PALLIATIVES

Scented language alive
flexing the frontal way
toward a stranded plant
of geraniums living carefree
in taking leaves of Fall
by an uneasy rock garden
a cupboard constructs
moments to chronicle days
in the water proof studio
from pop art shattering boxes
of Cornell -like mediums
by picked up pills
from friendless company
of showering acceptance
in metaphoric rain.

YVES BONNEFOY'S WALK


Two cities attain
your eraser today

to die writing an invention
with a sign, moon, birdsong

away from the earliness
of a train to Paris

your senses recognized
by veiled window

a half- burnt sun guides you
the Seine wind lashes the river

watch for seven
in the mourning dove-cote

spendthrift sunshine is hot
in the fleece of a moment

at the Louvre's shadows
remembering the last Fauvre

as witness in an art book
of Derain's "The Turning Road."

GALLI- CURCI" ARIAS
(1983-1962)

Every Saturday
after the Met
Galli-Curci
was heard along the Charles
in the old West End
of Boston
as Italian and Jewish
airy windows are opened
with the newborn notes
of Lucia on everybody's lips
telling us to benevolently live.

PESSOA'S PARTING
(1888-1935)

So many names,
faces, pseudonyms
voices, an earthquake
of maxims and hymns
links us together
spiraling till twilight
opens among figures
multiplies proverbs
on added ladders
of Sephardic tables.

STARTING EVERY DAY

Starting every day
here by woodwinds
numbering fauna and birds
as a clarinet sounds in a chorus
of Bach from a cantata
outside the wandering echo
of the sea islets
outside my windowpane
for a tender moment
to look upward,
the restless stars
are gone
like secret loves
in the height of time
as a wilderness of verse
cannot bury you
in the sound proof studio
when riffs enlighten
as shadows of a black swan
glides near by rocks
by the shore's crest
and open raised music
from a starred calendar
of words, choirs, angels
into holiness on an altar
dazzles the spirit in us
as sonorous cello and solo
between earth and days
calls up the third heaven
into a dawn of a poet's praise.

APPOLINAIRE'S 'S PARIS

Orphic arrangements
when  a poem was painted
in the exaggerated eye
of a storybook in Paris
from hearsay consensus
of one.

ESTABAN VICENTE'S "AFTERNOON"
(1903-2001)

Guide of colors
in solo landscape
enchanted abstract dream
garden grinning sun's lightness
cycles a transcendent nature
flowering modernist shadows
over a visionary's collage field.

POP ART

Walking kilometers
from bedazzled colors
barely awake and detoxed
of illusions
to view Larry Rivers
"Dutch Masters with Cigars 2"
or Cornell boxes
with exploded masks
and metaphors
in the midst of a coffee break.

BEACON CHAMBER ROOMS
( BOSTON,1974)

Rooms to rent sign
for a student apartment
making turns off the freeway
approaching Boston
with the lights out early
needing a night to stay
checking in up on Beacon
puts his fine art books away
before the night owls
are heard in chorus
on my nine windows
before Morpheus' descent
with his landscaped shadows
sinks over these pantry boarders
covering this sleep house
while reading Edgar Poe
in the wooden den
of a sensitized space
a Boston abstract painter
who knew Phillip Guston
enjoys his environmental art
invites us to his future
new gallery on Newbury St.
near the Common,
the solitary play cards
like gin rummy or canasta
other to yield to checkers
or chess among pawns
kings or queen
in a parlor of drinkers
while armchair philosophers
think of Kant or Kierkegaard
while a once famous pianist
related to my great aunt
plays a Chopin sonata,
an actor recites his lines
the local bard wrote for him
desiring new cadences
waiting for September's dawn
with a dry eyed gentleman
from Athens, Greece
retelling us of Byron's decadence
with an old myth and legend
of the plucking at Jason's fleece
outside are sirens by all night
yellow and red hacks
of emergency cabs
not knowing what mid-sleep
trembles in underground circles
as morning bird sound calls
and a cool clarinet plays jazz
now to climb up out of bed
with a church hymn book
in my hand to sing
with a cogency
by a first sunlight search
on the grounds for a coffee cup
and a slice of Danish cheese
in a prophet's homestead
asking the Almighty twice
to bring me
an increase of money
not left in my glove compartment
for any contingency
yet holding on to  these memories
which will always keep
me in perfect peace.

