two shining people know, they go directly to the roots they
lie between. For my part I describe the whole orchard.
F O U N D O N C E A G A I N S H A M E L E S S L Y
I G N O R I N G T H E S W A N S • . .
Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans who inflame the spectators on the shores of American rivers; found once again allowing the juicy contract to expire because the
telephone has a magic correspondence with my tapeworm;
found once again leaving the garlanded manhood in danger
of long official repose while it is groomed for marble in
seedily historic back rooms; found once again humiliating
the bank clerk with eye-to-eye wrestling, art dogma, lives
that loaf and stare, and other stage whispers of genius;
found once again the chosen object of heavenly longing
such as can ambush a hermit in a forest with visions of a
busy parking lot; found once again smelling mothball
sweaters, titling home movies, untangling Victorian salmon
rods, fanatically convinced that a world of sporty order is
just around the corner; found once again planning the ideal
lonely year which waits like first flesh love on a calendar of
third choices; found once again hovering like a twine-eating
kite over hands that feed me, verbose under the influence
of astrology; found one again selling out to accessible local
purity while Pentagon Tiffany evil alone can guarantee my
power; found once again trusting that my friends grew up
in Eden and will not harm me when at last I am armourless
and absolutely silent; found once again at the very beginning, veteran of several useless ordeals, prophetic but not seminal, the purist for the masses of tomorrow; found once
again sweetening life which I have abandoned, like a fired
zoo-keeper sneaking peanuts to publicized sodomized elephants; found once again flaunting the rainbow which demonstrates that I am permitted only that which I urgently
need; found once again cleansing my tongue of all possibilities, of all possibilities but my perfect one.
I964
I •93
W H E N I H E A R Y O U S I N G
When I hear you sing
Solomon
animal throat, eyes beaming
sex and wisdom
My hands ache from
I left blood on the doors of my home
Solomon
I am very alone from aiming songs
at God for
I thought that bes�de me there was no one
Solomon
194 I
H E W A S L A M E
He was lame
as a 3 legged dog
screamed as he came
through the fog
If you are the Light
give me a light
buddy
I A M T O O L O U D W H E N Y O U A R E G O N E
I am too loud when you are gone
I am John the Baptist, cheated by mere water
and merciful love, wild but over-known
John of honey, of time, longing not for
music, longing, longing to be Him
I am diminished, I peddle versions of Word
that don't survive the tablets broken stone
I am alone when you are gone
I 1 95
S O M E W H E R E I N M Y T R O P H Y R O O M . . .
Somewhere in my trophy room the crucifixion and other
sacrifices were still going on, but the flesh and nails were
grown over with rust and I could not tell where the flesh
ended and the wood began or on which wall the instruments were hung.
I passed by limbs and faces arranged in this museum like
hanging kitchen tools, and some brushed my arm as the
hallway reeled me in, but I pocketed my hands along with
some vulnerable smiles, and I continued on.
I heard the rooms 'behind me clamour an instant for my
brain, and once the brain responded, out of habit, weakly,
as if thinking someone else's history, and somewhere in that
last tune it learned that it was not the Queen, it was a
drone.
There ahead of me extended an impossible trophy: the
bright, great sky, where no men lived. Beautiful and empty,
now luminous with a splendour emanating from my own
flesh, the tuneless sky washed and washed my lineless face
and bathed in waves my heart like a red translucent stone.
Until my eyes gave out I lived there as my home.
Today I know the only distance that I came was to the
threshold of my trophy room. Among the killing instruments again I am further from sacrifice than when I began.
I do not stare or plead with passing pilgrims to help me
there. I call it discipline but perhaps it is fallen pride alone.
I'm not the one to learn an exercise for dwelling in the sky.
My trophy room is vast and hung with crutches, ladders,
196 1
braces, hooks. Unlike the invalid's cathedral, men hang with
these instruments. A dancing wall of molecules, changing
nothing, has cleared a place for me and my time.
