Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

LET US COMPARE MYTHOLOGIES

POEM

I heard of a man

who says words so beautifully

that if he only speaks their name

women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body

while silence blossoms like tumours on our lips

it is because I hear a man climb the stairs

and clear his throat outside our door.

LETTER

How you murdered your family

means nothing to me

as your mouth moves across my body

And I know your dreams

of crumbling cities and galloping horses

of the sun coming too close

and the night never ending

but these mean nothing to me

beside your body

I know that outside a war is raging

that you issue orders

that babies are smothered and generals beheaded

but blood means nothing to me

it does not disturb your flesh

tasting blood on your tongue

does not shock me

as my arms grow into your hair

Do not think I do not understand

what happens

after the troops have been massacred

and the harlots put to the sword

And I write this only to rob you

that when one morning my head

hangs dripping with the other generals

from your house gate

that all this was anticipated

and so you will know that it meant nothing to me

LOVERS

During the first pogrom they

Met behind the ruins of their homes —

Sweet merchants trading: her love

For a history-full of poems.

And at the hot ovens they

Cunningly managed a brief

Kiss before the soldier came

To knock out her golden teeth.

And in the furnace itself

As the flames flamed higher,

He tried to kiss her burning breasts

As she burned in the fire.

Later he often wondered:

Was their barter completed?

While men around him plundered

And knew he had been cheated.

PRAYER FOR MESSIAH

His blood on my arm is warm as a bird

his heart in my hand is heavy as lead

his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

O send out the raven ahead of the dove

His life in my mouth is less than a man

his death on my breast is harder than stone

his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

O send out the raven ahead of the dove

O send out the raven ahead of the dove

O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave

your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

your blood in my ballad collapses the grave

O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave

your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

your heart in my hand is heavy as lead

your blood on my arm is warm as a bird

O break from your branches a green branch of love

after the raven has died for the dove

WHEN THIS AMERICAN WOMAN

When this American woman,

whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth,

comes thundering past my sitting-place

like a forest-burning Mongol tribe,

the city is ravished

and brittle buildings of a hundred years

splash into the street;

and my eyes are burnt

for the embroidered Chinese girls,

already old,

and so small between the thin pines

on these enormous landscapes,

that if you turn your head

they are lost for hours.

THESE HEROICS

If I had a shining head

and people turned to stare at me

in the streetcars;

and I could stretch my body

through the bright water

and keep abreast of fish and water snakes;

if I could ruin my feathers

in flight before the sun;

do you think that I would remain in this room,

reciting poems to you,

and making outrageous dreams

with the smallest movements of your mouth?

WARNING

If your neighbour disappears

O if your neighbour disappears

The quiet man who raked his lawn

The girl who always took the sun

Never mention it to your wife

Never say at dinner time

Whatever happened to that man

Who used to rake his lawn

Never say to your daughter

As you’re walking home from church

Funny thing about that girl

I haven’t seen her for a month

And if your son says to you

Nobody lives next door

They’ve all gone away

Send him to bed with no supper

Because it can spread, it can spread

And one fine evening coming home

Your wife and daughter and son

They’ll have caught the idea and will be gone

THE FLY

In his black armour

     the house-fly marched the field

of Freda’s sleeping thighs,

undisturbed by the soft hand

     which vaguely moved

to end his exercise.

And it ruined my day —

     this fly which never planned

to charm her or to please

should walk boldly on that ground

     I tried so hard

to lay my trembling knees.

THE SPICE-BOX OF EARTH

AS THE MIST LEAVES NO SCAR

As the mist leaves no scar

On the dark green hill,

So my body leaves no scar

On you, nor ever will.

When wind and hawk encounter,

What remains to keep?

So you and I encounter,

Then turn, then fall to sleep.

As many nights endure

Without a moon or star,

So will we endure

When one is gone and far.

BENEATH MY HANDS

Beneath my hands

your small breasts

are the upturned bellies

of breathing fallen sparrows.

Wherever you move

I hear the sounds of closing wings

of falling wings.

I am speechless

because you have fallen beside me

because your eyelashes

are the spines of tiny fragile animals.

I dread the time

when your mouth

begins to call me hunter.

When you call me close

to tell me

your body is not beautiful

I want to summon

the eyes and hidden mouths

of stone and light and water

to testify against you.

I want them

to surrender before you

the trembling rhyme of your face

from their deep caskets.

When you call me close

to tell me

your body is not beautiful

I want my body and my hands

to be pools

for your looking and laughing.

I HAVE NOT LINGERED IN

EUROPEAN MONASTERIES

I have not lingered in European monasteries

and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights

who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;

I have not parted the grasses

or purposefully left them thatched.

I have not released my mind to wander and wait

in those great distances

between the snowy mountains and the fishermen,

like a moon,

or a shell beneath the moving water.

I have not held my breath

so that I might hear the breathing of G-d,

or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise,

or starved for visions.

Although I have watched him often

I have not become the heron,

leaving my body on the shore,

and I have not become the luminous trout,

leaving my body in the air.

I have not worshipped wounds and relics,

or combs of iron,

or bodies wrapped and burnt in scrolls.

I have not been unhappy for ten thousand years.

During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.

My favourite cooks prepare my meals,

my body cleans and repairs itself,

and all my work goes well.

I LONG TO HOLD SOME LADY

I long to hold some lady

For my love is far away,

And will not come tomorrow

And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect

As on my lady’s bone,

And yet it seems so distant

When I am all alone:

As though she were a masterpiece

In some castled town,

That pilgrims come to visit

And priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel

To a love I have so deep

Or sleep too close beside

A love I want to keep.

