Cat's Dream
How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
sleeps with all the rings-
a series of burnt circles-
which have formed the odd geology
of its sand-colored tail.
I should like to sleep like a cat,
A Child's Christmas In Wales
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
Affirmation
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
At The Fishhouses
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
04 And Silence Is What I Choose
He was as old as my grandfather and I, just twelve.
Marriage meant nothing to me, not even a new cheeram.
He lived in penance and I, just a little child, tended the aashram,
Never cared for, not even acknowledged of my existence.
Years of spring visited me, uncalled for, for life never bloomed
In the aashram. New yearnings of my body intrigued me.
He never cast even a glance though I longed for him to caress me
Kiss and fondle me, albeit with his wrinkled hands and quivering fingers.
September On Jessore Road
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go
Angels Of The Love Affair
'Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me? '
1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS
Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, 'The devil is down that festering hole.'
The Idea Of Ancestry
Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead) , grand-
fathers (both dead) , brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd) , nieces, and nephews.They stare
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk.I know
their dark eyes, they know mine.I know their style,
they know mine.I am all of them, they are all of me;
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.
I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
Manners
For a Child of 1918
My grandfather said to me
as we sat on the wagon seat,
"Be sure to remember to always
speak to everyone you meet."
We met a stranger on foot.
My grandfather's whip tapped his hat.
"Good day, sir. Good day. A fine day."
Alone
A single rose with thorny stem
On mother nature`s tattered hem
Which no-one cares to steal away
So left to wither and decay
And just one tear-dropp on the hand
Brushed upon the dusty sand
To be consumed into the earth
As one which has no lasting worth
Things I Didn'T Know I Loved
it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird
I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
A Hymn To Frost
Old leaves have no defence against the wind.
A gray hawk is October's inner cry.
The bells of Salem church play elegies.
Distance becomes a single snowflake's fall.
The mood is blue as autumn's last frost flowers,
Small bits of heaven hidden in the grass.
Tom Roach who called them by their favored name,
Went home across the green fields long ago.
.....Staring Out The Window.....
............sitting here in the stillness
.............................staring
...............staring out the window
...at darkness my friend and my foe.
.
............staring out the window
.........................listening
...........to the grandfather clock
........................tick tock
..
Identity Card
Write down !
I am an Arab
And my identity card number is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth will come after a summer
Will you be angry?
.
Write down!
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
My Other Love
He’s active as quicksilver,
Ageless as the sun,
Agile as a stream,
And alert as a bird in springtime.
Holding eachother's hand,
We’d walk down the stream,
He’d hold me so close,
As if I could get lost-
As illusive as a dream—
As Life Was Five
Portate bien,
behave yourself you always said to me.
I behaved myself
when others were warm in winter
and I stood out in the cold.
I behaved myself when others had full plates
and I stared at them hungrily,
never speaking out of turn,
existing in a shell of good white behavior
with my heart a wet-feathered
Grandfather Says
"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
in the dark.
It's after dinner playtime.
We're outside,
hidden by trees and shrubbery.
He calls it hide-and-seek,
but only my little sister seeks us
Manuelzinho
[Brazil. A friend of the writer is speaking.]
Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)—
a sort of inheritance; white,
in your thirties now, and supposed
to supply me with vegetables,
but you don't; or you won't; or you can't
get the idea through your brain—
the world's worst gardener since Cain.
Tears Of The Broken
Even if our hearts were as strong as a storm, we'd still feel a little bit sad
Knowing that we've lost our grandfather, our friend, our dad.
For so many years, we've felt their presence
In so many ways, we've felt complete,
But truly, even if we deny - We sometimes skip a heartbeat.
Our lives are nothing but their memories and their art,
Orbiting us each day, reminding us of who we are
Where we stand and to whom we belong,
We pray and cry up oceans for them night after night
Peekabo, I Almost See You
Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to
lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes
are all right but your arm isn't long
enough
to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go
to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,