Stranger Music

and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.
I LONG TO HOLD SOME LADY
I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.
There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady’s bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:
As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.
Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.
But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.
OWNING EVERYTHING
You worry that I will leave you.
I will not leave you.
Only strangers travel.
Owning everything,
I have nowhere to go.
SONG
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how I kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover
FOR ANNE
With Annie gone,
Whose eyes to compare
With the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she’s gone.
YOU HAVE THE LOVERS
You have the lovers,
they are nameless, their histories only for each other,
and you have the room, the bed and the windows.
Pretend it is a ritual.
Unfurl the bed, bury the lovers, blacken the windows,
let them live in that house for a generation or two.
No one dares disturb them.
Visitors in the corridor tiptoe past the long closed door,
they listen for sounds, for a moan, for a song:
nothing is heard, not even breathing.
You know they are not dead,
you can feel the presence of their intense love.
Your children grow up, they leave you,
they have become soldiers and riders.
Your mate dies after a life of service.
Who knows you? Who remembers you?
But in your house a ritual is in progress:
it is not finished: it needs more people.
One day the door is opened to the lover’s chambers.
The room has become a dense garden,
full of colours, smells, sounds you have never known.
The bed is smooth as a wafer of sunlight,
in the midst of the garden it stands alone.
In the bed the lovers, slowly and deliberately and silently,
perform the act of love.
Their eyes are closed,
as tightly as if heavy coins of flesh lay on them.
Their lips are bruised with new and old bruises.
Her hair and his beard are hopelessly tangled.
When he puts his mouth against her shoulder
she is uncertain whether her shoulder
has given or received the kiss.
All her flesh is like a mouth.
He carries his fingers along her waist
and feels his own waist caressed.
She holds him closer and his own arms tighten around her.
She kisses the hand beside her mouth.
It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters,
there are so many more kisses.
You stand beside the bed, weeping with happiness,
you carefully peel away the sheets
from the slow-moving bodies.
Your eyes are filled with tears, you barely make out the lovers.
As you undress you sing out, and your voice is magnificent
because now you believe it is the first human voice
heard in that room.
The garments you let fall grow into vines.
You climb into bed and recover the flesh.
You close your eyes and allow them to be sewn shut.
You create an embrace and fall into it.
There is only one moment of pain or doubt
as you wonder how many multitudes are lying beside your body,
but a mouth kisses and a hand soothes the moment away.
SONG FOR ABRAHAM KLEIN
The weary psalmist paused
His instrument beside.
Departed was the Sabbath
And the Sabbath Bride.
The table was decayed,
The candles black and cold.
The bread he sang so beautifully,
That bread was mould.
He turned toward his lute,
Trembling in the night.
He thought he knew no music
To make the morning right.
Abandoned was the Law,
Abandoned the King.
Unaware he took his instrument,
His habit was to sing.
He sang and nothing changed
Though many heard the song.
But soon his face was beautiful
And soon his limbs were strong.
SONG TO MAKE ME STILL
Lower your eyelids
over the water
Join the night
like the trees
you lie under
How many crickets
how many waves
easy after easy
on the one-way shore
There are stars
from another view
and a moon
to draw the seaweed through
No one calls the crickets vain
in their time
in their time
No one will call you idle
for dying with the sun
SUMMER HAIKU
for Frank and Marian Scott
Silence
and a deeper silence
when the crickets
hesitate
MY LADY CAN SLEEP
My lady can sleep
Upon a handkerchief
Or if it be Fall
Upon a fallen leaf.
I have seen the hunters
Kneel before her hem —
Even in her sleep
She turns away from them.
The only gift they offer
Is their abiding grief —
I pull out my pockets
For a handkerchief or leaf.
GIFT
     You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
     This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.
I WONDER HOW MANY PEOPLE IN THIS CITY
I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.
TRAVEL
Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought
Of travelling penniless to some mud throne
Where a master might instruct me how to plot
My life away from pain, to love alone
In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake.
Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost
Enough to lose a way I had to take;
Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust
The will that forbid me contract, vow,
Or promise, and often while you slept
I looked in awe beyond your beauty.
                                                                  Now
I know why many men have stopped and wept
Halfway between the loves they leave and seek,
And wondered if travel leads them anywhere —
Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek,
The windy sky’s a locket for your hair.
I HAVE TWO BARS OF SOAP
I have two bars of soap,
the fragrance of almond,
one for you and one for me.
Draw the bath,
we will wash each other.
I have no money,
I murdered the pharmacist.
And here’s a jar of oil,
just like in the Bible.
Lie in my arms,
I’ll make your flesh glisten.
I have no