The Flame Read online

All of us,

  the musicians, the audience,

  were dissolved in gratitude.

  There was nothing but

  the starry darkness,

  the smell of fresh cut hay,

  and a hand of wind caressing

  every single forehead.

  I don’t even remember the music.

  A wide unison whispering arose

  which I didn’t understand.

  When I left the stage

  I asked the promoter

  what they were saying.

  He said they were chanting:

  to-re-ro, to-re-ro

  A young woman drove me back to the hotel,

  a flower of the race.

  All the windows were rolled down.

  It was a ride free from error.

  I could not feel the road

  or the pull of destination.

  We didn’t speak

  and there was no question of her

  entering the lobby,

  or climbing to my room.

  Only recently

  I remembered that drive of long ago,

  and since then,

  I need to be weightless

  But I never am.

  MY LAWYER

  My lawyer tells me not to worry

  Says that junk has killed the revolution

  Leads me to the penthouse window

  Tells me of his plan

  To counterfeit the moon

  1978

  I CAN’T BREAK THE CODE

  I can’t break the code

  Of our frozen love

  It’s too late to know

  What the password was

  I reach for the past

  Keep coming up short

  And everything feels

  Like a last resort

  Tho’ we’ve called it quits

  And there’s nothing left

  Still I hear my lips

  Make these promises

  Though we’ve squandered the truth

  And there’s little left

  We can still sweep the room

  We can still make the bed

  When the world is false

  I won’t say it’s true

  When the darkness calls

  I will go with you

  In a time of shame

  In the great Alarm

  When they call your name

  We’ll go arm in arm

  I’M LOOKING AT THE FLAG

  I’m looking at the flag

  My hand against my heart

  If only we could win

  (One of) these wars we like to start

  THE LUCKY NIGHT!!!!! SUNDAY MARCH 7, 2004

  Let’s say that on that lucky night

  I found my house in order

  and I could slip away unseen

  tho’ burning with desire

  Escaping down a secret stair

  I cross into the forest

  the night is dark but I am safe—

  my house at last in order

  But luck or not, I do it right

  and no one sees me leaving

  hidden, blind and secret night—

  my heart the only beacon

  But O that beacon lights my way

  more surely than the sun,

  and She is waiting for me there—

  of all and all, the only One

  And then the night commands me

  to enter in Her side

  and be as Adam is to Eve

  before they need divide

  So I can show Her what’s been kept

  for Her and Her alone—

  a secret place that Love had left

  before the world was born

  Her nipples underneath My hand

  Her fingers in My hair—

  a forest crying from the dead

  and fragrance everywhere

  And from the wall a grazing wind

  weightless and serene

  wounds Me as I part Her lips

  and wounds Us in between

  And fastened here, surrendered to

  My Lover and My Lover,

  We spread and drown as lilies do—

  forever and forever

  HE SAYS HE WANTS TO KILL US

  he says he wants to kill us

  he says it very often

  just let him know you love him

  his attitude will soften

  let’s wait a little while

  let’s wait a little longer

  the enemy is gaining strength

  let’s wait until he’s stronger

  ROSHI SAID

  1.

  Roshi said:

  Jikan san, there’s something I want you to

  know

  yes, Roshi

  you are the worst student I’ve ever had

  2.

  I disappeared for ten years.

  When I came back to Los Angeles

  Roshi invited me for dinner.

  After dinner Roshi wanted to see me

  alone.

  Roshi said:

  When you left half of me died.

  I said:

  I don’t believe you.

  Roshi said:

  Good answer.

  3.

  During Roshi’s sex scandal (he was 105)

  my association with Roshi

  was often mentioned in the newspaper

  reports.

  Roshi said:

  I give you lots of trouble.

  I said:

  Yes, Roshi, you give me

  lots of trouble.

  Roshi said:

  I should die.

  I said:

  It won’t help.

  Roshi didn’t laugh.

  IF THERE WERE NO PAINTINGS

  If there were no paintings in the world,

  Mine would be very important.

  Same with my songs.

  Since this is not the case, let us make haste to get in line,

  Well towards the back.

  Sometimes I would see a woman in a magazine

  Humiliated in the technicolour glare.

  I would try to establish her

  In happier circumstances.

  Sometimes a man.

