Collecte Works (17 page)

New!

Reason explodes. Atomic split

shows one element

Jew

Now hide

who can bombarded particles

of international

pride

(L.Z.)

“An acre of music”

or a room closer to it

movement, rest, repeat,

for those making music

but not allowed to hear it

and those in peril

on the street

Chimney Sweep

He fished the black deep

to eat,

swam the river, struck a stone

before he could sleep.

One Sunday morning,

unlearned in all but soot,

he flashed and went down

in a book.

Swept snow, Li Po,

by dawn's 40-watt moon

to the road that hies to office

away from home.

Tended my brown little stove

as one would a cow—she gives heat.

Spring—marsh frog-clatter peace

                      breaks out.

Regards to Mr. Glover

Yes, I've lived a good life—cows, the soil—

but what do we know for sure? Light from stars

dead a billion years still pricks…see!…

I can't conceive…let the cost of war out

of it. You say each birthday you know more,

better. Well. I don't. And I'm not stuck

in that old stuff: cosmos versus puny

man, God, no. What is life? (not always

does one feel this intimate) My only

fear: I'll go blind before I give

the soil my phosphorus. And you, my friend,

happy anniversary.

Sunday's motor-cars

jar the house.

When I'm away on work-days

hear the rose-breast.

Love the night, love the night

and if on waking it rains:

little drops of rest.

Let's play a game.

           Let's play Ask for a job.

What can you do?

           I can hammer and saw

           and feed a dog.

 You'll do! Take this slip

to the department of song.

           You must ask me where I'm from.

Oh yes, you're from the country

called The Source.

           Will the nurse in your plant

            give me sweet pills?

No! We're not at war.

            One console-ation is:

            we can always play

            Ask for a job.

Lugubre for a child

but for you, little one,

life pops

             from a music box

shaped like a gun.

Watch! In some flowers

a hammer drops down

like a piano key's

            and honeybees

wear a pollen gown.

A hammer, a hummer!

A bomber in feathers!

Hummingbirds fly

          backwards—we eye

blurred propellers.

Dear fiddler: you'll carry

a counter that sings

when man sprays

                         rays

on small whirring things.

Could You Be Right

He asked: Will man obsolesce

when he sends the rays against himself?

And she, sore-pressed: Absurd!—

obsolesce is not a word.

But think of Troy, it was a word

before we dug and found that world…

yet ah, girl with Helen's light,

could you be right?

Look close

the senses don't get it all

a few hundred thousandths of a centimeter

in wave length and you see the mark

or you don't

Sylvashko and Robertson

shook hands hard

and the air was loaded

and after tea vodka—

“To the friendship of our countries”—

guilty of reason

matter that day

hit home

If I were a bird

I'd be a dainty contained cool

Greek figurette

on a morning shore—

H.D.

I'd flitter and feed and delouse myself

close to Williams' house

and his kind eyes

I'd be a never-museumed tinted glass