What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-
conscious looking at the full moon.
   In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the
neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
   What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping
at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in
the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing
down by the watermelons?

   I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
   I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork
chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
   I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following
you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
   We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary
fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
    (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 
supermarket and feel absurd.)
   Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add
shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
   Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue
automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
   Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you
got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear
on the black waters of Lethe?

—Berkeley, 1955

Reverend Walter Peters, All Angels’ Church, November 18, 1849

Someone has died, who will never see the black
joylight expand in her mother’s blue eyes.
Who will never grasp a pinky, nor be danced
up, down and around and lullabied all night.
Someone who will never come to realize
that her Dada’s palms aren’t dirty, they’re just brown.
Who made HER mother, HIM father, then broke their hearts.
Who is their shooting star, glimpsed only once.
Someone who will never laugh, or play, or care …

Praying that little box into the earth,
Rev. Peters asks forgiveness for his faint faith.
He thinks of the life of pain Someone was spared.

“A female still born child of Egbert Stairs (colored) & Catherine Cochran his wife (white) was buried in All Angels’ churchyard, November 18, 1849”—from the church record.

For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894-1956

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
   the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
   talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
   shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm—and your memory in my head three years after—
   And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud—wept, realizing
   how we suffer—
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
   prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of An-
   swers—and my own imagination of a withered leaf—at dawn—
Dreaming back thru life, Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apoca-
   lypse,
the final moment—the flower burning in the Day—and what comes after, 
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
   Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed—
like a poem in the dark—escaped back to Oblivion—
No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream,
   trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worship-
   ping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all—longing or inevitability?—while it
   lasts, a Vision—anything more?
It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder,
   Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shoul-
   dering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant—and
   the sky above—an old blue place.
or down the Avenue to the south, to—as I walk toward the Lower East Side
   —where you walked 50 years ago, little girl—from Russia, eating the
   first poisonous tomatoes of America frightened on the dock 
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?—toward
   Newark—
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice 
   cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards—
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school,
   and learning to be mad, in a dream—what is this life?
Toward the Key in the window—and the great Key lays its head of light
   on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the
   sidewalk—in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward
   the Yiddish Theater—and the place of poverty
you knew, and I know, but without caring now—Strange to have moved
   thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstops doors and dark boys on
   the street, fire escapes old as you
—Tho you're not old now, that's left here with me—
Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe—and I guess that dies with
   us—enough to cancel all that comes--What came is gone forever
   every time—
That's good!  That leaves it open for no regret—no fear radiators, lacklove,
   torture even toothache in the end—
Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul—and the lamb, the soul,
   in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce hunger--hair 
   and teeth—and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin,
   braintricked Implacability.
Ai! ai!  we do worse! We are in a fix!  And you're out, Death let you out,
   Death had the Mercy, you're done with your century, done with 
   God, done with the path thru it—Done with yourself at last—Pure
   —Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us all—before the
   world—
There, rest.  No more suffering for you.  I know where you've gone, it's good.
No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more 
   fear of Louis,
and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts,
   loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands—
No more of sister Elanor,—she gone before you—we kept it secret you
   killed her--or she killed herself to bear with you—an arthritic heart
   —But Death's killed you both—No matter—
Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and
   weeks—forgetting, agrieve watching Marie Dressler address human-
   ity, Chaplin dance in youth,
or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping Czar
   —by standing room with Elanor & Max—watching also the Capital 
   ists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,
with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts
   pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and
   laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
all girls grown old, or dead now, and that long hair in the grave—lucky to
   have husbands later—
You made it—I came too—Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and
   will gream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer—or kill
   —later perhaps—soon he will think—)
And it's the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now
   --tho not you
I didn't foresee what you felt--what more hideous gape of bad mouth came 
   first--to you--and were you prepared?
To go where?  In that Dark--that--in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the 
   Void?  Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream?  Adonoi at last, with
   you?
Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull
   in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon—Deaths-
   head with Halo?  can you believe it?
Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence,
   than none ever was?
Nothing beyond what we have—what you had—that so pitiful—yet Tri-
   umph,
to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower—fed to the 
   ground—but made, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe, 
   shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth
   wrapped, sore—freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.
No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the
   knife—lost
Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy—even in the Spring—strange ghost 
   thought some—Death—Sharp icicle in his hand—crowned with old
   roses—a dog for his eyes—cock of a sweatshop—heart of electric
   irons.
All the accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks, bodies, consciousness,
   shoes, breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—'Paranoia' into
   hospitals.
You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later.  You of 
   stroke.  Asleep?  within a year, the two of you, sisters in death.  Is
   Elanor happy?
Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over
   midnight Accountings, not sure.  His life passes—as he sees—and
   what does he doubt now?  Still dream of making money, or that might 
   have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Im-
   mortality, Naomi?
I'll see him soon.  Now I've got to cut through to talk to you as I didn't
   when you had a mouth.
Forever.  And we're bound for that, Forever like Emily Dickinson's horses
   —headed to the End.
They know the way—These Steeds—run faster than we think—it's our own
   life they cross—and take with them.

   Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, mar-
ried dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
   In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under
pine, almed in Earth, blamed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
   Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless,
Father in death.  Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm
hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
   Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not
light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
   Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some
of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
   This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Won-
derer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping
—page beyond Psalm—Last change of mine and Naomi—to God's perfect
Darkness--Death, stay thy phantoms!

II
   Over and over—refrain—of the Hospitals—still haven't written your
history—leave it abstract—a few images
   run thru the mind—like the saxophone chorus of houses and years—
remembrance of electrical shocks.
   By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your
nervousness—you were fat—your next move—
   By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you—
once and for all—when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my
opinion of the cosmos, I was lost—
   By my later burden—vow to illuminate mankind—this is release of
particulars—(mad as you)—(sanity a trick of agreement)—
   But you stared out the window on the Broadway Church corner, and
spied a mystical assassin from Newark,
   So phoned the Doctor—'OK go way for a rest'—so I put on my coat
and walked you downstreet—On the way a grammarschool boy screamed,
unaccountably—'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered—
   and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma—
   And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of 
the gang?  You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on—to New
York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound—

                                  —for Patrick Rosal

Before, ache never seemed long like a tunnel
under the city flaring off another tunnel
the subway rumbled against, or the dark

jutting out of daylight’s reach up on 187^th
when I know some part is inhabited and
that habitation looks out at me. I know

every uninhabited place lodges a thing looking
out. I have grown into a life, become middle
aged, deepened into the hidden inside, like

the day into its other half, or a memory
of a woman’s silence after she didn’t
want to be kissed, and I wonder when rot

began, and I wonder what other ideas the cabbie
had when he turned into the truck’s path.
Sometimes silence is emptier than some oaths

I have made. Hours change habits and late seeps
into early and rain, in another part of this
country, suddenly, heavily falls, flattens seams,

frays and splits them like I did away from a lover once
in a city where both of us were foreign, and she
the only person who recognized me for a thousand miles,

the only one who knew where I was. And
then not. This ache is empty like that.

Sometimes I picture your face on money. 

But this isn’t Rome, where they know
what money’s worth, which is almost 

the paper it’s printed on (a kind of art), 

and where I stared what seemed eternity
into a guidebook, lost, side-skipping

pigeon past, motorbikes, and swarms 

of gypsy tykes excavating the ruins
of tourists’ pockets, until I stumbled

onto the Temple of the Golden Arches-

McDonald’s!- and across the piazza, 
the Pantheon.... Inside, third niche left, 

alone a moment with the Ossa et cineres

of Raphael, I thought of you; “put it all
in the poem” was your advice so, okay, 

here you are! – among the camcorders, 

cell phones, retired gods, and a pair of
kings – rumpled, broke, and amused 

as you were the Green Mountain morning

you asked: among us who was writing 
for posterity?, and one of us knew. Bill, 

I haven’t paid you your due, but need

another favor: could you please undie
so I can buy you the glass of good

rosso in the Eternal City I owe you? 



               William Matthews, poet and teacher (1942 – 1997) 

Look at the slight valley of the horse between haunch and shoulder,
recalling its rider and the low hills between. Form never forgets.
Though they are free to be real horses not obscured by work,
not pull anything, they must think hard to do nothing but remember
their lovers to run the low hills and dream and eat up green landscape.
He thinks of her and the way part of him still sinks down the cushions
when he's gone. A few remembering shapes linger till the foam or feathers
take a deep breath and remember what they were. If he comes back soon
he may not be quite missing, indentations rising as if still getting up.
When he leaves he feels her still on him, a loving cinch like the feel of hat,
the hat gone.