Field of Snails

Wipe your feet before you enter the room
The cameraman will just be a moment
A cripple wriggles in from the window
And crawls into a maple jar
And I say we all are cripples in a maple jar
I say, take my sneakers to the power-lines
Clouds hang like the limbs of a wartime pilot
I say, I suppose this is dangerous
A sunken wrap across the people
Who look incredulously taken
A great hushed mistake
I say, behave my weeping
A dog bathed in peculiar alarm
Rises into one large nostril
And catastrophe stains the salted feet
Hundreds upon hundreds are quitting
But less and less.

On Translating a Poem Originally Written in English

Let me copy down another paragraph
of stones and a little of the the recalcitrant
hubbub I'm used to Yep! Waves look empty
as newsprint.  Girls open up like umbrellas,
and grieving passengers photograph pastures
of ocean birds, pick up a wiffle ball
and toss it like a remedy for relieving
a headache.  They puff their half-light tragedies
with a single dreamy puff.  Can I see
the missing ponytail? Sometimes I find
myself, the only one in the boat referring
to the sinking feeling one can have after
looking into an ethereal face.
But then a few, and then some, and then some more
come on-board with their life jackets on
bracing for a tidal command. I have a word for it. 

Pluto

I don't know what to call it anymore
or the unskillful  and uneasy pronunciation
of the word figment
As if that had a subject
The furniture is reflected in the window
and the window is a bad toy
for the unconscious.  Its transparent faces
broken stars and horrible collisions
with things that do not believe a solid
could be so clear.
I get that same feeling
when I look at you
but you were not suppose to be here
not now anyway.  I like it how
we now live. That this here is home.
That things bring us surprise
or anger or contemplation
I like it how you and I think
we think no matter how bad we feel
it is more or more or less
 like a distant rock of ice
whose name only recently has
been taken off the list of planets.

Anatomy of the Sea

I astonishingly order my
fries with gravy as I have done for
the last thousand low tides.  The diner
fills up like a fish tank.  A body
slips like a boat without a bottom.
Men deprived of long oceanic
awakenings try to put a spell
on the waitress with a biscuit.
Up pops a clear potential for a
reckoning but we make him walk home
before trouble starts slapping.  I wipe
the flotsam from my brow.  There would be
a hundred ways to set this moment
off in another direction
if only we had a finger-post.
Tonight, we will make love again on
the surface, and afterwards. I'll swim
you home.

Men Comment on Frizzled Time

The sun pours what is left of itself
Onto the grenadine faces of
Dancers.  And there is such a joyful
Flow over the singer's simplest
Words that nothing comes to mind. Not
The forgetting of a season nor
The drink stranding the moon into the sky/
"O filter me!" recite the brothers
Their patches of shade sweeten the dance floor
They dance.  They dance the dance
Where girls pick up hula-hoops and twirl
Themselves into a young translucence.
And yellow are their mythic dresses.
Yellow is the light now turning gold.

When We Lay in the Snow

It is getting late for the houseplants.

A solitary arm waves to Mexico.

An unexpected lover dissipates
like the texture of an efficacious snowball.

Dons an Aussie hat
and leans through the glad afternoon.

Surely someone will catch a carp
beneath this rubble.

Mice have fevers!
And we are running out of their sardine-can beds!

A child's autograph travels from room to smiling room.

The old rug is late getting back from the gallery.
He was talking to his wife who was keeping him
from being more than a rug, or so he thought.

Regressions and regressions of lesser amplitude.

Security at Auction

The mirror left on the floor filled with apricots
was careless.  But careless is something I've been
recently.  I didn't want to open the book
the author had signed, crossed out his his name and
signed again in trench marks, like a bitten-into
peach.  Now say something philosophical.
And when we threw him out he clanged
like an old chandelier.  A greater smoker reduced to ashes.
Outside two swans clear their long throats.
It is remarkably short and over like the
first time making love for months.

Now I am writing this letter from a field of aster.
And the stems are understandably long.

Definitive Version

Weather vanes pointing in all directions
you.  An armistice in practice flies
in to the real thing. Even the parsimonious
are overjoyed and hand out a quail under
each arm. Olives exonerated a moment later
(always momentary) and an aviary wakes up
and blooms in a cherry tree.
You stand on the first bucket
and shout the colloquial name for water.
I call you my hemlock, my waterfowl
After that you were mine.

Sample History of Sense of Wonder

One can only lie back in bed and think that he
should bud somewhere in the wine cellar. Or, think,
flowers have a happier time of it, being
potted...you know the image.   One must write the story
in the laundry or on the back of a defeated
mermaid slipping below the surface no matter
if the lamp distorts the glare through the lugubrious
windows.  No matter if on Tuesdays love attracts
an obsolescent fruit or kisses dry wetting
another world but not his one.  A cluster
of tree boughs wag in a simplifying motion.
Bats siesta amid the clatter. That's what I
love about them, and my Aunt too!  But who
doesn't glimmer through the ash was what I was leading to.
Who doesn't use his lamppost as a searchlight
or a bread truck delivering a tapered roll
along with the wheat, the white, and the rye?

