I thought I saw an angel flying low,
I thought I saw the flicker of a wing
Above the mulberry trees; but not again.
Bethesda sleeps. This ancient pool that healed
A host of bearded Jews does not awake.
This pool that once the angels troubled does not move.
No angel stirs it now, no Saviour comes
With healing in His hands to raise the sick
And bid the lame man leap upon the ground.

The golden days are gone. Why do we wait
So long upon the marble steps, blood
Falling from our open wounds? and why
Do our black faces search the empty sky?
Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing
We have lost, wandering in strange lands?

There was a day, I remember now,
I beat my breast and cried, “Wash me, God,
Wash me with a wave of wind upon
The barley; O quiet One, draw near, draw near!
Walk upon the hills with lovely feet
And in the waterfall stand and speak.

“Dip white hands in the lily pool and mourn
Upon the harps still hanging in the trees
Near Babylon along the river’s edge,
But oh, remember me, I pray, before
The summer goes and rose leaves lose their red.”

The old terror takes my heart, the fear
Of quiet waters and of faint twilights.
There will be better days when I am gone
And healing pools where I cannot be healed.
Fragrant stars will gleam forever and ever
Above the place where I lie desolate.

Yet I hope, still I long to live.
And if there can be returning after death
I shall come back. But it will not be here;
If you want me you must search for me
Beneath the palms of Africa. Or if
I am not there then you may call to me
Across the shining dunes, perhaps I shall
Be following a desert caravan.

I may pass through centuries of death
With quiet eyes, but I’ll remember still
A jungle tree with burning scarlet birds.
There is something I have forgotten, some precious thing.
I shall be seeking ornaments of ivory,
I shall be dying for a jungle fruit.

                        You do not hear, Bethesda.
O still green water in a stagnant pool!
Love abandoned you and me alike.
There was a day you held a rich full moon
Upon your heart and listened to the words
Of men now dead and saw the angels fly.
There is a simple story on your face;
Years have wrinkled you. I know, Bethesda!
You are sad. It is the same with me.

There is a smile of bitter scorn,
    Which curls the lip, which lights the eye;
There is a smile in beauty’s morn,
    Just rising o’er the midnight sky.

There is a smile of youthful joy,
    When Hope’s bright star’s the transient guest;
There is a smile of placid age,
    Like sunset on the billow’s breast.

There is a smile, the maniac’s smile,
    Which lights the void which reason leaves,
And, like the sunshine through a cloud,
    Throws shadows o’er the song she weaves.

There is a smile of love, of hope,
    Which shines a meteor through life’s gloom;
And there’s a smile, Religion’s smile,
    Which lights the weary to the tomb.

There is a smile, an angel’s smile,
    That sainted souls behind them leave;
There is a smile that shines through toil,
    And warms the bosom though in grief;

And there’s a smile on Nature’s face,
    When Evening spreads her shades around;
A pensive smile when twinkling stars
    Are glimmering through the vast profound.

But there’s a smile, ’tis sweeter still,
    ’Tis one far dearer to my soul;
It is a smile which angels might
    Upon their brightest list enroll.

It is the smile of innocence,
    Of sleeping infancy’s light dream;
Like lightning on a summer’s eve,
    It sheds a soft and pensive gleam.

It dances round the dimpled cheek,
    And tells of happiness within;
It smiles what it can never speak,—
    A human heart devoid of sin.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it?  All those words, too many to fall into rank and file, stumbling bareassed drunk onto the field reporting for duty, yessir, spilling out as shamelessly as the glut from a megabillion dollar chemical facility, just the amount of glittering effluvium it takes to transport a little girl across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords, curtains blowzy with spring — is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?

Daffodils don’t smell but prose doesn’t care.  Prose likes to hear itself talk; prose is development and denouement, anticipation hovering near the canapés, lust rampant in the antipasta — e.g., a silver fork fingered sadly as the heroine crumples a linen napkin in her lap to keep from crying out at the sight of Lord Campion’s regal brow inclined tenderly toward the wealthy young widow . . . prose applauds such syntactical dalliances.

Then is it poetry if it’s confined?  Trembling along its axis, a flagpole come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve for attention — Over here! It’s me! — while the white spaces (air, field, early morning silence before the school bell) shape themselves around that one bright seizure . . . and if that’s so what do we have here, a dream or three paragraphs?  We have white space too; is this music?  As for all the words left out, banging at the gates . . . we could let them in, but where would we go with our orders, our stuttering pride?

We wait for the light here, at 14th and Broadway,
Here, we hand passers-by silk ribboned poems,

We staple them to our neighborhood bulletin board,
We paste them to lampposts. And here, we fold poems

Into parking lots, under each windshield wiper blade,
We tape them up in the Ruby Room bathroom stalls.

Here, we hand letter haiku on Dubs colored confetti,
Weave them with daisies into vacant lot chain fences,

Slip them into glossy envelopes, and drop them
Into the mail slots of whole blocks downtown.

Here, 8th and Webster bullhorns and firecracker fists
Here, spray paint odes for boarded up storefronts,

And here, baybayin in balisong carved verses
For oaks lakeshore. Here, we set paper boat songs

Alongside egrets and geese, to float slow to the bay,
Westward paper airplane and origami crane poems,

Here, boombox blasting Digital Underground,
Here, our hella Baller ballgame singalong—

Because you said we should take words to the world.
Because every poem an arrival. Because we are here.

When the sun takes a final bow, its luminous gown glittering as it leaves the stage, and the audience stands, stretches, files out of the theater, only then do the fireflies enter, lighting their delicate lamps to show us the way out, and they hover over the edges of the grass like our smallest hopes, evening’s fading beacons. We drive past the fields in our rented sedans, windows sealed against the heat, we stretch our feet in our stiff shoes, the lights flying past, those tiny flares floating above the grass, we roar by, our engines, our wheels, our windows sealed, the fields aspark under that lowering curtain, and we strain to see them, wait for that slight hint, as if someone is whispering the word: fire. So quietly, so gently, so brief, it’s almost as if we imagined that bit of air, we crane our necks, waiting for the next flash, holding our breath, hoping, hoping, remembering those moments, when we caught them inside the globe of our clasped hands, put them in a jar, and screwed on a lid with holes in the top, a starry sky for the jar of the world, and we carried the world into our room, and we peered through its glass walls, the pulsing lights, the glimmering hopes, which we hold in our hands, which we watch in the dark, those flashes, each like a star shorting out and out.