On Trial
In the bedlam
of bed-land,
happy as babies,
active as rabbits,
me sky-father
you earth-mother;
doubtless reenacted
by every ploughboy
and milk-maid,
sporting away
under a midday sun,
laboring
dirty and sweaty,
to snoring repose.
At night, dry-eyed,
across some midden,
my maiden flits
to a tryst
not five minutes
from midnight;
dancing and prancing
my horse makes his way;
goaded,
extends his limbs,
gallops.
Trolls and their ilk
creep out,
Comus, Momus,
oblivious Silenus,
Pyramus and Thisbe
walled up in
the same mortar;
unaccountable witnesses
to our fatal fooling.
Me King Dis, you Persephone,
rolled into a ball,
making hard love,
hurtful pleasure;
reenacting the rape
of the harvest,
the loss of the seed.
In the midst of
our exhausting myth,
we pause for breath;
a horn-mad moon pokes up
from a stand of trees;
stone-hearted fate
slays Adonis,
beast-gored,
weltering in blood;
among white leaves,
the grieving goddess
stains the anemone red
as the setting sun.
Osiris, by brother Set
drowned, sliced, diced and
nevertheless
back from death,
pieced out of the desert,
Isis drags enough Osiris;
makes life enough from death.
My, my, so soon in the sky,
the hook of dawn.
Back-treading I go,
to the hearth,
to the earth I loved
ere madness
moved a match
made in heaven.
Right on time,
the indifferent dawn
in the window peeping,
creeping, spying
on our naked skin.
The slow return of
light shows your
sleeping arms
flung out to me.
We could touch,
me standing, you waking;
healing hands
laid on
to no purpose.
Hands across the waters,
stretch like mares’ tails
over the arching heaven,
the jagged Rockies,
the lurid desert.
The traveler faces
the wind, the sun,
the storm;
mortal ancient danger
in the quick speech,
the rolling eye,
of a stranger
met in the wastes.
Wasted on no one,
for the strong
as well as the weak,
a service
simple as a cup
of water
draws on Nemesis;
Telephus and Philoctetes
beg and fester
in stinking rags.
For the traders
at love’s oasis,
the welcome is short,
the pleasures even shorter.
A man, a woman,
a woman, a man
embrace and are loved;
become quite contrary,
the duet ends.
Our frantic amours
last and least.
Transfixed
like Saint Sebastian
I smile myself silly
at the tricks of
the trade,
the false face of
the barter.
The way of a man with a maid?
Woman, you wound.
Pricked with arrows,
porcupined with spears,
we crawl off together;
clumsy impossible beast.
Now, in broad daylight,
beyond the brick of history,
the tricks of mythology,
in a time
of no gods,
of no roads to paradise,
of highways leading nowhere,
safe in a safe harbor,
secure in our narrow room,
we languish
like prisoners;
hope and age alone
hold the faithful;
angry no longer.
Not as vain as
we used to be,
bent down somewhat;
fallen somewhat
into a harmony.
Your breath softer,
my spirit warmer,
yet our hard hearts,
set on separate courses,
divide the waters,
alone and apart.
Sky farther,
earth nearer,
still stars
and a lighthouse of stone.
Pass, friend, and leave nothing;
with this hard monument
leave
but your memory
of the light within.
Stern law of life,
have mercy enough for us,
wandering couple
on this earth;
two lovers, still two,
on a bleak altar,
again and again
for no good reason
making one gift of love.
Canzonet
Met a pretty rose
in a pretty garden,
was never rose more sublime.
After converse
sweet and subtle,
I bestowed a kiss
on her pretty lips,
but divertissement
was not to be mine.
She slapped my face
with a heavy hand
to me less endearing
than reluctant surrender.
I ran off downstage,
by this impudent shepherdess
put down;
in love's enchanted playground
reason and pleasure
so they say,
don't mix;
good manners either.
But noble effort deserved
a noble rebuff;
this witless hoyden
had no handsome riposte,
cast a cold eye
on my discourse,
my decent passion.
I left a rose
in a pretty garden;
blessed rose
with thee conversing,
advancing, in full retreat,
I lost my time.
Non Dolet
The pleasures of philosophy;
the smiling stars
parade out of heaven,
one by one,
and more than one,
bursting forth with a bloom
more beautiful than youth;
but not for the young,
whose energies lie elsewhere.
The treasures of philosophy;
flowers that grow on earth
need simple sun and rain
and not the sources of things,
or the mishaps of ontology.
Consolations of the spirit
ebb and flow with time
and the light-going years;
unconsoled at last,
we cope like prisoners,
uncomfortable in the
narrow chambers of Faust.
Green sleeves, green dresses
echo the forest
and lawns
of far-off youth,
when balance was
a bouncing ball,
up and down,
up and down, restless,
careless as love.
Careful now as ballerinas,
we wend our ambiguous ways
to termination.
But listen;
the fields are
green as ever, if bare
in winter, the winter sea
glad-handed and
brilliant as ice;
the balls balance still,
like sun and moon,
rolling
the miles away, the years.
Like Captain Cook,
whatever strikes us dead
strikes at least
in a different clime,
beginning and ending
among strangers,
indifferent to see us
gasp our last.
To the dump
with the memory
of the limber nervous body;
Venus’ corpse was always
there, the skull
as bare beneath the
freckled nose and
cheeks as Yorick’s,
the ribs
stark scaffolds
beneath the
nourishing breasts.
So what if all
goes under to the grave?
Let’s fare our way,
and crazy or judicious
in decay,
servants of luck and time,
let’s live like masters
in another’s house;
the good shepherd,
the faithful steward,
calm only the righteous,
or those patient for eternity.
The measure of philosophy;
whirling all overhead like a
mad king or a drunken dervish;
sea to sea,
beginning to end,
come to rest
we will.