EYES FASTENED WITH PINS
How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.
CLOUDS GATHERING
It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
Sunlight in every room.
The two of us walking by the sea naked.
Some evenings, however, we found ourselves
Unsure of what comes next.
Like tragic actors in a theater on fire,
With birds circling over our heads,
The dark pines strangely still,
Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.
We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
Clouds of almost human appearance
Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely
With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.
The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
You lighting a candle, carrying it naked
Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.
The dark pines and grasses strangely still.
COUNTRY FAIR
If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,
One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.
Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.
She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.
READ YOUR FATE
A world's disappearing.
Little street,
You were too narrow,
Too much in the shade already.
You had only one dog,
One lone child.
You hid your biggest mirror,
Your undressed lovers.
Someone carted them off
In an open truck.
They were still naked, travelling
On their sofa
Over a darkening plain,
Some unknown Kansas or Nebraska
With a storm brewing.
The woman opening a red umbrella
In the truck. The boy
And the dog running after them,
As if after a rooster
With its head chopped off.
POEM
Those happy days when I climbed
The bare cemetery tree holding on to my life.
The evening clouds were the sea,
And I was the captain in the crow's nest.
It was an old cemetery.
Nobody got buried there anymore.
They lay squeezed like the poor in their beds,
And I was the captain in the crow's nest.
STREET SCENE
a blind little boy
with a paper sign
pinned to his chest.
too small to be out
begging alone,
but there he was.
this strange century
with its slaughter of the innocent,
its flight to the moon--
and now he waiting for me
in a strange city,
on a street where i lost my way.
hearing me approach,
he took a rubber toy
out of his mouth
as if to say something,
but then he didn't.
it was a head, a doll's head,
badly chewed,
held high for me to see
the two of them grinning at me.
