Writings

Originally Published in A Turning Wind (1939) The fear of poetry is the fear : mystery and fury of a midnight street of windows whose low voluptuous voice issues, and after that there is no peace. The round waiting moment in the theatre : curtain rises, dies into the ceiling and here is played the scene with the mother bandaging a revealed son's head. The bandage is torn off. Curtain goes down. And here is the moment of proof. That climax when the brain acknowledges the world, all values extended into the blood awake. Moment of proof. And as they [...]

Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) You come from poets, kings, bankrupts, preachers, attempted bankrupts, builders of cities, salesmen, the great rabbis, the kings of Ireland, failed drygoods storekeepers, beautiful women of the songs, great horsemen, tyrannical fathers at the shore of ocean, the western mothers looking west beyond from their windows, the families escaping over the sea hurriedly and by night-- the roundtowers of the Celtic violet sunset, the diseased, the radiant, fliers, men thrown out of town, the man bribed by his cousins to stay out of town, teachers, the cantor on Friday evening, the lurid [...]

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) Waking this morning, a violent woman in the violent day Laughing. Past the line of memory along the long body of your life in which move childhood, youth, your lifetime of touch, eyes, lips, chest, belly, sex, legs, to the waves of the sheet. I look past the little plant on the city windowsill to the tall towers bookshaped, crushed together in greed, the river flashing flowing corroded, the intricate harbor and the sea, the wars, the moon, the planets, all who people space in the sun visible invisible. African violets in the light [...]

First published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane, The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories, The news would pour out of various devices Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen. I would call my friends on other devices; They would be more or less mad for similar reasons. Slowly I would get to pen and paper, Make my poems for others unseen and unborn. In the day I would be reminded of those men and women, Brave, setting up [...]

Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) is my concern.      That's the moment, when I lean on my elbows out the windowsill and feel the city among its time-zones, among its seas, among its late night news, the pouring in of everything meeting, wars, dreams, winter night. Light in snowdrifts causing the young girls lying awake to fall in love tonight alone in bed; or the little children half world over tonight rained on by fire--that's us-- calling on somebody--that's us--to come and help them. Now I see at the boundary of darkness extreme of moonlight. Alone. [...]

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) "You are not pregnant," said the man with the probe and the white white coat; "Yes she is," said all the little animals. Then the great gynecologist examined. "You are not now, and I doubt that you ever have been," he said with authority. "Test me again." He looked at his nurse and shrugged. "Yes she is," said all the little animals, and laid down their lives for my son and me. Twenty-one years later, my son a grown man and far away at the other ocean, I hear them  :   "Yes you [...]

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the roads.       He smelled a familiar smell.       It was the Sphinx.       Oedipus said, “I want to ask one question. Why didn’t I recognize my mother?”        “You gave the wrong answer,” said the Sphinx.      “But that was what made everything possible,” said Oedipus.     “No,” she said. “When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered, Man.      You didn’t [...]