stringed by swift wings, the twilight lyre, only to fade before my eyes.

Devolved, invisible, a wordless cry; where has it gone, bright light’s desire?
Devolved, invisible, a soundless sigh; where has it gone, bright light’s desire?

Too short the day, eternal liar. Love is the way I learned to lie.

Extant of time, numberless die — All is nul set at eventide.

Devolved, invisible, a wordless cry; where has it gone, bright light’s desire?
Devolved, invisible, a soundless sigh; where has it gone, bright light’s desire?

09/11/2021 ~ PHILADELPHIA, PA

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and I was left alone in London with her flat

to promenade in Leicester Square. A drunkard sat

and played a dead harmonica.

The air was full of spring’s decay:

the pond ice, half-submerged and somewhat reticent,

uttered a groan for peace, a wish for winter spent

in hiding, covered by the light’s majolica.

And so I called a friend who said he’d come

to keep his company, and mine. Inside the dome,

the engines bled their passengers; a few for home

in Haslemere; a few to work,

with glances at the clock; and some,

like us, to play. The evening hid beneath the streets

and we ran slowly through the city veins, discreet

and fixed inside our trains, with silence our hauberk.

We climbed the night and drowned within the crowd

that pressed the pavement underneath the peacock light.

A woman’s laugh; the slamming of a door; tight

dissonance. Our casual hands

inside our pockets hugged the loud

green paper with assurance. We both knew the way.

We’d been there in our dreams, and on those lonely days

we’d spent chilling our white buttocks on the basement sand.

And so we climbed the stairs in silence, knowing that

this was a serious affair — a short crusade.

And, at the top, a woman with a pink Band-Aid

planted on her wrist smiled

at us. She’s just a little fat,

I thought, and handed her my money. And as I sucked

a foreign cigarette, I heard my friend get fucked

behind a curtain, with the moanings of a child.

1969 ~ Winchester, England

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clashing gray clouds with laughing light.

The pulsing sound of waves, laden with weed,

whisked past bare feet with even toes and even nails.

A mouth full of sand and fruit; rare strawberries.

And kites diving higher than they could.

And music organs, and monkey’s caps,

with monkeys in between.

And endless sails of endless dyes, sifting

silently between themselves, between the sea

and sun, and sun and sea.

Then, sudden movements empty emerald chests,

and shouts, and babies’ cries, and heat,

and flies, and sand, and mothers’ hands:

dismissed by regal whim.

Oh, emperors and poets, conquerors and kings:

come, paltry viewers, view

a blind salt-tinted prince turn

timely towards far deeper depths,

through choral bicycles and diamond tins,

past empty halls of glass

to breathe . . .

And fallen sand lies on the wooden floor

beneath an old man’s silent stare.

And cuffs, returned, fall even by dark leather feet,

with even toes and even nails.

New Canaan, Connecticut ~ 1971

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“Will you take me then,

pluck me like a faded flower from a branch?”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you open up my head,

cleave it as my father chops a sheep?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“And what of my wife, Maria?

Will she lay dried wreaths along this hill?”

“Perhaps.”

“Born;

and then the midwife’s hands around me;

crushing roaches at the table;

and my sister’s drowning;

my uncle beating, beating me;

and the little yellow wheel-barrow;

and cutting my first calf on the slaughterhouse floor;

and Maria’s breasts, creamy and soft,

suckling the child that never was,

nor will be.

What of them?”

“Into the earth.

Into the wet red earth.”

“Born;

and the miners’ hands, sweaty and hard;

carried on the donkey’s back;

melted in the furnace heat;

molded, turned and round;

hanging from the soldier’s belt;

gunpowder bed,

sleeping in the barrel of a gun.

What of me?”

“Into the earth.

Into the wet red earth.

With you.

In you.”

New Canaan, Connecticut ~ 1972

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There is a tranquil eye inside the hurricane;

I think (perhaps I’m wrong) that’s something you once said,

somewhere, hidden, on the other side of pain.

Last night, as I was walking to you in the rain,

the western sky above the hills glowed blue and red.

There is a tranquil eye inside the hurricane.

And, as I passed the trellis by your windowpane,

I saw you lying, naked, on your walnut bed,

somewhere, hidden, on the other side of pain.

You weren’t alone; another lay where I had lain

beside you on those summer days of words unsaid.

There is a tranquil eye inside the hurricane.

And in the cold, outside your window, as a train

incised the night, I saw you smile and hold his head —

somewhere, hidden, on the other side of pain.

I don’t know why I came to you again,

but a love that’s slipped away is never really dead.

There is a tranquil eye inside the hurricane …

somewhere, hidden, on the other side of pain.

New Canaan, Connecticut ~ 1975

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I was walking in the Bronx the other day

by Peter’s Golden Egg and Jumpin’ Jax;

I was movin’ slow and beggin’ for a j

when a man I knows strut from the railway tracks.

Now me, babe, I ain’t never took surprised;

I let this cat come walking down to me.

But when he stopped and looked me in the eyes,

I knew that while I stared, I could not see.

“Yo, Peanut — wanna little fix?

A little green, some wet, or coke?

Well, ain’t that how you always get your kicks?”

he said, and vanished into smoke.

Well, all this bullshit blew me off my shelf:

The dude I’d seen was no one but myself.

New York City ~ 1979

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with the viscous Housatonic

struggling home below the bridge,

the swallows gather into clouds,

a hundred thousand heartbeats clicking to the tandem

axles, clicking like the anxious flutter of your

fingers on the bed frame

as I kissed you one last time.

This is a study of oncology, the copper dome

which shivers in the light’s embrace across the

tracks, the arced remembrance of a pink

skywriter, the swollen bells jars of the power lines.

Tomorrow they will cut you as you sleep

and even they don’t know what hides beneath

that stained and clean-shaved tent of skin.

From the window, sitting backwards on an inside seat,

the swallows hold the sunset for a moment more,

a moment as they sew the evening closed against the earth,

sea shroud, and falling through the darkness watch

the train below them glowing,

going with a head against one window,

like the model you once ran around my universe

and across the playroom floor.

1984 ~ Bridgeport, Connecticut

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I remember the yellow blouse

you wore that day.

The world was still asleep,

and the cutthroat trout

sucked small dark flies

into their mouths.

When you told me of your plans,

I felt as if I’d never fished

with you before;

as if I were a soldier

from a foreign land

who’d come to find

an enemy he’d never seen.

* 36 BC – Roman legionnaires confront Chinese troops in Sogdiana.

New York City ~ 1984

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Cold air falls, slips

down the earth, the Coriolis,

butts against warm;

each breath a sigh.

Leaves fly, orange embers, sparks

from the bonfire of the Fall.

We have an extra hour to dream about our opposition.

On the fulcrum of the year

I come like cold air from the north,

slip into you and turn and roil,

our passions soaring on the thermals

of our singular obsessions,

our pride, our points of view, directions.

Two plains converge, collide, cowed

by the substancelessness of our union,

as inchoate and intemporal,

as amorphous and impenetrably beautiful

as a cloud.

2003 ~ Hopewell Township, New Jersey

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