, something
As imprecise. But don’t be fooled. The world
Is only a mirror returning its image. They will say
It is about particulars, making a case for this or that,
But it tries only to be itself. The low hills, the freshets,
The long dresses, even the lyre and dulcimer mean nothing.
The music it makes is mainly its own. So far
From what it might be, İt always turns into longing,
Spinning itself out for desire’s sake, desire for its own end,
one word after another erasing the world and leaving instead
The invisible lines of its calling: Out there, out there.

It is midnight.
He comes up the walk
and knocks at the door.
I rush to greet him.
He stands there weeping,
shaking a letter at me.
He tells me it contains
terrible personal news.
He falls to his knees.
“Forgive me! Forgive me!” he pleads.

I ask him inside.
He wipes his eyes.
His dark blue suit
is like an ink stain
on my crimson couch.
Helpless, nervous, small,
he curls up like a ball
and sleeps while I compose
more letters to myself
in the same vein:

“You shall live
by inflicting pain.
You shall forgive.”

Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me
When I pluck them;
And writhe, and twist,
And strangle themselves against my fingers,
So that I can hardly weave the garland
For your hair?
Why do they shriek your name
And spit at me
When I would cluster them?
Must I kill them
To make them lie still,
And send you a wreath of lolling corpses
To turn putrid and soft
On your forehead
While you dance?

Oh you,
Who came upon me once
Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing,
Why did you not strangle me before speaking
Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words
And then leave me to the mercy
Of the forest bees?

You want to get a good look at yourself. You stand before a mirror,
you take off your jacket, unbutton your shirt, open your belt, unzip
your fly. The outer clothing falls from you. You take off your shoes
and socks, baring your feet. You remove your underwear. At a loss,
you examine the mirror. There you are, you are not there.

When I am alone,
The wind in the pine-trees
Is like the shuffling of waves
Upon the wooden sides of a boat.