selected poems
Of the Western poems I have written, these fifteen
are some of my favorites. I believe the rengas and the few haiku
(on the "four rengas " and "haiku" pages) are among my
best poems too; in particular the haiku on the haiku page, which are brief
but are equivalent in weight to the Western poems. Many
of the haiku that comprise the rengas can stand alone as well.
In A Coffee Shop
As she ran quickly past,
In a starched blue uniform
Under the mirrored electric lights,
The plump and sturdy waitress
Put down her cigarette
At this end of the counter,
But in a rush going by,
In haste;
It nearly rolled off,
And lies against the glassy
Ashtray, propped,
As if it were an answer,
The cigarette,
The lush and curly smoke
That rises from the years
Above my empty cup.
..................................................
...late afternoon, Midsummer
-ducks, dipping a bath, preening feathers...
-splashes out of the silent water, a carp...
-watersnake, ripples among the roots...
-reflected in the river shallows, the moon...
..................................................
City Night (NYC)
-whisper this
1.
I listen to the night, the roar,
With the angry shouts
From the ventilation shaft,
And the clink of pots,
While a kitchen light shines in
Through the darkness, and the clock
Ticks beside the bed.
I can hear the cries of love -
In the stifling heat -
From the silent lovers, locked
In the darkened rooms,
Like this room, where you and I
All alone together, wait
For the night to pass.
2.
I am listening to your breathing
In the roaring dark.
Are you listening also?
From the water tap
Do you hear the water drops
Falling in the pool they make?
Do you hear your heart?
For a while the room is ours,
And the warmth is ours,
For as long as we care to,
And the roaring night -
Where we must go sometimes,
Where we must go sometimes
Though we do not want to.
..............................................................
At Paul and Carol's House
We laughed and talked all night
In the yellow-lighted kitchen
With bugs smacking the screen,
The hallway to the sunporch dark
But squares of light from the passing cars
Now and then on the barber's house next door;
The still hands of the clock
And two empty bottles of beer;
We laughed and talked all night,
Until she came in,
Squinting, but not mad.
She liked to watch the rain come on
From the sunporch black with lightning,
The droplets pattering from the overhang
While we two stayed in the kitchen
Listening to it roar outside the screen,
And then maybe went out to see
Where she was. I watched her sitting there
A drop of rain her feet up on the sill
Like I did too, when I was a child:
I watched her so, but what can we know?
(And tomorrow will soon be years ago.)
And then September, the bright afternoon:
A line of tiny kids let out from school
Their legs walking too fast, but hand in hand,
In twos or threes or by themselves,
With little skirts and cartooned lunchboxes,
Their solemn eyes and faces all aglow:
A little crowd
They crossed the mainstreet when the lady said,
Not thinking of tomorrow.
That night when we were walking
By the porches under the moon
Kids were out in the street;
Or in the living room in front of their TV
Looking at eternity
Within the flickering light.
The house was old he rented
With flowered wallpaper we had to paint,
An old garage with a trellis of grapes,
And an empty downstairs store
That creaked at night
When I lay on the narrow cot
Too late for the lights to pass
And laughing in my sleep;
It never did get dark; and yet
When I got up they both had gone to work.
.............................................................
On The River
A small dock
on the river,
hot sunlight
with the odor
of tar: when
I jumped in
I watched my
slender body
waver in
the green
transparent water
filled with light.
...........................................................
Christmas Death
I saw this. I saw this.
We were talking about his earache.
He was sitting all by himself at the vinyl
Kitchen table, the snow falling into the dark
Outside my window above the TV store.
I remember I glimpsed a startled goblin's face
Staring at me from the steamed-up window pane
When I glanced out into the Christmas dark.
He was not the kind of a man you told what to do.
He was sitting all alone at the table, there,
(The vinyl kitchen table where I write)
The room electric-lighted in the dark.
"Why had they driven up North in this blizzard?
I'd told him I'd rather they didn't come!
I'd shouted into the phone!
Why hadn't he gone to a doctor?
What if it went to his brain?
Two weeks - ...with a fever - two weeks!?"...
He got a funny smile, as if drunken,
"Maybe I ought to go and see a doctor,"...
And he gazed up into my eyes...
