Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Read online

  they are leaning out for love

  they will lean that way forever

  while Suzanne she holds the mirror.

  And you want to travel with her

  and you want to travel blind

  and you're sure that she can find you

  because she's touched her perfect body

  with her mind.

  2 10 1

  G I V E M E B A C K M Y F I N G E R P R I N T S

  Give me back my fingerprints

  My fingertips are raw

  If I don't get my fingerprints

  I have to call the Law

  I touched you once too often

  & I don't know who I am

  My fingerprints were missing

  When I wiped away the jam

  I called my fingerprints all night

  But they don't seem to care

  The last time that I saw them

  They were leafing through your hair

  I thought I'd leave this morning

  So I emptied out your drawer

  A hundred thousand fingerprints

  Floated to the floor

  You hardly stooped to pick them up

  You don't count what you lose

  You don't even seem to know

  Whose fingerprints are whose

  When I had to say goodbye

  You weren't there to find

  You took my fingerprints away

  So I would love your mind

  I don't pretend to understand

  Just what you mean by that

  1 2 1 1

  But next time I'll inquire

  Before I scratch your back

  I wonder if my fingerprints

  Get lonely in the crowd

  There are no others like them

  & that should make them proud

  Now you want to marry me

  & take me down the aisle

  & throw confetti fingerprints

  You know that's not my style

  Sure I'd like to marry

  But I won't face the dawn

  With any girl who knew me

  When my fingerprints were on

  2 1 2 1

  F O R E I G N G O D , R E I G N I N G

  I N E A R T H L Y G L O R Y . . .

  Foreign God, reigning in earthly glory between the Godless

  God and this greedy telescope of mine: touch my hidden

  jelly muscle, ring me with some power, I must conquer

  Babylon and New York. Draw me with a valuable sign,

  raise me to your height. You and I, dear Foreign God, we

  both are demons who must disappear in the perpetual crawl·

  ing light, the fumbling sparks printing the shape of each

  tired form. We must be lost soon in the elementary Kodak

  experiment, in the paltry glory beyond our glory, the chalksqueak of our most limitless delight. We are devoted yokels of the mothy parachute, the salvation of ordeal, we paid

  good money for the perfect holy scab, the pilgrim kneecap,

  the shoulder freakish under burden, the triumphant snowman who does not freeze. Down with your angels, Foreign God, down with us, adepts of magic: into the muddy fire

  of our furthest passionate park, let us consign ourselves now,

  puddles, peep-holes, dreary oceanic pomp seen through the

  right end of the telescope, the minor burn, the kingsize cigarette, the alibi atomic holocaust, let us consign ourselves to the unmeasured exile outside the rules of lawlessness. 0

  God, in thy foreign or godless form, in thy form of illusion

  or with the ringscape of your lethal thumb, you stop direction, you crush this down, you abandon the evidence you pressed on its tongue.

  I 2 1 3

  I B E L I E V E Y O U H E A R D Y O U R

  M A S T E R S I N G

  I believe you heard your master sing

  while I lay sick in bed

  I believe he told you everything

  I keep locked in my head

  Your master took you traveling

  at least that's what you said

  0 love did you come back to bring

  your prisoner wine and bread

  You met him at some temple where

  they take your clothes at the door

  He was just a numberless man of a pair

  who has just come back from the war

  You wrap his quiet face in your hair

  and he hands you the apple core

  and he touches your mouth now so suddenly bare

  of the kisses you had on before

  He gave you a German shepherd to walk

  with a collar of leather and nails

  He never once made you explain or talk

  about all of the little details

  such as who had a worm and who had a rock

  and who had you through the mails

  Your love is a secret all over the block

  and it never stops when he fails

  He took you on his air-o-plane

  which he flew without any hands

  and you cruised above the ribbons of rain

  that drove the crowd from the stands

  2 1 4 I

  Then he killed the lights on a lonely lane

  where an ape with angel glands

  erased the final wisps of pain

  with the music of rubber bands

  And now I hear your master sing

  You pray for him to come

  His body is a golden string

  that your body is hanging from

  His body is a golden string

  My body is growing numb

  0 love I hear your master sing

  Your shirt is all undone

  Will you kneel beside the bed

  we polished long ago

  before your master chose instead

  to make my bed of snow

  Your hair is wild your knuckles red

  and you're speaking much too low

  I can't make out what your master said

  before he made you go

  I think you're playing far too rough

  For a lady who's been to the moon

  I've lain by the window long enough

  (you get used to an empty room)

  Your love is some dust in an old man's cuff

  who is tapping his foot to a tune

  and your thighs are a ruin and you want too much

  Let's say you came back too soon

  I loved your master perfectly

  I taught him all he knew

  I 2 15

  He was starving in a mystery

  like a man who is sure what is true

  I sent you to him with my guarantee

  I could teach him something new

  I taught him how you would long for me

  No matter what he said no matter what you do

  T H I S M O R N I N G I W A S D R E S S E D

  B Y T H E W I N D

  This morning I was dressed by the wind.