But I long to hold some lady,

For flesh is warm and sweet.

Cold skeletons go marching

Each night beside my feet.

OWNING EVERYTHING

You worry that I will leave you.

I will not leave you.

Only strangers travel.

Owning everything,

I have nowhere to go.

SONG

I almost went to bed

without remembering

the four white violets

I put in the button-hole

of your green sweater

and how I kissed you then

and you kissed me

shy as though I’d

never been your lover

FOR ANNE

With Annie gone,

Whose eyes to compare

With the morning sun?

Not that I did compare,

But I do compare

Now that she’s gone.

YOU HAVE THE LOVERS

You have the lovers,

they are nameless, their histories only for each other,

and you have the room, the bed and the windows.

Pretend it is a ritual.

Unfurl the bed, bury the lovers, blacken the windows,

let them live in that house for a generation or two.

No one dares disturb them.

Visitors in the corridor tiptoe past the long closed door,

they listen for sounds, for a moan, for a song:

nothing is heard, not even breathing.

You know they are not dead,

you can feel the presence of their intense love.

Your children grow up, they leave you,

they have become soldiers and riders.

Your mate dies after a life of service.

Who knows you? Who remembers you?

But in your house a ritual is in progress:

it is not finished: it needs more people.

One day the door is opened to the lover’s chambers.

The room has become a dense garden,

full of colours, smells, sounds you have never known.

The bed is smooth as a wafer of sunlight,

in the midst of the garden it stands alone.

In the bed the lovers, slowly and deliberately and silently,

perform the act of love.

Their eyes are closed,

as tightly as if heavy coins of flesh lay on them.

Their lips are bruised with new and old bruises.

Her hair and his beard are hopelessly tangled.

When he puts his mouth against her shoulder

she is uncertain whether her shoulder

has given or received the kiss.

All her flesh is like a mouth.

He carries his fingers along her waist

and feels his own waist caressed.

She holds him closer and his own arms tighten around her.

She kisses the hand beside her mouth.

It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters,

there are so many more kisses.

You stand beside the bed, weeping with happiness,

you carefully peel away the sheets

from the slow-moving bodies.

Your eyes are filled with tears, you barely make out the lovers.

As you undress you sing out, and your voice is magnificent

because now you believe it is the first human voice

heard in that room.

The garments you let fall grow into vines.

You climb into bed and recover the flesh.

You close your eyes and allow them to be sewn shut.

You create an embrace and fall into it.

There is only one moment of pain or doubt

as you wonder how many multitudes are lying beside your body,

but a mouth kisses and a hand soothes the moment away.

SONG FOR ABRAHAM KLEIN

The weary psalmist paused

His instrument beside.

Departed was the Sabbath

And the Sabbath Bride.

The table was decayed,

The candles black and cold.

The bread he sang so beautifully,

That bread was mould.

He turned toward his lute,

Trembling in the night.

He thought he knew no music

To make the morning right.

Abandoned was the Law,

Abandoned the King.

Unaware he took his instrument,

His habit was to sing.

He sang and nothing changed

Though many heard the song.

But soon his face was beautiful

And soon his limbs were strong.

SONG TO MAKE ME STILL

Lower your eyelids

over the water

Join the night

like the trees

you lie under

How many crickets

how many waves

easy after easy

on the one-way shore

There are stars

from another view

and a moon

to draw the seaweed through

No one calls the crickets vain

in their time

in their time

No one will call you idle

for dying with the sun

SUMMER HAIKU

for Frank and Marian Scott

Silence

and a deeper silence

when the crickets

hesitate

MY LADY CAN SLEEP

My lady can sleep

Upon a handkerchief

Or if it be Fall

Upon a fallen leaf.

I have seen the hunters

Kneel before her hem —

Even in her sleep

She turns away from them.

The only gift they offer

Is their abiding grief —

I pull out my pockets

For a handkerchief or leaf.

GIFT

     You tell me that silence

is nearer to peace than poems

but if for my gift

I brought you silence

(for I know silence)

you would say

This is not silence

this is another poem

and you would hand it back to me.

I WONDER HOW MANY PEOPLE IN THIS CITY

I wonder how many people in this city

live in furnished rooms.

Late at night when I look out at the buildings

I swear I see a face in every window

looking back at me,

and when I turn away

I wonder how many go back to their desks

and write this down.

TRAVEL

Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought

Of travelling penniless to some mud throne

Where a master might instruct me how to plot

My life away from pain, to love alone

In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake.

Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost

Enough to lose a way I had to take;

Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust

The will that forbid me contract, vow,

Or promise, and often while you slept

I looked in awe beyond your beauty.

                                                                  Now

I know why many men have stopped and wept

Halfway between the loves they leave and seek,

And wondered if travel leads them anywhere —

Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek,

The windy sky’s a locket for your hair.

I HAVE TWO BARS OF SOAP

I have two bars of soap,

the fragrance of almond,

one for you and one for me.

Draw the bath,

we will wash each other.

I have no money,

I murdered the pharmacist.

And here’s a jar of oil,

just like in the Bible.

Lie in my arms,

I’ll make your flesh glisten.

I have no money,

I murdered the perfumer.

Look through the window

at the shops and people.

Tell me what you desire,

you’ll have it by the hour.

I have no money,

I have no money.

THE CUCKOLD’S SONG

If this looks like a poem

I might as well warn you at the beginning

that it’s not meant to be one.

I don’t want to turn anything into poetry.

I know all about