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.