Y O U K N O W W H E R E I H A V E B E E N
You know where I have been
Why my knees are raw
I'd like to speak to you
Who will see what I saw
Some men who saw me fall
Spread the news of failure
I want to speak to them
The dogs of literature
Pass me as I proudly
Passed the others
Who kneel in secret flight
Pass us proudly Brothers
I 197
I M E T A W O M A N L O N G A G O
I met a woman long ago,
hair black as black can go.
Are you a teacher of the heart?
Soft she answered No.
I met a girl across the sea,
hair the gold that gold can be.
Are you a teacher of the heart?
Yes, but not for thee.
I knew a man who ,lost his mind
in some lost place I wished to find.
Follow me, he said,
but he walked behind.
I walked into a hospital
Where none was sick and none was well.
When at night the nurses left,
I could not walk at all.
Not too slow, not too soon
morning came, then came noon.
Dinner time a scalpel blade
lay beside my spoon.
Some girls wander by mistake
into the mess that scalpels make.
Are you teachers of the heart?
We teach old hearts to break.
One day I woke up alone,
hospital and nurses gone.
1 gs 1
Have I carved enough?
You are a bone.
I ate and ate and ate,
I didn't miss a plate.
How much do these suppers cost?
We'll take it out in hate.
I spent my hatred every place,
on every work, on every face.
Someone gave me wishes.
I wished for an embrace.
Several girls embraced me, then
I was embraced by men.
Is my passion perfect?
Do it once again.
I was handsome, I was strong,
I knew the words of every song.
Did my singing please you?
The words you sang were wrong.
Who are you whom I address?
Who takes down what I confess?
Are you a
teacher of the heart?
A chorus answered Yes.
Teachers, are my lessons done
or must I learn another one?
They cried: Dear Sir or Madam,
Daughter, Son.
I 199
I ' V E S E E N S O M E L O N E L Y H I S T O R Y
I've seen some lonely history
The heart cannot explore
I've scratched some empty blackboards
They have no teachers for
I trailed my meagre demons
From Jerusalem to Rome
I had an invitation
But the host was not at home
There were contagjous armies
That spread their uniform
To all parts of my body
Except where I was warm
And so I wore a helmet
With a secret neon sign
That lit up all the boundaries
So I could toe the line
My boots got very tired
Like a sentry's never should
I was walking on a tightrope
That was buried in the mud
Standing at the drugstore
It was very hard to Jearn
Though my name was everywhere
I had to wait my turn
200 1
I'm standing here before you
I don't know what I bring
If you can hear the music
Why don't you help me sing
S N O W I S F A L L I N G
Snow is falling.
There is a nude in my room.
She surveys the wine-coloured carpet.
She is eighteen.
She has straight hair.
She speaks no Montreal language.
She doesn't feel like sitting down.
She shows no gooseflesh.
We can hear the storm.
She is lighting a cigarette
from the gas range.
She holds back her long hair.
1 201
C R E A T E D F I R E S I C A N N O T L O V E
Created fires I cannot love
lest I lose the ones above.
Poor enough, then I'll learn
to choose the fires where they burn.
0 God, make me poor enough
to love your diamond in the rough,
or in my failure let me see
my greed raised to mystery.
Do you hate the opes who must
turn your world all to dust?
Do you hate the ones who ask
if Creation wears a mask?
God beyond the God I name,
if mask and fire are the same,
repair the seam my love leaps through,
uncreated fire to pursue.
Network of created fire,
maim my love and my desire.
Make me poor so I may be
servant in the world I see,
Or, as my love leaps wide,
confirm your servant in his pride:
if my love can't burn,
forbid a sickening return.
Is it here my love will train
not to leap so high again?
202 1
No praise here? no blame?
From my love you tear my name.
Unmake me as I'm washed
far from the fiery mask.
Gather my pride in the coded pain
which is also your domain.
C L A I M M E , B L O O D , I F Y O U
H A V E A S T O R Y
Claim me, blood, if you have a story
to tell with my Jewish face,
you are strong and holy still, only
speak, like the Zohar, of a carved-out place
into which I must pour myself like wine,
an emptiness of history which I must seize
and occupy, calm and full in this confine,
becoming clear "like good wine on its lees."
