Poems

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which…

Sorting through Documents at Dawn

three crosses appear

on the tv screen

following a

sweep of my hair

that felt like your hand

maybe i dreamt it

but i so badly

Fire in the Reeds

One night, fire fell into a reed bed

It burned like love falling onto a soul

As fire’s head warmed to its work

every reed turned into a candle at its own grave

Sonnets from the Portuguese 24

Let the world’s sharpness, like a clasping knife,

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,

And let us hear no sound of human strife

Bicycle Eclogue

   That red bicycle left in an alley near the Ponte Vecchio,
I claim; I claim its elongated shadow, ship crested on
stacked crates; I claim the sour-mouth Arno and the stone
arch bending sunlight on vanished medieval fairs;

I Am

I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes —

Moment One

I remember my birth

like it was tomorrow, the unholy sensation

covering

in the broadest conception

of black music, which is the

truest conception of black

music, black music can't be

conceived. a music of covers,

black music covers, and cover

The Boxers

We were combatants from the start. Our dad 

Bought us boxing gloves when we were ten — 

Champions like Euryalus, say, or Epeius 

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

New Year

         Out of their torments men carved a flower

         which they perched on the high plateaus of their faces

Mrs. Kessler

Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,

And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,

And stood on the corner talking politics,

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

We can never be with loss too long.

Behind the warped door that sticks,

the wood thrush calls to the monks,

A Hundred and Fifty Pounds

In some, the luggage lies open

like a mouth mid-sentence.

In others, closed zippers grimace:

What would you have brought?

Slippers, a stuffed platypus, a gold watch

St John’s Burns Down for the Umpteenth Time

Let’s say the fix was in. Let’s say history,
Being human and thus short on ideas,
Made change from an old bag of tricks. Say this

I Am

l am

gap tooth black girl

back corner of class

scribbling left-handed

poetry on blank paper

save the school's

curriculum for later

I am

overflowing tales by moonlight

The House on the Hill

They are all gone away,

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

Index of Themes

Poems about night

and related poems. Paintings

            about night,

sleep, death, and

Children Listen

                         It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!

“Where are thy father and mother? say?”

From Correspondences

Sometimes we are led through the doorway

by a child, sometimes

by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing

Veronica?

What's it like at the centre of the AGO?

Hmm. Imagine being coloured, drawn, and placed

in a wooden frame, another hung woman, positioned

just so in the middle of a landscape surrounded by rocks,

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

I have so many now.

I have so many now.

There’s one where we were giants, playing with our size by falling over

houses and trees, laughing.

There’s another where I was racing the old ones in a game, and we stopped

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

1

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur

Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River

you are unaware of your obscure sources

but you are explicitly sure of the vast sea

as your final destination

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,

The road runs by me white and bare;

Up the steep hill it seems to swim

Declaration of Intent

let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are

i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us

the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

A Thunderstorm

A moment the wild swallows like a flight

Of withered gust-caught leaves, serenely high,

Toss in the windrack up the muttering sky.

What the Queer Community Should Have Told Us

1. you are perfect

& also flawed

2. you are allowed to make mistakes

& you must be accountable for them

3. accountability is not a price you pay in blood

for being human

39

Oliver Sacks is going to die,

He tells us blithely in the New York Times.

He’s 81. His liver’s shot.

He’s blind in one eye

Though when both worked fine

Winter House

My father threw his language overboard,

a bag of kittens, waterlogged mewling:

small hard bodies.

My mother hung on to hers —

Wove the words like lace, an open web

The Dark Stag

A startled stag, the blue-grey Night,

Leaps down beyond black pines.

Behind — a length of yellow light —

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

The Swimmer’s Moment

For everyone

The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,

But many at that moment will not say