THE QUESTION

          What will you do, poor human,

          When you discover

          At your death that God is not

          Your Mafia grandfather,

          But vacant, immense

          And numberless as the stars—

          Like being alone,

          And faceless.

Image from http://redbulls.theoffside.com/players-red-bulls-news-rumors-opinions/stars-out-of-alignment.html

SONG FOR A ROCK GROUP

I look at you,
You look at me—
You with the eyes of an angel, a demon—
What do you see?

I say Hello,
You sing the refrain
Of a song that says things that I don’t understand—
What does it mean?

You take my hand—
Is it for real?
All of a sudden I’m falling, I’m flying—
What do you feel?


CHORUS
I lie awake all night
Thinking of you,
Stumble around in a daze all day,
Don’t know what to do….
When will I see you again?
Will it be today?
Some times you seem to be
So far away.
Sometimes I think I’ll never know
What you mean to say. 



June 1985

PASCAL RESTATED

As often as I say there is an afterlife,
You say, “Not so.”
Friend, let us cease this futile strife
About what can’t be proved true or untrue:
If I am wrong, I’ll never know—
If you are, I must pity you.

(EKPHRASTIC) HENRI MATISSE: WOMAN BEFORE AN AQUARIUM

              Bette Davis with nothing to do,

              In a rare moment of rest.

              She has nothing to do but wait.

              She wants a cigarette.

SOME CONTEMPORARY POETS AND THEIR WORK

They work hard,
going to great lengths
that it be not overcharged
with either music or sense,
and their labors are rewarded:
it isn't.

TO THE MUSIC OF MOZART

Symphony No. 27 in G, K. 199: Second Movement, Andante

In Memoriam

Louis Dollarhide

William Horan 

Smiling, three women come into the salon,
Three young women under the high ceiling.

They curtsey together and, turning and circling,
Smoothly they move to invisible music

While all around them the mute world is sleeping,
Feeling the hush of the late afternoon.

Softly the strings sound—and clarinet and flute,
Two shafts of bright sunlight in a shadowy room.



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Photo from http//:greatriftvalley.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

RILKE IN THE LIBRARY

Neither a prophet nor a man possessed
with eyes of wildfire and haywire hair,
the quiet expert in the window there
brings nothing new to feed your chic unrest.

Beside gigantic fronds, half hidden by
the out-sized sofas of the Reading Room,
a hunter stalks among the elephants.
Unlike the bright birds and the beasts of prey,
he does not shoulder through the alien gloom
with tribal arrogance, gauche elegance.

His disappearance is the only hint
of the movement of the mind behind it—

A study by da Vinci, a shark's fin
shearing the water as it zeroes in


___________
Portrait from areyouindecisive.tumblr.com, April 2008
_

AT SEA

Night comes, releasing me
and free as a ship at sea, with all around
only the spun horizon by
triangulation from the stars
to tell
and out into the star-expanded space
my thoughts pursue the still
still changing souls

. . . and bodies lie
like ore in the mother-lode
the ages vent their pressure in
the subterranean chambers of the brain
slow, dissolve, and crystals realign

imponderably Earth inclines
toward where all meet
what sustains
what sustains the planet as

and huger more oppressive each next day's
juggernaut unretarded overtakes
what sustains

what

darkly . . .

Stars

beneath the Earth






Off the island of Key West, 1970
_

VANITY FAIR

You wake up, out of nowhere, in a carny county fair,
And everything's for sale, and you are poor.

Like most, you pay for the right to pay more and more
For less and less: cracked kewpie doll, torn teddy bear,

Grease-soaked corn-dog that turns to glue in the throat,
And a chance to gawk at the two-headed man
And the woman with the legs of a goat.

Your head whirls till flat earth's a tilted carrousel,
And you stagger among the enameled saddles,

A child bedazzled by every flashing, twirling thing,
You lurch to the hysterical calliope,
You lunge for the flying brass ring.


_______________________________
Photo from http://villagetucson.com/blueCreme2012Layout/scripts/image/full.php?fid=13

(UNTITLED)

The conclusion that I have not been able to avoid is that none of the passers-by sees either this pool or me. No one ever seems to stop by the low round curb; nobody, as far as I can tell, even glances this way.

One can't blame them--it's not the sort of thing that calls attention to itself; it is, one would almost say, nondescript. Neither large nor small (although its width does not permit one to reach across it), apparently it is not wide enough to allow the formation of ripples; none is ever seen.

Within the low circle of its rim, the water is almost as invisible as if the pool were empty. No light is reflected from the surface; nor, when I lean over it, do I ever see my own reflection. It reflects nothing.

I don't know how deep it is, or where the water comes from--if, after all, the liquid in the pool be water. It is not unlike ether or alcohol in its lack of density, except that it has no properties or effects, not even that of annulling sensations. It is perfectly colorless, absolutely odorless and tasteless.

I do not wish to be here, but I cannot move away; I cannot stop dipping my hand to drink, never feeling either thirsty or satisfied.