Memoir

Today I loaded up my car with my favorite collection
of grapes.  I was trying to make the world seem a little
bit different, but then a police officer pulled me over
and asked me for my license and registration.  I don't
have a permit for these grapes, I said.  I am transporting
them over the county line.  Some are poisonous and I
am taking them over to the duck pond to feed the swans.
I mean to watch their necks writhe.  He studied the photograph.
I said it was the only one left.  I said the rest have been made
into counterfeit likenesses of myself.  I said I no longer know
what I look like, and nowadays when I look in the mirror
I see someone else.  Someone with rose tinted sunglasses
pulled up along side of me.  He spoke to the officer as if he
had known him since childhood.  As if he was setting up an alibi
for a recent murder.  I sneezed very hard and a drop of blood beaded
up around my nostril.  I was praying it didn't fall because that would
have been the end of me.  I felt frail.  I no longer had the courage
to look at my grapes or say anything about how wrong it was of me
to think I could just load them up in my car and ride around with them.
How utterly immature of me to think this way going to be a joyride.
The world of adolescent foibles flooded back to me as fleshy
red and green translucent orbs. As they hit one by one
I felt emptier and emptier.  The man in the car smiled
at my sudden pallor.  I knew what he was thinking.  How clear and simple things
are when one breaks them down. But then like a character in a Sanskrit play
I lifted my head with a renewed appreciation.
 How really lucky I had been, how seemingly endless and happy.
How healthy too! And look at all these grapes!  Who was this man,
and what did he owe me except to bring me towards the rim of misery.
The officer looked at my photograph and then back at me
with mystery as mystery broke involuntarily across my face.

Collapsible Opera Hat

Put on your bracelet of moths
and rise like the hint of the kamikaze's
cologne lingering above the gasoline
soaked jacket you wear; we should
stopping dating ourselves and date someone
who can unearth love in this borrowed
and spelunking universe.  I'm stuck
with these claustrophobic fumes rising
off the furtive heads of swallows, which
are harmless unless descending into a
a pleasure boat.  Listen,  I was once
a vapor myself and my whole shtick
desperately hung in lonely bands
around the eyes like a mask.  But wait,
you can lick whatever mask I wear
I don't mind.  And in turn I'll show you
circling like the darkness of a musty
collapsible opera hat, a brave solution
tampered with braver indecision.

Bells

for Agha Shahid Ali
(d. December 8, 2001)


I was your trump card
and dotted the inner ring of tiny bells

bells...bells...bells...you wrote
and pomegranates

Listen...when the mayfly
when he is young
with water in his wings
flies gently backwards to his mate.

What an evanescent gesture.
And every poem returned to you backwards for years

Still the amputated fingers of boys
touched you in a dream.

Exiled, we leave one world
and go on to the next.
Like round silver plates encrypted with curry

Words can never be overused.
I will be your happy little Indian
that you will be, at last,
writing about, for at least,
the next few hundred years.

When Darling Opens Up Her Eyes

A lake that hasn't been skated
on.  A telephone ringing out its
desires.  A kiss on the face of
a dog. A firecracker a cut above
a roman-candle or star shooter
A smaller world, more likable
like a small boy named Benny
A tiny spark inside a whale
A flicker among sparrows
A taxicab plowing into a johnny blah
Then the whole theater darkens
A waiter politely removes our dinners
from the check.  A tiny hole the size
of an O opens and we jump
in afraid to tear it. We put our slickers
on because we have them
It is rocky so head towards the rocks

(Dip of Heavy Wings etc...)

Now that New Orleans sleeps
on the floors of changing
rooms one looks under
at the smiling women
like a spectator actually
feeling the magnificent
wave of the lit world beyond
the drowned (dip of heavy wings etc..)
Just sticking out one's neck
could mean an indelible
toasting.  But we peep out
of sheer joy.  Out of giddiness
like taking a cookie
and running upstairs
In other words this is
pealing off the label
Embracing the possibility
of spoonfuls of beauty
the size of a river
The delta expands
and more houses fall in.

Kissing in the Driveway

Over a mile not the blooming lilacs
not the wrong we have done or the empty after the rim
appears to be drifting  like a dark consequence
I mean heavenly garland of flowers looking out the window
asking questions with universal freshness of pencil shavings
trading up of blow-cap pathos
A large vase
The door of enormous distractions
same lightening.
The name that bobs and comes up now and then
A seat for the kids
The distance like misunderstanding a good mood
Life melting around the dinner plate of our frozen beginnings
The last page of a funny book---starfish diaries, guinea hen,  &
hair cut with swamp clover abandoned like dogs on the beach
great waves with a mild peril that rains inside a tin can.
blue light and white light and lump colored light
and light with orange tops and light with white caps
and light with impatient heart beats
and light that bears light
and light that tips off the table cloth
and light and light
and light kissing in the driveway.

You Know I Can Sleep Anywhere

These parts are no longer important

the secret tiptoes once again

like an intrigued stranger

over the fresh greenery of photographs

never expelling the bright ambient

I never said mother lightly

But the rest of what I have said

has lightly fallen like dander

or blush or the thinking that something will

come out of it

This is also about the couple dinning

alone in a castle which I have said

nothing about.

and the body

in the diamond sleep
of the glorious downstream
the cottage swimmers
remember a brilliant forgetfulness
open dampers
of filmiest parcel
in kitchen savannas
the reed gaze
squandered penumbra
do tell mask
and cheek summons
brown hangovers
dinner skirts
contemplate the clever
placid apologies and
carousel alphabets
from the equatorial treetops
ponytail quinces
clover burn
water loner
and puts the sky dress on

Apartments and Houses

Our heads feel so warm
we might want to cancel
the electric

In fact

When the stars burn out
I just might cancel it all

And grab the books of poetry
from the bag

from my trunk
I bought at the church sale

In fact

They might help me predict

the place
before my body catches up
to my body

before your body
catches up
to mine.