  The sky said, close your eyes and run

  this happy face into a sundrift.

  The forest said, never mind, I am as old

  as an emerald, walk into me gossiping.

  The village said, I am perfect and intricate,

  would you like to start right away?

  My darling said, I am washing my hair in the water

  we caught last year, it tastes of stone.

  This morning I was dressed by the wind,

  it was the middle of September in 1965.

  2 16 1

  I S T E P P E D I N T O A N A V A L A N C H E

  I stepped into an avalanche

  It covered up my soul

  When I am not a hunchback

  I sleep beneath a hill

  You who wish to conquer pain

  Must learn to serve me well

  You strike my side by accident

  As you go down for gold

  The cripple that you clothe and feed />
  is neither starved nor cold

  I do not beg for company

  in the centre of the world

  When I am on a pedestal

  you did not raise me there

  your laws do not compel me

  to kneel grotesque and bare

  I myself am pedestal

  for the thing at which you stare

  You who wish to conquer pain

  must learn what makes me kind

  The crumbs of love you offer me

  are the crumbs I've left behind

  Your pain is no credential

  It is the shadow of my wound

  I have begun to claim you

  I who have no greed

  I have begun to long for you

  I who have no need

  I 217

  The avalanche you're knocking at

  is uninhabited

  Do not dress in rags for me

  I know you are not poor

  Don't love me so fiercely

  when you know you are not sure

  It is your world beloved

  It is your flesh I wear

  2 18 1

  V / New Poems

  T H I S I S F O R Y O U

  This is for you

  it is my full heart

  it is the book I meant to read you

  when we were old

  Now I am a shadow

  I am restless as an empire

  You are the woman

  who released me

  I saw you watching the moon

  you did not hesitate

  to love me with it

  I saw you honouring the windflowers

  caught in the rocks

  you loved me with them

  On the smooth sand

  between pebbles and shoreline

  you welcomed me into the circle

  more than a guest

  All this happened

  in the truth of time

  in the truth of flesh

  I saw you with a child

  you brought me to his perfume

  and his visions

  without demand of blood

  On so many wooden tables

  adorned with food and candles

  a thousand sacraments

  which you carried in your basket

  I visited my clay

  I visited my birth

  until I became small enough

  1 221

  and frightened enough

  to be born again

  I wanted you for your beauty

  you gave me more than yourself

  you shared your beauty

  this I only learned tonight

  as I recall the mirrors

  you walked away from

  after you had given them

  whatever they claimed

  for my initiation

  Now I am a shadow

  I long for the boundaries

  of my wandering

  and I move

  with the energy of your prayer

  and I move

  in the direction of your prayer

  for you are kneeling

  like a bouquet

  in a cave of bone

  behind my forehead

  and I move toward a love

  you have dreamed for me

  222 1

  Y O U D O N O T H A V E T O L O V E M E

  You do not have to love me

  just because

  you are all the women

  I have ever wanted

  I was born to follow you

  every night

  while I am still

  the many men who love you

  I meet you at a table

  I take your fist between my hands

  in a solemn taxi

  I wake up alone

  my hand on your absence

  in Hotel Discipline

  I wrote all these songs for you

  I burned red and black candles

  shaped like a man and a woman

  I married the smoke

  of two pyramids of sandalwood

  I prayed for you

  I prayed that you would love me

  and that you would not love me

  I 223

  I T ' S J U S T A C I T Y , D A R L I N G

  It's just a city, darling,

  everyone calls New York.

  Wherever it is we meet

  I can't go very far from.

  I can't connect you with

  anything but myself.

  Half of the wharf is bleeding.

  I'd give up anything to love you

  and I don't even know what the list is

  but one look into it

  demoralizes me like a lecture.

  If we are training each other for another love

  what is it?

  I only have a hunch

  in what I've become expert.