OUT OF TOUCH

Out of touch
after my art tour guide
calls out to us
capturing memory in a fog
from a Vermeer
in a Dutch landscaped year
wishing to avenge myself
from an eerie nightmare
in my new play's dialogue
detached in my own mirror
of light gazing
on the museum's corridor
by "A Girl with a pearl earring"
imprisoning me
in my own back bench
through sleep and dreams
trembling in blue-grey blankets
reaching out to the airy horizon
for a hour's morning shade
covering a  ringed compass
it seems in our own reflection
while my great aunt leans
on the table napkin
drinks her dark coffee
and a French toast's
powdery confection
her nephew murders a croissant
to his own delectation.

WALK OF LIFE

You leave in the morning
when it is still dark
with high expectations
on Central Park, West
the sun expected on your back
and trying on a new vest
with first exams on
Fairfield Porter and  Larry Rivers
as repainted lovers of art
visiting the New York school
to a first gentleman's showing
of my jazz poetry on canvas
combing and combining
"A Trinity in Abstract"
in three parts for the faculty
of my opaline iridescent drawing
yet as any adolescent fool
mulling in your bed of sleep
to wait for recognition
on dawns,words,questions
puzzled to cross each pavement
scenting at first September light
at the Red Apple
marking my walk of life
puzzled to cross the pavement
yet it's too early in the day
to think of an explanation
tomorrow you will do better
you may even mail your friend's
dear John or St. Joan letter
or find your way after
to a happy hour malt
after my sporting
a one day mustache
trying to be like James Dean
wrestling in a somersault
when all the sun is gone
and it's not your fault
you almost forgot in the cafe
the very last word
at your last night's reading
as you whisk past
a gravel patch of memory
of that half-buried bird
by a St. Franciscan convent
near the birds you were feeding
near the playground garden
with a lark ascending
where you first played sax
relaxed on a bench
and made the sight -read sound
matched to your airy French verse
you translated all night
not missing out
to swing on any branch
for an image
of which you are attracted,
not yet attached
to any new found boarder
yet with a welcome
to an alien bocce field
wondering if today
you will pick
up Achilles shield
watching your ankle
fixing your sneaker
checking out the disarmed heel
seeing it's in order
seeking everybody's pardon
the clouds begin to rain
in absolute black and blue
to reveal your first quatrain.

NIGHT OF NAMES

Only this scoured night of names
and my initials my friend
put on the graffiti wall
will not forget you in the Village
the moon may pass by
and unnoticed rain
yet even for a pensive moment
O'Hara, Schuyler, Koch
we know by your still lives
are by the cafe's windowpane
as shadows on great hooks
unloose on injured love
as birds under marble stars
jump over tulip beds
moving next door
in a familiar pattern
shamelessly reify themselves
from many dark phantoms
following an August breeze
here in Manhattan
as if under city lantern light
by the fallen Oak acorns
on tree branches of Central Park
we watermarked poets
on other tongues mingle
with your own marathon voice
in the empty single rooms
full of furtive secrets
two almond eyes opening
think twice
wakened by the sun
by blueprints of your own body
demanding any life signs
along the long silences
of unspeakable loss
by our morning games
unlocks the bocce toss
here in the early chill
covering the fevered blank verse
on sheets of a somnambulist dream
under street lamps
a few gatherers pick up leaves
under pebbles of a century's dust
on the first frost of morning.

NEW YORK SCHOOL

The whole company,
Bishop, Bell, Cage,
Rose,Cornell
or those who missed out on
the free artists and those who spoke
or kissed the hypothetical away
will disclose and retell
as we engage on their behalf
in a showcase of metrical form
beyond any rage at the Paris scene
on canvas and lithograph
as we will redeem not embarrass
though our page's paragraph
our new born stress and storm
just viewing their studio again
in Manhattan's open windows
drawing us through ink dream
warm August shadows
harassed to pull us thrice in part
toward every new medium
from a drop art that lives
in galleys of generations
over these high -priced photographs
from myth, kith and kin.

GALWAY KINNELL'S GRAVITAS
(1927-2014)

Nothing grave for him
but glaucous yellow green ferns
between city visages
along the burning sea walls
sunflowers match villages
always earth-wise
near cyclopic buildings
no stranger's snowy tongue
for Galway's latitude
along a mortality of port calls
encountering rumors
those tricksters of fate
that in delirium cannot wait
on branches for Autumn leaves
to fall in the hip pocket of Apollo.

