The Sweet City

Then I came back, & it was still October. The city

was still in flames. The city seen
in any weather, in any
light. The lead rolled over us like light. Every second, the city’s
particulars change. The city will
edit itself & adjust or the city
will edit itself and there is more
in the city than any single
eye can see. The stationary and the moving
parts. The names
remained to be listed and named. I lay down. How definite
is this bed? And the body that lies in it? I am thinking
something outside is
infinite, what is it? A blue thing, a thing blue
that has existed for a week, a thing blue
that has existed for a day. It makes sense to say
about someone that she was for a moment happy

Blue, o blue thing be more good with all
gooder things that are

Perceptible black, perceptible blue that the world contains
If you want to see the lights of a town go down
go to New York. If you want to see smoking holes and buildings bristling
out of Baghdad’s back take a train to Brooklyn.

Wake up to the story of fire,
Student of nature,
the once uncuttable atom
will touch you now.

‡

the grace of arms & legs
silkening through other rooms

‡

‡

the whole night is drowned and alive;
black Palmetto bugs hiding
from porchlights under porcelained leaves
will make it

through the dark halls of cryptography,
nanotechnologists of the celled night

in each human: 100 trillion small containers,
apartments for vacant lots / though & makings of
vacuoles

charred & pulverizable

What thoughts of the night
or a day do you bear cutting into deep muscle
to carry this rippling, waves riding out at the darkened bay
A city’s spinning mouth makes smoke rings, it’s hit

with life, light hitting the skin, wind
or water moving over limbs
as they too move, gifted gestures of casual symmetry
Hands how
Hands
How many
hands move down a
day Down
a day

One ball of the finger to count the eyelashes (ash)

Bullcart the eye, drag a mess past
the retina into the brain
Now what can the mind do but
be carried along by it

‡

There will be time to lean on things of the day
Pleasure boats float and school buses line up, yellow metacarpal
matchboxes with no momentary children Manhattan bristling in
the back
ground still

‡

‡

rags hang on the tumbling wire
stretched across the river, fluttering fingers emptied of what It
eludes me, but
significant, too, are spiderworks on
iron gears for opening floodgates
Everywhere I look, human
endeavor: This lake
was made by a man who paid men
to dig it. The canals, too,
were shoveled by men who died at it.
Out on the fake lake
the Great Blue Heron moves not an inch—I know
we’ve built some design on it—
walking, flying, fishing, fighting machine—
powered wings, graceful legs
born in the mind of some workman

‡

they began by tearing up trees then founded
break points: cities

[boom!]—Hope—have it—

needling the cracks

‡

‡

The forestmeister will not leave the leaves alone

bitter cleanliness
in leafy clandestine
House of her Flesh
Let all sleepy leaves
rest on the forest floor

for the global village of villagers
reaching for high leaves at an angle

‡

The sweet city—what is it? Is that
what you called it? The one with lights & rubble

where Venus rises over the hills
one by one and arm-in-arm
grackles go

over the silver gutted corpse of burned buildings
latticed in dust
& people sparkle & speak in big tones of
small things, speaking
What is “the Good Life”?
(Now write a 2,000 page poem)

(See how the leaf curls the
new-green idea of a wintering tree)

When I saw all the little packets
of human projects from the plane
& what have you made, there by the river? Let’s blow it up—

corrosive clouds of Venus rain down
— this is how we love each other —

a cascade of voices come from space
or the earthly voice of the angular foot lumbering through stones

Give me boots from the School of
Unified Beauty
to talk with you, walk
with you (you who are studying earth
from inside it) to interpret
the bend of the knee, tap of the foot, of the living

A creamy froth comes
tasseling from the top
of corn crops golden hair
that the earth sprung forth, braided kernel by kernel
At the mercy of August with not an independent twig to
stake out and sleep on we were
reduced to sitting around community pools & living rooms
having no thoughts

of the beach-rocks round as dove
eggs and whiter still

That rock makes a
thought, spinning
out: a woman sitting in her chair
in Karya, Lefkada, the embroiderer’s thread moving

in bright knots to pattern
the fingers of light
under sea-belly
trees stitched up under
the absolute red heart
of design: a watermelon, a
plum.

What is “the Good Life?”

thought & bone — what — salt — remains of us —

the beautiful part risen of humans — Imagine — rise up

“all that can be done flickering aloft
& below” a small flame of life
left & let gone let go

Originally printed in Mantis 6 (2007)