You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need
To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going. 

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.
Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

O New York City!
Your sky is sharp.
Saw the light grow
and fill in January
with a Delft blue,
clear as Vermeer
at the Frick: clarity
I love most of all.
City I could marry.
A brilliant violet
streaks the edges.
Uzbekistan market,
I taste your mint,
meat and beets.
Couldn’t sleep again.
The cut hyacinths
hold a musty scent.
All these shadows
by Jasper Johns.
I hear the traffic
on 6th. The air clean.
The snow like felt
upholsters the streets.
I look out, I look up.
I am at the height
of the cross now—
so close I can touch it.
My mother is dead.

We go in search of history and find

a guillotine at a garage sale where the lady

of the house in curlers and stretch pants

sits in a lawn chair knitting, knitting.

The guillotine is ugly but has historic

value, we say, and take it home

to replace the wagon wheel in the yard,

but we can’t get the damned thing to work.

Nobody told us the lubricant of history

is blood. We thought it was money.

Is Grandma’s pickle crock historical?

How much is it worth? Could we convert

the rusted old tricycle into a fountain?

But history sings like a chain saw

in the woods, a freight train

in the night. History is the grizzled

Viet Nam veteran with his dog and sign,

begging at the intersection. History

is the yellow detritus of used condoms

at the edge of Lovers’ Lane.

History is a lottery ticket, a truck full

of cocaine approaching the border crossing,

a drunk on the wrong side of the highway.

History is hallucination, fantasy, a mirage

in the desert, as blind as justice.

Historians suffer from the fever of time

but never know what time it is.

They are mad poets making up stories.

The history of war passes a hat and we

put our children in it. Then somebody

gives us stars to put in our windows,

one star for each child.

On the streets of history there are more

guns than lovers, but who could stay

indoors on such a day when the chestnuts

have leafed out at last and lilacs

fill the air with the heartbreak of history.

and a line of light is just beginning

to open the lid of the horizon.

Somebody leans out an upstairs window

and shouts, “Thanks for the beer.

Write when you get work.” A car

coughs, starts, moves down the street

avoiding the deeper puddles

stippled with rain. It passes a dog

in a doorway, his tail curled

carefully around his delicate feet.

It is raining in Coblenz and in Buda

and in Pest. It is raining

on the top and bottom of the world.

It is raining in Argentina. The bank vaults

are leaking. The German certificates

of deposit are beginning to mold.

It is raining on the gleaming seats 

of hundreds of parked bicycles.

It is raining for those who plan to go out

and for those who plan to stay in.

It is raining quietly, the rain of forever,

the rain of good-bye, the rain of tomorrow.

It is raining on horses who stand

on three feet in wet fields

and speak the language of every country.

It is raining on the mansion on the hill

with one small light from the kitchen

where the cook has a toothache and cannot sleep.

She sits playing solitaire, looking around

the empty room quickly, and cheating.

It is raining on the glistening tailings

from exhausted mines and on little

ghost towns in the mountains.

It is raining on the old house in the city

far away where we once lived another life.

It is raining wherever you are

and wherever I am and wherever

we are going and have been.

It is raining on the tombstones, on the flat

stones and the upright stones. It is raining

into the open graves that are waiting.

It is raining on history, on the battlefields

of long-lost wars

and the bronze statues of forgotten heroes.

It is raining on Alcatraz, in the fog,

where mushrooms are growing under steel bunks.

It is raining on millions of pale yellow

butterflies far out at sea, migrating

like angels from one world to another. 



 

The pederasts were pederasting,
The sycophants were sycophanting
and Washington was awash in the slime of politics

when suddenly the three wise monkeys
burst into the committee room
beating on drums and demanding

an end to the teaching of Darwinism or any
theory that related them, even distantly,
to such a debauched creature as man.

Meanwhile, the homeless were trying
to form a union so each of them
could have a pot and a window.
Can you imagine the gall? A pot and a window!

he ordered me to do what 
i would have done anyway 

i knew it as did he but always 
he had to order it 

so that he could tell himself 
he was with a woman who wanted him 

that this breast was a woman’s 
breast               it was a slave’s 

who did not give           who was 
taken              he felt no pleasure 

here     no deep desire 
though well there could have been 

he had to order me and 
i made it master and thing 

it was my only power 
and i used it

I, whom Apollo sometime visited,
Or feigned to visit, now, my day being done,
Do slumber wholly; nor shall know at all
The weariness of changes; nor perceive
Immeasurable sands of centuries
Drink of the blanching ink, or the loud sound
Of generations beat the music down.