  Sometimes living persons sat for me.

  May I say to them again:

  Thank you for coming to my room.

  I also loved the objects on the table

  Such as candlesticks and ashtrays

  And the table itself.

  From a mirror on my desk

  In the very early morning

  I copied down

  Hundreds of self-portraits

  Which reminded me of one thing or another.

  The Curator has called this exhibition

  Drawn to Words.

  I call my work

  Acceptable Decorations.

  JAN 15, 2007 SICILY CAFÉ

  And now that I kneel

  At the edge of my years

  Let me fall through the mirror of love

  And the things that I know

  Let them drift like the snow

  Let me dwell in the light that’s above

  In the radiant light

  Where there’s day and there’s night

  And truth is the widest embrace

  That includes what is lost

  Includes what is found

  What you write and what you erase

  And when will my heart break open

  When will my love be born

  In this scheme of unspeakable suffering

  Where even the blueprint is torn

  DEPRIVED

  Deprived of Sahara’s company

  I looked around the room

  and spied her purse

  at the foot of the chair

  I went through every item

  in a little notebook

  written with an eyebrow pencil

  I found the very poem

  which you are reading now—

  the
writing smudged

  but word for word:

  “Straighten up, little warrior,” it ended

  “It’s not as though you

  wasted your life

  by loving me.”

  DIMENSIONS OF LOVE

  Sometimes I hear you stop abruptly

  and change your direction

  and start towards me

  I hear it as a kind of rustling

  My heart leaps up to greet you

  to greet you in the air

  to take you back home

  to resume our long life together

  Then I remember

  the uncrossable dimensions of love

  and I prepare myself

  for the consequences of memory

  and longing

  but memory with its list of years

  turns gracefully aside

  and longing kneels down

  like a calf

  in the straw of amazement

  and for the moment that it takes

  to keep your death alive

  we are refreshed

  in each other’s timeless company

  FULL EMPLOYMENT

  For V.R. (1978–2000)

  Vanessa called

  all the way from Toronto.

  She said that I

  could count on her

  if ever I was down and out.

  After I hung up the phone

  I played

  the six-holed wooden flute

  she gave me

  on the occasion of our parting.

  I figured out the fingering

  and I played it better

  than I had ever done.

  Tears came out of my eyes

  because of the sound,

  and the recollection

  of her extraordinary beauty

  which no one could avoid,

  and because she said

  a song had gone missing,

  and I had been selected,

  out of all the unemployed,

  I had been selected

  to recover it.

  I see you in windows

  that open so wide

  there’s nothing beyond them,

  and nothing inside.

  You take off your sandals

  you shake out your hair,

  your beauty dismantled

  and worn everywhere.

  The story’s been written.

  The letter’s been sealed.

  You gave me a lily,

  but now it’s a field.

