Nodding a curt greeting: "Well, you've been awhile
But now we're back together, which is what counts."
Air in my path, you could shorten this,
But the breeze has dropped, and silence is the last word."

[end of poem]

New Poem: Ode to Bill

Some things we do take up a lot more time
And are considered a fruitful, natural thing to do.
I am coming out of one way to behave
Into a plowed cornfield. On my left, gulls,
On an inland vacation. They seem to mind the way
I write.

Or, to take another example: last month
I vowed to write more. What is writing?
Well, in my case, it's getting down on paper
Not thoughts, exactly, but ideas, maybe:
Ideas about thoughts. Thoughts is too grand a word.
Ideas is better, though not precisely what I mean.
Someday I'll explain. Not today though.

I feel as though someone had made me a vest
Which I was wearing out of doors into the countryside
Out of loyalty to the person, although
There is no one to see, except me
With my inner vision of what I look like.
The wearing is both a duty and a pleasure
Because it absorbs me, absorbs me too much.

One horse stands out irregularly against
The land over there. And am I receiving
This vision? Is it mine, or do I already owe it
For other visions, unnoticed and unrecorded
On the great, relaxed curve of time,
All the forgotten springs, dropped pebbles,
Songs once heard that then passed out of light
Into everyday oblivion? He moves away slowly,
Looks up and pumps the sky, a lingering
Question. Him too we can sacrifice
To the end progress, for we must, we must be moving on.

[end of poem]

New Poem: Lithuanian Dance Band

Nathan the Wise is a good title it's a reintroduction
Of heavy seeds attached by toggle switch to long loops leading
Out of literature and life into worldly chaos in which
We struggle two souls out of work for it's a long way back to
The summation meanwhile we live in it "gradually getting use to"
Everything and this overrides living and is superimposed on it
As when a wounded jackal is tied to the waterhole the lion does come

I write you to air these few thoughts feelings you are
Most likely driving around the city in your little car
Breathing in the exquisite air of the city and the exhaust fumes dust and other
Which make it up only hold on awhile there will be time
For other decisions but now I want to concentrate on this
Image of you secure and projected how I imagine you
Because you are this way where are you you are in my thoughts

Something in me was damaged I don't know how or by what
Today is suddenly broad and a whole era of uncertainties is ending
Like World War I or the twenties it keeps ending this is the beginning
Of music afterward and refreshments all kinds of simple delicacies
That toast the heart and create a rival ambiance of cordiality
To the formal one we are keeping up in our hears the same

What with skyscrapers and dirigibles and balloons the sky seems pretty crowded
And a nice place to live at least I think so do you
And the songs strike up there are chorales everywhere so pretty it's lovely
And everywhere the truth rushes in to fill the gaps left by
Its sudden demise so that a fairly accurate record of its activity is possible
If there were sex in friendship this would be the place to have it right here on this floor
With bells ringing and the loud music pealing

Perhaps another day one will want to review all this
For today it looks compressed like lines packed together
In one of those pictures you reflect with a polished tube
To get the full effect and this is possible
I feel it in the lean reaches of the weather and the wind
That sweeps articulately down these drab streets
Bringing everything to a high gloss

Yet we are alone too and that's sad isn't it
Yet you are meant to be alone at least part of the time
You must be in order to work and yet it always seems so unnatural
As though seeing people were intrinsic to life which it just might be
And then somehow the loneliness is more real and more human
You know not just the scarecrow but the whole landscape
And the crows peacefully pecking where the harrow has passed

[end of poem]

New Poem : Sand Pail

Process
of a red stripe through much whiplash
of environmental sweepstakes misinterprets
slabs as they come forward. A
footprint
directs traffic in the center
of flat crocus plaza as the storm
incurves on this new situation. Why
are there developments?
A transparent shovel paves, "they" say,
residual elastic fetters
pictures of moments
brought under the sand.

