Poetry

It is night. I feel it is night
not because darkness has fallen
(what do I care about darkness falling)
but because down in myself the shouting
has stopped, has given up.

unbalance the flowers on their stems:
their brute grace fisted me silly. Now
I’m sodden as Sunday. Greeks
couldn’t speak of my feelings, I’m a zoo baby.

I was sleeping in Madison, Anthony Bradbury’s spareroom,
after a day when we visited a gallery to look at collages
he had pasted from illustrations torn out of magazines.

A day comes
when it has always been winter,
will always be winter.

If we agree that the truth is never
  only what we want to believe,
the urgent arguments of desire

still have the body’s weight behind them,
 the weight of the bully who tells you
what to say and then makes sure you mean it.

Here at the shore of Ashkelon we arrived at
the end of memory
like rivers that reach the sea.