Poetry

The light will inch across the ceiling
until it meets the wall. 
                                       The sheets
will seem softer than you remember.

Deep in the wood where things escape their names,
Her childish arm draped round the fawn’s soft neck
(Her diffidence, its skittishness in check,
Merged in the anonymity that tames),
She knits her brow, but nothing now reclaims
The syllables that...

the wind carries 
its empty package 
through the streets

The cloud moves off the escarpment.
The man is seen on the granite face,
A spider, hanging for a long time

What did he say, coming out of that cave
After a hundred forty days, and the world
Still skipping past the stars, the sun

The tall Fijian spears a giant turtle
And hurls him down upon the foaming breakers;

The first wife floats in memory calmly
who formerly was storm-tossed, who gave
at the edges a whitewash to those rocks

of myself, begging your pardon, as a young man,
quick to draw arms, quick
to take a fence for daggers toward my
heart, 

I give the black pit dream’s head,
not fearing to hit bottom, to the water
I offer my head like a stone,