[end of poem]

New Poem: No Way of Knowing

And then? Colors and names of colors.
The knowledge of you a certain color had?
The whole song bag, the eternal oom-pah refrain?
Street scenes? A blur of pavement
After the cyclists passed, calling to each other,
Calling each other strange, funny-sounding names?
Yes, probably, but in the meantime, waking up
In the middle of a dream with one's mouth full
Of unknown words takes in all of these:
It is both the surface and the accidents
Scarring that surface, yet it too only contains
As a book on Sweden only contains the pages of that book.
The dank no-places and the insubstantial pinnacles -
Both get carried away on the surface of a flood
That doesn't care about anything,
Not even about minding its own business.
There were holidays past we used to
Match up, and yep, they fitted together
All right, but the days in between grown rank,
Consume their substance, orphan, disinherit
But the air stands in curtains, reigns
Like a centennial. No one can get in or out.
These are parts of the same body:
One could possibly live without some
Such as a finger or elbow, but the head is
Necessary, and what is in doubt here. This
Morning it was off taking French lessons.
Now it is resting and cannot be disturbed

Yes, but - there are no "yes, but"s.
The body is what this is all about and it disperses
In sheeted fragments, all somewhere around
But difficult to read correctly since there is
No common vantage point, not point of view
Like the "I" in a novel. And in truth
No one never saw the point of any. This stubble-field
Of witnessings and silent lowering of the lids
On angry screen-door moment rushing back
To the edge of woods was always alive with its own
Rigid binary system of inducing truths
From starved knowledge of them. It has worked
And will go on working. All attempts to influence
The working are parallelism, undulating, writhing
Sometimes but kept to the domain of metaphor.
There is no way of knowing whether these are
Our neighbors or friendly savages trapped in the distance
By the red tape of a mirage. The fact that
We drawled "hallo" to them just lazily enough this morning
Doesn't mean that a style was inaugurated. Anyway evening
Kind of changes things. Not the color,
The quality of a handshake, the edge on someone's breath,
So much as a general anxiety to get everything all added up,
Flowers arranged and out of sight. The vehicular madness
Goes on, crashing, thrashing away, but
For many this is near enough to the end: one may
Draw up a chair close to the balcony railing.
The sunset is just starting to light up.

As when the songs start to go
Not much can be done about it. Waiting
In vanilla corridors for an austere
Young nurse to appear, an opaque glass vase of snapdragons
On one arm, the dangerously slender heroine
Backbending over the other, won't save the denouement
Already drenched in the perfume of fatality. The passengers
Reappear. The cut driver pushes them to heaven.
(Waterford explodes over the flagstones.)
At the same time that we are trying to spell out
This very simple word, put one note
After the other, push back the dead chaos
Insinuating itself in the background like mists
Of happy autumn fields - your money is dead.
I like the spirit of the songs, though,
The camaraderies that is the last thing to peel off,
Visible even now on the woven pattern of branches
And twilight. Why must you go? Why can't you
Spend the night, here in my bed, with my arms wrapped tightly
Around you?
Surely that would solve everything by supplying
A theory of knowledge on a scale with the gigantic
Bits and pieces of knowledge we have reatained:
An LP record of all your favorite friendships,
Of letters from the front? Too
Fantastic to make sense? But it made the chimes ring.
If you listen you can hear them ringing still:
A mood, a Stimmung, adding up to a sense of what they really were,
All along, through the chain of lengthening days.

[end of poem]

New Poem: Suite

The inert lifeless mass calls out into space:
Seven long years and the wall hasn't been built yet
The crust thickens, the back of everything...
Clustered carillons and the pink dew of afterthoughts
Support it.

This was to be forgotten, eliminated
From history. But time is a garden wherein
Memories thrive monstrously until
They become the vagrant flowering of something else
Like stopping near the fence with your raincoat.

At night, orange mists.
The sun has killed a trillion of 'em
And it keeps stretching back, impossible planets.
How do I know? I'm lost. It says its name.
The blue-black message at the end of the garden
Is garbled. Meanwhile we're supposed to be here
Among pine trees and nice breaths of fresh air.

Snow was the last thing he'd expected.
Sun, and the kiss of far, unfamiliar lands,
Harsh accents though strangely kind
And now from the unbuttoned corner moving out,
Coming out, the postponed play of the day.
Astonishing. It really tells you about yourself,
The day made whole, the eye and the report together, silent.

[end of poem]