Gary

(1954-1980)

The grass blown over your eyes,

  I saw, soul-shrivelled

in wind, wet in an early Spring,

  an absent heart

(were it just grass borders taking

  you in!),

 and even a

  slight form of a daughterless dad

(were it just in the way the next

  stone took you out),

  & a very wet sunken place

( Gary , not a tree around for

  you either!)

With some watchful sweeping, alone

  alone all the time, I

saw the step, smile & the veiny brow

  returned,

and very shapeless under my

  feet  a

few leaves yet to brush from the eyes,

                              old friend

Gertrude

When it's out of your hands,  and the cute curled face
   of the cat-saint takes one in hers,

look on a bit & wait. The two or three others, breathless
  and tight-lipped (those cats of hers!)

she won't embrace because they are beyond Nevelles fields,
  and beyond me every bit as much--

these, --I pray !--be always yesterday's poor  inexistent
  twitching under her heat

Tabby

She's etched in snow-decal like the panther cousin; and

  lost in a broken field, like the plumehunter

Devislish with fur's soft-fire, foxed,
  hourly, in even bouts a cat walks out of her rubble-lair to
taste yardbrush and its  fancy dish

Tabby's part chisel-toothed, part tiger tongs
  with eye-grease
(fecund feet mounting on rocks)

  A faint brocade beautifully grains evenly at the throat,
the very softness a symbol
  from round  the nape and down the central arch--

the cushy patron-saint of the somnambulist!

  If ticklish as a mushroom's dewy underbelly
she's also watchful as an ear of the sea

  She's also marathon-prowler

because with all the momentary glaring sun-reveille,
  transparent grass mists
and footfalls seen across a frictionless,crabbed yard,
  we can hardly spot her at all

clawing on the oak with tusky prescience

  Rains can't wither tails nor alone a tabby's puff-cheeks,
powdery ear, cute crystal-moth nose, too

  And if she's more shrimper than man-eater,
more a whiskery fandango, majorette, than sacred pelf matted
  with odd street-gore--
still for all that the cat prefers guttling prey to just meanly
  boring through

  Tabby's still all egress, a pure window on the world,
assailed by nothing so much as a light rain

  and with feathers in the mouth looks like nothing so
much as some celestial mouser, nestbugger,
  eyes two starry flea-wings,

  gums of moist cooked cheese.

Exempla of the Aged

 

   That Wisdom to know when to rise

is caught in shades, strong-armed by two fleshy feet

   that get up slowly, greet the light.

& hold derisively to the taffrails of a stormy Day

   There's no tabla or tabor but an ear-ringing;

& that ache at temples in cheap palliative out-

   doors where icy pale yellow straw

are beds, not graves.

   Degrading gloss of plastic

   patio seats, too, without flaming horses!

At first glance his face rising lowers towards

   Styrofoam cups; nose & chin moisten

heading for a ground far away from the rails & damp.

   The cheeks are cracked flowerpots.

If anyone sees 'em when he tries to go, it's welcome

   relief from leggy shades round him.

If ever a heavy forearm makes a start, it's rebel angel

   wing of eighty or so that slowly tears him

from his toast.

He may even find there some bold fixity,
   with crumbs on lips & crumpled chin,

and can thank himself for it & "a word with you"
   would be enough.

 But if "no one's

heard me, it's been quiet at least" because "he's wise

   who knows when it's time to rise".

Fay, please confirm

Fay, please confirm

             that it's just another spring

  memory, veiled

like the Crocus at the painter's

  feet-

  a clay bed

for seeds to green in lavender heat,

  heats of old;

              & things like that!

You, in yr leg-horned hat, will plant 'em

 scented in milkpod

(or gashed to let in dew), and

  keep in one drying eye

Dreamless, like petals in your hands,

  are ghosts of a milky

love! 

And shadowy, to be passed on

  in hectic heat;

at that zenithal, uppermost stalk

  of yr one dear eye, Fay!

For whose dear sake, (or since it's me!)

  a type of acid-

yellow flower or the stone of a

  southern star

will punch through Night's hollow bars

...

  Fay, please, it's

just a time zone long, up or down--

  acid Crocus of my love!

   

Becky

By the willow and aspen groves,

their accustomed rendezvous,

he'd told her, as often as not,

to find a spot and hide from view:

"I didn't promise--don't say I did,

that the night wouldn't reveal us--

dirty sinners and all of that!--

to Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Look! that ivy came from Boston,

that's twined--so cute!--around your wrist.

its yellowing lime and aspic leaves

being apt symbols of our tryst!

and more malleable English vines,

braided and falling down your hair--

why, they'll bring out the Eve in you

that tempted me to stare down there!

And panting for grasses, waist-deep,

so we could find a place to lie,

has left not a few milk-thistle stains

around the circle of your eye."

His Becky turned to look at him,

turned round to hear the man she loved,

as warm soft winds tossed and breezed.

And feeling she'd been cruelly snubbed,

she charged the night with all its stars,

to pluck the ivy from their place;

and bid the moon to wear its horns

and scrape the thistle from her face.

"I didn't promise--don't say I did!"

that grasses wouldn't conceal us."

And one more pagan, sprouting wings,

flies to Mary, Joseph and Jesus!

White Rose

(for Sophie Scholl)

I say, Yes to the petal lips given to Rose hearts
  as freely and easily
as all the world's real true outgrowing

  In a velvet crown
you're a sort of supermute conqueror
  of hard suns, aren't you?

  but Yes mostly to a Rose lasting in the head!
and to the cruel mossy roots
  that like  true loving arms can easily
hug and tear,

                    canceling bud and
  swelling, if need be, for a dear Something

Yes, blooming heart that'd better eventually
                                                         not grow!

  For what grows, lonely, can be un-
seasonably rare & gold for just a true time:
  it's less than clod but more
than cold, so a clear plant naming from the first

  And so my one only Rose, cela!

You are really lolling sweet and honey tongued as
  all heck, with a pink push here,
(& there),& the goodwill of an odd briny dew-
  tears below a one  true eye—

A slow-rising fulsome kind of true eye, you are.

  Earth, seen from here, is one hothouse eterne,

 wormed for claypot and urn, 

   and just where
  petals crowning sober clods
have  known it,

    and the leal & pipsqueak pinkbuds, too--

  there you are, too, ripe for angry bees.