No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn: New and Selected Poems Book

Move Over


Merchants. of the sea and of finance

(Smash the plate glass window)

The dead face is the true face
of Washington, New York a misery, but north and east
the carpenter obeyed
topography

As a hand addresses itself to the care of plants
and a sense of proportion, the house
is put to the earth

Tho peopled with hants, New England

Move over the let the death-blow in,
the unmanned or the transvest, drest
in beard and will, the capillary

Seven years with the wrong man,
7 yrs of tristus and vibullation.
And I looked up to see a toad. And the boy sd:
"I crushed one, and its blood is green"

Green, is the colour of my true love's green
despite
New England is
despite her merchants and her morals

* * *

The Kingfishers

* * *

At Yorktown


1

At Yorktown the church

at Yorktown the dead

at Yorktown the grass

are live

at York-town the earth
piles itself in shallows,

declares itself, like water,

by pools and mounds


2

At Yorktown the dead

are soil

at Yorktown the church

is marl

at Yorktown the swallows

dive where it is greenest,

the hollows,
are eyes are flowers, the heather,

equally accurate, is hands

at York-town only the flies
dawdle, like history,

in the sun


3

at Yorktown the earthworks

braw

at Yorktown the mortars

of brass, weathered green, of mermaids

for handles, of Latin

for texts, scream

without noise

like a gull


4

At Yorktown the long dead

loosen the earth, heels

sink in, over an abatis

a bird wheels


and time is a shine caught blue

from a martin's

back

* * *

The Moon Is the Number 18


is a monstrance,
the blue dogs bay,
and the son sits,
grieving

is a grinning god, is
the mouth of, is
the dripping moon

while in the tower the cat
preens
and all motion
is a crab

and there is nothing he can do but what they do, watch
the face of waters, and fire

The blue dogs paw,
lick the droppings, dew
or blood, whatever
results are. And night,
the crab, rays round
attentive as the cat to catch
human sound

The blue dogs rue,
as he does, as he would howl, confronting
the wind which rocks what was her, while prayers
striate the snow, words blow
as questions cross fast, fast
as flames, as flames form, melt
along any darkness
Birth is an instance as is a host, namely, death

The moon has no air

In the red tower
In that tower where she also sat
in that particular tower where watching & moving are,
there,
there where what triumph there is, is: there
is all substance, all creature
all there is against the dirty moon, against
number, image, sortilege -

alone with cat & crab,
and sound is, is, his
conjecture
* * *

The Ring of


it was the west wind caught her up, as
she rose
from the genital
wave, and bore her from the delicate
foam, home
to her isle

and those lovers
of the difficult, the hours
of the golden day welcomed her, clad her, were
as though they had made her, were wild
to bring this new thing born
of the ring of the sea pink
& naked, this girl, brought her
to the face of the gods, violets
in her hair

Beauty, and she
said no to zeus & them all, all were not or
was it she chose the ugliest
to bed with, or was it straight
and to expiate the nature of beauty, was it?

knowing hours, anyway,
she did not stay long, or the lame
was only one part, & the handsome
mars had her And the child
had that name, the arrow of
as flight of, the move of
his mother who adorneth

with myrtle the dolphin and words
they rise, they do who
are born of like
elements

* * *

As the Dead Prey Upon Us

* * *

Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele

* * *

The Librarian

* * *

Moonset, Glouchester, December 1, 1957, 1:58 AM


Goodbye red moon
In that colour you set
west of the Cut I should imagine
forever Mother

After 47 years this month
a Monday at 9 AM
you set I rise I hope
a free thing as probably
what you more were Not
the suffering one you sold
sowed me on Rise
Mother from off me
God damn you God damn me my
misunderstanding of you

I can die now I just begun to live

* * *

The Song


more than the sennet of the solstice pipe,
lovely though a hautboy is, now that the season
is indoors

Now that we are driven
and all outdoors
is indoors

Now that we are driven
and all outdoors
is no good

and the season
nor the hautboy
cover the tune,

we talk, pell-mell.
And when, for a moment,
nothing is said,

in this season still (and so forth
And it is
indoors)

And small as the group. Then,
more than the sennet of the solstice pipe,
lovely though the piping is,

and the season
still is cold

* * *

Cross-Legged, the Spider and the Web


with his body worship her
if necessary arrange
to sit before her parts
and if she object as she might
ask her for your sake to cover
her head but stare to blindness
better than the sun look until
you know look look keep looking until
you do know you do know

* * *

The Lamp


you can hurry the pictures toward you but
there is that point that the whole thing itself
may be a passage, and that your own ability
may be a factor in time, in fact that
only if there is a coincidence of yourself
& the universe is there then in fact
an event. Otherwise - and surely here the cinema
is large - the auditorium can be showing
all the time. But the question is
how you yourself are doing, if you in fact
are equal, in the sense that as a like power
you also are there when the lights
go on. This wld seem to be a
matter of creation, not simply
the obvious matter, creation
itself. Who in fact is any of us
to be there at all? That's what
swings the matter, also -
the beam hanging from

* * *

Maximus, to himself

* * *

COLE'S ISLAND