somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

    Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 
          First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and full of pride, uphold,
   High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
      Eldorado in the grass have found, 
        Which not the rich earth’s ample round 
    May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
   Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

    Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 
          Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease; 
   ’Tis the Spring’s largess, which she scatters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
       Though most heart never understand 
    To take it at God’s value, but pass by 
    The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

    Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; 
          The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
    Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
       In the white lily’s breezy tent,
    His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
    From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

    Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 
          Where, as the breezes pass, 
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 
   Of leaves that slumber in a cloud mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 
      That from the distance sparkle through 
    Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 
    Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

    My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
          Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 
     And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
        With news from heaven, which he could bring 
    Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
    When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 

    How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 
          Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart, 
    Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 
       Did we but pay the love we owe, 
    And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look 
    On all these living pages of God’s book. 

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.

If I can’t save us



then let me feel you

happy and safe 

under my chin. 



If this will drown 

or burn 



then let us drink starlight

nap under trees

sing on beaches—



the morning rush to sit indoors

what, again? 



If we are dying



then let me rip open

and bleed Love,

spill it, spend it

see how much 

there is



the reward for misers is 

what, again? 



If this life is ending



then let me begin 

a new one 

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

My friend, I need thee in good days or ill,
    I need the counsel of thy larger thought;
   And I would question all the year has brought—
   What spoil of books, what victories of will;
But most I long for the old wordless thrill,
   When on the shore, like children picture-taught,
   We watched each miracle the sweet day wrought,
   While the tide ebbed, and every wind was still.
Dear, let it be again as if we mused,
   We two, with never need of spoken word
   (While the sea’s fingers twined among the dulse,
And gulls dipped near), our spirits seeming fused
   In the great Life that quickens wave and bird,
   Our hearts in happy rhythm with the world-pulse.

^{March 30, 1889}

The yellow flowers on the grave
make an arch, they lie 

on a black stone that lies on the ground
like a black door that will always

remain closed down into the earth,
into it is etched the name

of a great poet who believed
he had nothing more to say,

he threw himself into literal water
and everyone has done their mourning 

and been mourned over, and we all 
went on with our shopping, 

I stare at this photograph of that grave
and think you died like him, 

like all the others,
and the yellow flowers 

seem angry, they seem to want to refuse 
to be placed anywhere but in a vase 

next to the living, someday 
all of us will have our names 

etched where we cannot read them,
she who sealed her envelopes

full of poems about doubt with flowers 
called it her “granite lip,” I want mine 

to say Lucky Life, and what would 
a perfect elegy do? place the flowers 

back in the ground? take me 
where I can watch him sit eternally 

dreaming over his typewriter? 
then, at last, will I finally unlearn 

everything? and I admit that yes, 
while I could never leave 

everyone, here at last 
I understand these yellow flowers, 

the names, the black door 
he held open 

and you walked through.

My friends are dead who were

the arches    the pillars of my life 

the structural relief when

the world gave none.

My friends who knew me as I knew them

their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.

If I got on my knees

might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?  

Who if I cried out would hear me?

My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.

The dandelion stares
In the yellow sunlight.
How very still it is!
When it is old and grey,
I blow its white hair away,
And leave it with a bald head.

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

23–29 October 1962

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.