A voice from outside me shouted into my ear:
"HE'S GOING TO DIE!"
And then, surprised, recovering, I said:
"You'll be OK. You just keep getting sick
All the time, over and over - like me!"
His face seemed to lose expression,
And he lowered his eyes...
...I write in the room at night, remembering:
He was sitting all alone at the table,
This vinyl kitchen table where I write,
The room electric-lighted in the dark.
........................................................................
On The Backyard Porch
("Grandma Appleby")
1. The Porch
The backyard porch is dark as night,
With clotheslines, and the old strawbroom,
That the electric light
In the orange-gold room
Shines out on, through the dark screendoor,
When I peer from the gloom -
At the porcelain stove on the vinyl floor,
The sink, in sight,
And the kitchen table with papers where I write.
2. The Town
The rumbling town is bright with hot-rod cars
Zooming by, and car-radio songs in the air -
Metallic and harsh -
With a shout, somewhere,
(In the glistering autumn moonlight),
While I hear - everywhere -
The crickets singing: and deep in the night
Train-whistles, sweet,
And eerie sirens from a far-off street.
3. The Living Room
..........
I remember the sunlight through the windowpane,
With the flowered curtains, and the half-closed door,
And the varnish stain
On the hardwood floor...
How I'd sit on a book, in joy,
Alone and waiting for
The day to go by, or just to enjoy
The warmth of June,
I'd watch the sunlight in the afternoon.
4. Mrs. Appleby (Sneaks In)
Until I heard a knocking, and the door -
The kitchen screendoor - snapped and opened wide,
And heels tapped on the floor
When she snuck inside.
A pot lid raised up with a clink.
My papers rustled. She tried
The door. Then stopped a while to look and think.
"He's a nut!"
She said out loud. And snapped the screendoor shut.
...........................................................................
Tyger Tyger
This story is from the Tripitaka
And the traditions of the holy Buddha:
In the long ago, it does not matter when,
But long ago and in an ancient forest,
A young and virile Prince (he was the Buddha)
Was walking by himself in sweltering heat
Through the lonely, dying forest of a drought,
With trunks of trees that loomed in heated light
And dried-up leaves that rattled in the air,
The silence without birds and animals
(They had run from the dessicated jungle
Or died and endlessly been eaten),
The ground was burning dust, the light was fire,
Only a lizard flitted underfoot:
The Prince walked slowly through the emptiness.
O suffering universe! the world is burning!
With breathless attention, hopeless compassion,
The Prince (his eyes were bright) observed the crime:
A tiger, lolling in her thirst and pain
Beside her dying, starving newborn cubs,
Gigantic beast! too weak to run and kill.
Pitiful illusion! the world of beings!
Thirsting for existence and happiness!
Ephemeral in a world ephemeral!
There is nothing else! There is only this!
Compassion welled-up in his empty heart,
With breathless attention, hopeless compassion,
He lay down by the tiger's side to die.
The tiger staggered to her feet, her eyes
Were terrible, her fangs opened to roar,
The ferocious head as huge as Everest,
She seemed to grow before his eyes, a nightmare,
Her roar was like an earthquake, rumbling,
The stinking breath, the mass of body weight,
With pain and horror he felt the awful teeth
Tear out his throat, his blood sprayed in the air,
The moment of his life annihilated,
But not before he shrieked with infinite pain.
................................................................................
...whisper this
My cousin Shirley comes in a dream,
how young she is! - with her gentle eyes -
delicately gazing, shining
in a white orphelin nightgown -
like Anais Nin! - only
diaphanous from another world.
She comes with her tragic secret.
She's going to die, there is no hope.
It's hopeless. I'm speechless, gasping.
"Is there any hope?" I ask her.
She looks up at me. Then from the depths
of the darkness, I whisper to her,
"What now?" But there is no reply,
only her eyes, gazing at me.
.................................................................................
Lady Night Song
She watches in the flashing neon light
her cellphone's silent traffic rushes past
the luminous city fills the darkness tears
are brimming her violet eye-shadow
...............................................................................
1.
Looking In A Mirror, Age 25
...NYC
The face is emerging; but he seems lost, almost,
In what he sees, startled, like a child,
That's staring in a mirror, and does not understand.
