Let's use our nicknames
When we apply for this next job
Even though it's past our bedtime
And our current paycheck
 
Can't shut up the muse
Who mewls at the dinner table
Begging for a crust of bread
To sate the nightly terrors.
 
For they come, don't they,
Leaving empty spaces numbers
Are supposed to fill. Buddy
And Chip loaded their coffers
 
Before the hard freeze.
The ice burns our tongues
As we swallow prosperity
One parched drop at a time.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

In the end,

I was like others.

A person.

Sometimes embarrassed,

sometimes afraid.

When “Fire!” was shouted,

some ran toward it,

some away—

I neck-deep among them.

—2017

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.