  Half of the wharf is bleeding,

  it's the half where we always sleep.

  224 I

  E D M O N T O N , A L B E R T A ,

  D E C E M B E R 1 9 6 6 , 4 A . M .

  Edmonton, Alberta, December 1966, 4 a.m.

  When did I stop writing you?

  The sandalwood is on fire in this small hotel on Jasper

  Street.

  You've entered the room a hundred times

  disguises of sari and armour and jeans,

  and you sit beside me for hours

  like a woman alone in a happy room.

  I've sung to a thousand people

  and I've written a small new song

  I believe I will trust myself with the care of my soul.

  I hope you have money for the winter.

  I'll send you some as soon as I'm paid.

  Grass and honey, the singing radiator,

  the shadow of bridges on the ice

  of the North Saskatchewan River,

  the cold blue hospital of the sky-

  it all keeps us such sweet company.

  I 225

  T H E B R O O M I S A N A R M Y O F S T R A W

  The broom is an army of straw

  or an automatic guitar,

  The dust absorbs a changing chord

  that the yawning dog can hear,

  My truces have retired me

  and the truces are at war.

  Is this the house, Beloved,

  is this the window sill where

  I meet you face to face?

  Are these the rooms, are these the walls,

  is this the house that opens on the world?

  Have you been loved in this disguise

  too many times, ring of powder left behind

  by teachers polishing their ecstasy?

  Beloved of empty spaces

  there is dew on the mirror:

  can it nourish the bodies in the avalanche

  the silver could not exhume?

  Beloved of war,

  am I obedient to a tune?

  Beloved of my injustice,

  is there anything to be won?

  Summon me as I summon from this house

  the mysteries of death and use.

  Forgive me the claims I embrace.

  Forgive me the claims I renounce.

  226 1

  I M E T Y O U

  I met you

  just after death

  had become truly sweet

  There you were

  24 years old

  Joan of Arc

  I came after you

  with all my art

  with everything

  you know I am a god

  who needs to use your body

  who needs to use your body

  to sing about beauty

  in a way no one

  has ever sung before

  you are mine

  you are one of my last women

  1 227

  C A L M , A L O N E ,

  T H E C E D A R G U I T A R

  Calm, alone, the cedar gu
itar

  tuned into a sunlight drone,

  I'm here with sandalwood

  and Patricia's clove pomander.

  Thin snow carpets

  on the roofs of Edmonton cars

  prophesy the wilderness to come.

  Downstairs in Swan's Cafe

  the Indian girls are hunting

  with their English names.

  In Terry's Diner the counter man

  plunges his tattoo in soapy water.

  Don't fall asleep until your plan

  includes every angry nomad.

  The juke-box sings of service everywhere

  while I work to renew the style

  which models the apostles

  on these friends whom I have known.

  22B 1

  Y O U L I V E L I K E A G O D

  You live like a god

  somewhere behind the names

  I have for you,

  your body made of nets

  my shadow's tangled in,

  your voice perfect and imperfect

  like oracle petals

  in a herd of daisies.

  You honour your own god

  with mist and avalanche

  but all I have

  is your religion of no promises

  and monuments falling

  like stars on a field

  where you said you never slept.

  Shaping your fingernails

  with a razorblade

  and reading the work

  like a Book of Proverbs

  no man will ever write for you,

  a discarded membrane

  of the voice you use

  to wrap your silence in

  drifts down the gravity between us,

  and some machinery

  of our daily life

  prints an ordinary question in i t

  like the Lord's Prayer raised

  on a rollered penny.

  Even before I begin to answer you

  I know you won't be listening.

  We're together in a room,

  I 229

  it's an evening in October,

  no one is writing our history.

  Whoever holds us here in the midst of a Law,

  I hear him now

  I hear him breathing

  as he embroiders gorgeously our simple chains.

  A R E N ' T Y O U T I R E D

  Aren't you tired

  of your beauty tonight

  How can you carry your burden

  under the stars

  Just your hair

  just your lips

  enough to crush you

  Can you see where I'm running

  the heavy New York Times

  with your picture in it

  somewhere in it

  somewhere in it

  under my arm

  S H E S I N G S S O N I C E

  She sings so nice

  there's no desire in her voice

  She sings alone

  to tell us all

  that we have not been found

  T H E R E A S O N I W R I T E

  The reason I write

  is to make something

  as beautiful as you are

  When I'm with you

  I want to be the kind of hero