196s
H E W A S B E A U T I F U L W H E N H E
S A T A L O N E
He was beautiful when he sat alone, he was like me, he had
wide lapels, he was holding the mug in the hardest possible
way so that his fingers were all twisted but still long and
beautiful, he didn't like to sit alone all the time, but this
time, I swear, he didn't care one way or the other.
I'll tell you why I like to sit alone, because I'm a sadist,
that's why we like to sit alone, because we're the sadists wao
like to sit alone.
He sat alone because he was beautifully dressed for the
occasion and because he was not a civilian.
We are the sadists you don't have to worry about, you think,
and we have no opinion on the matter of whether you have
to worry about us, and we don't even like to think about
the matter because it baffles us.
Maybe he doesn't mean a thing to me any more but I think
he was like me.
You didn't expect to fall in love, I said to myself and at the
same time I answered gently, Do you think so?
I heard you humming beautifully, your hum said that I
can't ignore you, that I'd finally come around for a number
of delicious reasons that only you knew about, and here I
am, Miss Blood.
And you won't come back, you won't come back to where
you left me, and that's why you keep my number, so you
204 I
don't dial it by mistake when you're fooling with the dial
not even dialing numbers.
You begin to bore us with your pain and we have decided
to change your pain.
You said you were happiest when you danced, you said you
were happiest when you danced with me, now which do you
mean?
And so we changed his pain, we threw the idea of a body at
him and we told him a joke, and then he thought a great
deal about laughing and about the code.
And he thought that she thought that he thought that she
thought that the worst thing a woman could do was to take
a man away from his work because that made her what, ugly
or beautiful?
And now you have entered the mathematical section of
your soul which you claimed you never had. I suppose that
this, plus the broken heart, makes you believe that now you
have a perfect right to go out and tame the sadists.
He had the last line of each verse of the song but he didn't
have any of the other lines, the last line was always the
same, Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it.
He thought he knew, or he actually did know too much
about singing to be a singer; and if there actually is such a
condition, is anybody in it, and are sadists born there?
It is not a question mark, it is not an exclamation point, it
is a full stop by the man who wrote Parasites of Heaven.
I 205
Even if we stated our case very clearly and all those who
held as we do came to our side, all of them, we would still
be very few.
206 1
I A M A P R I E S T O F G O D
I am a priest of God
I walk down the road
with my pockets in my hand
Sometimes I'm bad
then sometimes I'm very good
I believe that I believe
everything I should
I like to hear you say
when you dance with head rolling
upon a silver tray
that I am a priest of God
I thought I was doing 100 other things
but I was a priest of God
I loved 100 women
never
told the same lie twice
I said 0 Christ you're selfish
but I shared my bread and rice
I heard my voice tell the crowd
that I was alone and a priest of God
making me so empty
that even now in 1966
I'm not sure I'm a priest of God
I 207
I N A L M O N D T R E E S L E M O N T R E E S
In almond trees lemon trees
wind and sun do as they please
Butterflies and laundry flutter
My love her hair is blond as butter
Wasps with yellow whiskers wait
for food beside her china plate
Ants beside her little feet
are there to share what she will eat
Who chopped down the bells that say
the world is born again today
We will feed you all my dears
this morning or in later years
2os 1
S U Z A N N E T A K E S Y O U D O W N
Suzanne takes you down
to her place near the river,
you can hear the boats go by
you can stay the night beside her.
And you know that she's half crazy
but that's why you want to be there
and she feeds you tea and oranges
that come all the way from China.
Just when you mean to tell her
that you have no gifts to give her,
she gets you on her wave-length
and she lets the river answer
that you've always been her lover.
And you want to travel with her,
you want to travel blind
and you know that she can trust you
because you've touched her perfect body
with your mind.
Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from a lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain
only drowning men could see him
he said All men will be sailors then
until the sea shall free them,
but he himself was broken
long before the sky would open,
forsaken, almost human,
he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.
And you want to travel with him,
I !.!09
you want to travel blind
and you think maybe you'll trust him
because he touched your perfect body
with his mind.
Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river,
she is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters.
The sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
as she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers,
there are heroes in the seaweed
there are children in the morning,
Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Page 12