  I HEAR THE TRAFFIC

  I hear the traffic

  On the Main

  Love my coffee

  Love Charmaine

  Another day

  To rise and fall

  Make a buck

  Start and stall

  I love Charmaine

  Her heart is kind

  I’m still a fool

  She doesn’t mind

  Her eyes are grey

  But when I’m mean

  Her eyes display

  A shade of green

  February 26, 2000

  HOMAGE TO MORENTE

  When I listen to Morente

  I know what I must do

  When I listen to Morente

  I don’t know what to do

  When I listen to Morente

  My life becomes too shallow

  To swim in

  I dig but I can’t go down

  I reach but I can’t go up

  When I listen to Morente

  I know I have betrayed

  The solemn promise

  The solemn promise that justified

  All my betrayals

  When I listen to Morente

  The alibi of my throat is rejected

  The alibi of my gift is overthrown

  With six impeccable threads of scorn

  My guitar turns away from me

  And I want to give everything back

  But no one wants it

  When I listen to Morente

  I surrender to my feeble imagination

  Which itself has surrendered long ago

  To the Great Voice of the Taverns

  And the Families and the Hills

  When I listen to Morente

  I am humbled but not humiliated

  I go with him now

  Out of the darkness of what I could not be

  Into the darkness of the song I could not sing

  The song that hungers for an earthquake

  The song that hungers for religion

  Then I hear him begin the great ascent

  I hear Morente’s Aleluya

  His thundering murderous serene Aleluya

  I hear it rise to the impossible occasion

  And pierce the ordinary ambiguities

  With the sharpened horns

  Of his own inconceivable ambiguities

  His cry his perfect word pitched against

  The baffled contradictions of the heart

  Wrestling them embracing them

  Strangling them with a jealous conjugal desperation

  And he hangs it there beneath his voice

  Above all the broken ceilings

  The disappointed sky

  His voice escaped from the mud of hope

  And the blood of the throat

  And the strict training of the cante

  And he hangs it there

  The Kingdom of Morente

  Which he does not enter as Morente

  But as the great impersonal anointed Voice

  Of the Taverns and the Families and the Hills

  And he takes us there

  By the bleeding finger by the throat by the soiled lapel

  Takes what’s left of us

  To his Kingdom

  the Kingdom of Poverty he himself established

  The only place we want to be

  Or ever wanted to be

  Where we can breathe the childhood air

  The unborn air

  Where we are nobody at last

  Where we cannot go without him

  Long live Enrique Morente

  Long live the Family Morente

  The dancers the singers

  The disciples of the Taverns and the Families and the Hills

  HOMAGE TO ROSENGARTEN

  If you have a wall, a bare wall in your house

  All the walls in my house are bare

  And I love the bare walls

  The only thing I would put up

  On one of my beloved bare walls

  Not beloved

  It doesn’t need beloved

  It doesn’t need an adjective

  The wall is fine as it is

  But I would put up a Rosengarten

  A Rosengarten produced with a wooden

  Comb and black ink

  Going nowhere forever in a swirl of indelible parallel curves

  Is it a letter or a woman?

  It is another perfect startling black letter in a word

  Among hundreds of words

  In a continuing Rosengarten epic that celebrates

  Mankind’s holy and relentless desire for itself

  Your heart is the same as the white paper

  Upon which the woman is so carefully splashed

  Both need her in order to become significant

  If you had a vast white wall

  And if you hung hundreds of his commanding women in a row

  You would not have to study the calligraphy

  For very long

  To understand and to forgive yourself

  For falling in love so often

  And for championing our mysterious and radiant race

  And it would silence whatever foolish argument

  About beauty

  You had been tricked into embracing

  And it is the same with a piece of furniture

  I have one or two wooden tables

  That I bought for a song long ago

  I’ve polished
them for years

  And I don’t want anything on them

  Except elbows a plate and a glass

  But I have a Rosengarten on one of them

  Because a Rosengarten celebrates the wood it stands on

  Because it is made with the same mind

  That made the table a hundred years ago

  The mind of honour and skill and modesty

  That patiently manifests an artifact

  Of unutterable usefulness

  You would have to live with a Rosengarten

  To know how useful it is

  As useful as a table or a wall

  To serve your helplessness

  To locate your “wrecked life” in a room

  You have forgotten to explore

  Just as there is no extra word in a great poem

  In a Rosengarten

  There is no extra volume

  There is no gesture, no conceit, no winking eye

  Soliciting a compliment

  It is as it is

  Respectful of the tradition from which it arises

  But independent of it too

  It stands there surrounded by the room

  Establishing second after second

  New alarming original friendships with the air and the light

  Which the room so deeply needs

  To irrigate and refresh your struggle

  And if you have a garden or an acre

  And you want it to flourish

  Place a number of Rosengartens here and there

  His great commanding Asherahs

  The streamlined female presence

  Which men and women sought and worshipped

  In the “high places” of the Bible

  And still do today

  As we walk hand in hand

  Through the bewildering and shabby insignificance

  Of our official corrected public and private daily lives

  And here She is:

  Fully born from herself

  Urgent and accommodating

  A thrust of polished energy that does not cut the air

  But softens it and ignites it softly

  Offered up on a simple stone staircase

  Which in itself is a masterpiece of escalating harmony

  Offered to the mystery of beauty

  Which no one dare explain

  Offered up for the secret reasons

  Which are known to all

  Offered up in the usual conditions of distress

  And the deep inner certainty of perfection

  And now your garden

  Does not need reminding

  I’M ALWAYS THINKING OF A SONG

  I’m always thinking of a song

  For Anjani to sing

  It will be about our lives together

  It will be very light or very deep

  But nothing in between

  I will write the words

  And she will write the melody