(Poem #219)Postcard I'm thinking of you. What else can I say? The palm trees on the reverse are a delusion; so is the pink sand. What we have are the usual fractured coke bottles and the smell of backed-up drains, too sweet, like a mango on the verge of rot, which we have also. The air clear sweat, mosquitos & their tracks; birds, blue & elusive. Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one day after the other rolling on; I move up, its called awake, then down into the uneasy nights but never forward. The roosters crow for hours before dawn, and a prodded child howls & howls on the pocked road to school. In the hold with the baggage there are two prisoners, their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten crates of queasy chicks. Each spring there's a race of cripples, from the store to the church. This is the sort of junk I carry with me; and a clipping about democracy from the local paper. Outside the window they're building the damn hotel, nail by nail, someone's crumbling dream. A universe that includes you can't be all bad, but does it? At this distance you're a mirage, a glossy image fixed in the posture of the last time I saw you. Turn you over, there's the place for the address. Wish you were here. Love comes in waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on & on, a hollow cave in the head, filling and pounding, a kicked ear. |
Postcard -- Margaret Atwood
Having A Coke With You -- Frank O'Hara
(Poem #218)Having A Coke With You is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully as the horse it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it |
A Drinking Song -- William Butler Yeats
(Poem #217)A Drinking Song Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh. |
The Love Cook -- Ron Padgett
(Poem #216)The Love Cook Let me cook you some dinner. Sit down and take off your shoes and socks and in fact the rest of your clothes, have a daquiri, turn on some music and dance around the house, inside and out, it’s night and the neighbors are sleeping, those dolts, and the stars are shining bright, and I’ve got the burners lit for you, you hungry thing. |
Summer Is Still Very Far Away -- Bai Hua
(Poem #215)Summer Is Still Very Far Away One day passes after another Secretly, something approaches you Sitting, walking Watching the leaves drop Watching the rain fall Watching as someone walks down the street Summer is still very far away It happened so fast, vanishing at birth All that is good entered on an October night So beautiful, entirely unnoticed A great serenity like your clean cloth shoes The past, vague and gentle, lingers by the bedside Like an old box A faded bookmark Summer is still very far away Meeting by chance, perhaps you can't recall It was a little cold outside Your left hand was tired, too Secretly you walked all the way to the left Far away, deep in The sole infatuation of your heart Summer is still very far away Never again easy to anger, easy to love To take up those old bad habits of yours Losing heart with each passing year A small bamboo house, a white shirt Are you in the prime of life? Seldom can a decision be made Summer is still very far away |