His neck is strong, and there is strength in his hand,
With something of youth, something of work, and failure,
And all of these change places in his eyes,
Where when he looks it seems he looks forever,
Until he turns away; and as he turns,
One notices his mouth, what is it there?
Sensual and selfish in the bones.
Otherwise he is a question only, not
Of the future or himself, but all the worlds
That powder at a touch, and slip from underfoot
And do not seem to be inside or out.
2.
The Universe Does Not Exist
-looking in a mirror, age 61
Here he is again in the mirror, gazing,
Contemplative, a solid muscular man,
With eyeglasses. And in his eyes? The dream.
Does he think he exists? He stands in the room, there,
Swaying; unspeakably alone; and reflected
Like a phantom in the mirror: ephemeral, glassy,
Insubstanial. What might he be thinking?
That there is only a dream? But he just looks.
A sensibility is in his eyes, and a true
Humility (though not from too much loss, nor
Because he questions almost everything);
But a desperate lonliness is in his eyes,
And he gazes out as if he wants to say:
The universe does not exist.
.............................................................................
New York City (Canto)
- The Diamond City
30 All truths wait in all things.
...late sixties
I work alone, and concentrate,
The kitchen glowing with sunlight,
Until New York is everywhere,
And I dispute, in ecstasy,
At the timeless kitchen table,
The mystery of what we are,
The secret Mind beyond the mind...
I stare into the bathroom mirror,
A weird man staring out at me,
The silence mirrored in the room
And water dripping in the sink;
I spiral down the stairs and watch
For savage animals with knives,
And listen to the silent doors
In numbered sequence down the hall.
Opening the heavy outside door
I hear the roar of the city...
The subway shrieks with agony,
The weirdo lurks behind his mirrors,
The rag lady, her lipstick sneers,
My face is staring from the glass,
The psychotic screams, denouncing us,
This is the "neon paradise,"
The Diamond City, the evil
Nighttime in everything.
Skyscrapers blot out the sky,
The sirens are singing of Death,
The Peeping Tom is watching us,
The city is a House of Mirrors,
We murder the murderers,
Nature itself is evil, and
My holy mind's the atom bomb.
In Brooklyn on the highway built on stilts,
The lighted towers far away,
I witness in the rear-view mirror
The horrors of the inner mind,
Me laughing in my taxicab...
The seals are barking in the Zoo,
The goat kid leaps up in the cage
And licks the bars to taste the steel
Between her fat and hairy lips.
But Nature is a silent mirror
Where I see - myself!...
I talk with brilliant girls
Across the timeless kitchen table,
And stay with them at night
After they kiss their dates goodbye,
When they are lighted-up, mysterious,
Like the very night itself, until
We look into each other's eyes.
But Nature is a secret
Mirror, where I see - myself!
I stop to see my friends if they are home
And talk with them of Freud, and Aeschylus,
And Proust, the pockets of my greatcoat
Filled with books, the collar up,
On the sofa snug and warm,
My fingers shape the delicate
Thoughts in air, the song...
Until they look at me.
But outside when they shut the door
The streets are brighter than the stars.
When I glance at the glass doors,
Mirror-like, mysterious, of
The neon-dark lounge-bars, among
The crowds of faces passing by
I see - myself! Under a lighted clock
At 4 AM, I strike a man,
He staggers and sits down,
The bright blood at his nose and mouth...
And there's too much sky overhead!
The wind is dark, I can feel my skin,
The future swings in a great arc across the sky!
Where am I? What am I?
.................................................................................
the dark night
in the dark night
the fireflies are drifting
appearing and disappearing
in the empty backyard
drifting without hurry
in the illimitable dark
..................................................................................
And here is an extra poem:
The Wild Sunflowers
The wild sunflowers in factory backlots
Grow high up as the rusty window-sashes,
Outward propped from the wall with little sticks -
And motors, and the clang of metal tools -
Where I can watch them, how they grow in silence,
With weeds in bloom, and rotting railroad ties,
And the hot-tar smell of barrels in the sun,
The bees adrift from flower to trembling flower,
While rows of black seeds ripen all day long
In blinding heat until the flowers nod.
...................................................................................