It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

(September, 1918)

This lonely beautiful word
                                                means church
and it is quiet here; the stone
walls curve
                        like slow water.
When we arrived the people were already gone,
green shutters latched and stoops swept clean.
A cow lowed through the village,
pushing into our gloves her huge
sodden jaw.

It’s Sunday and I’m standing
on the bitter ridge of France, overlooking the war.
La Guerre is asleep. This morning early
on patrol we slipped down through
the mist and scent of burning woodchips
(somewhere someone was warm)
                                                            into Moyenmoutier,
cloister of flushed brick and a little river
braiding its dark hair.

Back home in Louisiana the earth is red,
but it suckles you until you can sing
yourself grown.
                                    Here, even the wind has edges.
Drizzle splintered around us; we stood
on the arched bridge and thought
for a moment of the dead we had left
behind in the valley, in the terrible noise.

But I’m not sad—on the way back
through the twigs I glimpsed
in a broken windowbox by the roadside
mums:
stunned lavenders and pinks
dusted with soot.
                                                I am a little like them,
heavy-headed,
rough curls open to the rain.

I work a lot and live far less than I could,
but the moon is beautiful and there are
blue stars . . . . I live the chaste song of my heart.

—Garcia Lorca to Emilia Llanos Medinor,
November 25, 1920

The moon is in doubt
over whether to be
a man or a woman.

There’ve been rumors,
all manner of allegations,
bold claims and public lies: 

He’s belligerent. She’s in a funk.
When he fades, the world teeters.
When she burgeons, crime blossoms.

O how the operatic impulse wavers!
Dip deep, my darling, into the blank pool. 

^{It is difficult/ to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there. / Hear me out / for I too am concerned / and every man/ who wants to die at peace in his bed / besides.}

                      ^{—William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, that Greeny Flower”}

Move along, you don’t belong here.

This is what you’re thinking. Thinking

drives you nuts these days, all that

talk about rights and law abidance when

you can’t even walk your own neighborhood

in peace and quiet, get your black ass gone.

You’re thinking again. Then what?

Matlock’s on TV and here you are,

vigilant, weary, exposed to the elements

on a wet winter’s evening in Florida

when all’s not right but no one sees it.

Where are they – the law, the enforcers

blind as a bunch of lazy bats can be,

holsters dangling from coat hooks above their desks

as they jaw the news between donuts?

Hey! It tastes good, shoving your voice

down a throat thinking only of sweetness.

Go on, choke on that. Did you say something?

Are you thinking again? Stop!— and

get your ass gone, your blackness,

that casual little red riding hood

I’m just on my way home attitude

as if this street was his to walk on.

Do you hear me talking to you? Boy.

How dare he smile, jiggling his goodies

in that tiny shiny bag, his black paw crinkling it,

how dare he tinkle their laughter at you.

Here’s a fine basket of riddles:

If a mouth shoots off and no one’s around

to hear it, who can say which came first—

push or shove, bang or whimper?

Which is news fit to write home about?

Hell,

we just climbed. Reached the lip

and fell back, slipped

and started up again––

climbed to be climbing, sang

to be singing. It's just what we do.

No one bothered to analyze our blues

until everybody involved

was strung out or dead; to solve

everything that was happening

while it was happening

would have taken some serious opium.

Seriously: All wisdom

is afterthought, a sort of helpless relief.

So don't go thinking none of this grief

belongs to you: Even if

you don't know how it

feels to fall, you can get my drift;

and I, who live it

daily, have heard

that perfect word

enough to know just when

to use it––as in:

Oh hell. Hell, no.

No ––

this is hell.

We were dancing—it must have

been a foxtrot or a waltz,

something romantic but

requiring restraint,

rise and fall, precise

execution as we moved

into the next song without

stopping, two chests heaving

above a seven-league

stride—such perfect agony

one learns to smile through,

ecstatic mimicry

being the sine qua non

of American Smooth.

And because I was distracted

by the effort of

keeping my frame

(the leftward lean, head turned

just enough to gaze out

past your ear and always

smiling, smiling),

I didn’t notice

how still you’d become until

we had done it

(for two measures?

four?)—achieved flight,

that swift and serene

magnificence,

before the earth

remembered who we were

and brought us down.

Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken?
No more princes for the poor. Loss whittling you thin.
Grief is the constant now, hope the last word spoken.

In a dance of two elegies, which circles the drain? A token
year with its daisies and carbines is where we begin.
Who comforts you now? That the wheel has broken

is Mechanics 101; to keep dreaming when the joke’s on
you? Well, crazier legends have been written.
Grief is the constant now; hope, the last word spoken

on a motel balcony, shouted in a hotel kitchen. No kin
can make this journey for you. The route’s locked in.
Who comforts you now that the wheel has broken

the bodies of its makers? Beyond the smoke and
ashes, what you hear rising is nothing but the wind.
Who comforts you? Now that the wheel has broken,

grief is the constant. Hope: the last word spoken.