JACK SPICER'S DAY
(1925- 1965)

Words appeared to be
in city doorways
entitled to the depths
of our generation
shadowed in a tongue
sticky with sentences
pawned off
to an apprenticed Muse
first worked out
in the Boston Public library's
rare books section
and created from meditation
an understanding awe
in San Francisco's renaissance
your images rouse to choose
our still life 's longing chance
for a landscape between us.

PONGE, PONGEE
(1899 -1988)

All words suspicious
in the outline
of kiss fish shadows
along the sea
thoughts on a blank page
your bubbles in faces
like stars or cypress
in five pink petals
awaiting on shore
you breathe in arms
of bas reliefs
by stones and shells
waving plucked reeds
in the air from kingfishers
with a photograph
of the drifting amoebas.

MICHAUX'S HOUR
(1999- 1984)

Countless stones
from the windy Seine
of sunshine apparitions
a dazzling patina
from a blue well of sky
cover a cabin fever
in water color words
silent as whispers
over a breeze playing wave
abandoned as branches swing
where puffins on mallow trees
do not expect a cosmic fate
even in the undertow harbor
jay walking as shadows
cry over the coffin
of Henri Michaux
to enter another hour
in an atonement
of his pass words.

EDMOND JABES' EXODUS
(1912-1991)

Out of Egypt
Jabes to Paris
now another script
out of Paris
a boy's eye does not move
the rain makes ablutions
in a mystical shroud
above the shepherd heavens
in a doomed city
without even a memory
of Vichy water
a people of Enlightenment
again pass over to promises
to cross over and live
in a free France
yet every dawn is bloodshot
twilight turns cold
in shame.

BRETON'S DAYS
(1896-1966)

In the days of puppet-masters
the children watch the show
by the window pane
a sailor breathes in undertow
in the waves of the Seine
meeting the wordless
by the mute shore
in the days of lovers
who desire everything
under full face moons
a family mourns
the underground poets
whose thousand images
join in the sands off Normandy
cannot be erased.

EDWARD ELGAR'S VARIATIONS
(1857-1934)

In a marvelous charm
letting in the sheer love
of a first recital
a visiting boy hears
Elgar's music
on a twilight
in Barbican Hall
the stars outside also shine
in parables
and Romantic variations
of kindled praise.

BENJAMIN BRITTEN'S BRITAIN
(1913- 1976)

Long gone
like Yeats
on the backs of a swan
your songs, notes, words
live on
it was reported
for those of us of imagination
in latitudes of poets
and longitude of musicians
who live on in rumors
from concertos conceived
through entombed mirrors
facing your last reviews
you are comfortable
with a baton,trumpet and drum
waiting in hand
though England has changed
you are inescapable in spirit
faithful to the last note
of the musician's serious band.

MICHAEL TIPPETT'S TIME
(1905- 1998)

Light's perspectives
in shadows of wide open
quarter notes
in eyes of lyrical
and grateful time
embracing blues
and jazz
never burnt out
in music lessons
having lived it all out
for us at discernment
in the chorus
of private rhyme.

JOHN CAGE'S DAWN
(1912-1992)

Mobilized by energy

and knowing Thoreau

in your early drawing out

of entangled words,notes

from Walden's woody riverbed

in the papered over modernity

of extending twelve toned music

in the unquiet of sound 

proof studios at the Big Apple
speaking to us
John Milton Cage

in a cello's syncopation

as far as a sonata
in your panache will take you
on untangled chimeras
by augmented scales
reaching acrostic phantasma

in the concave jazz hours

of permeability's disengagement 

in passages of graffiti

or the pavane duple rhythm

in the secret syncretism

of multiple voices of a double bass

when centuries pass us by

you will be there with laughter

on a single note of amplification

after us all.

GIORGIO DE CHRICO'S HOURS
(1888-1978)

You paint metaphysically
on a discard canvas
in snapped on colors
immersed images
of your self-conscious
buried parables
in dismantled forms
to energize our perception
from your miraculous days
on brush tracing pieces
of the sky and trembles
by whispers of gulls
flying on over to visit spas
from the underground traffic
of a grand piano on candelabras
with imagination's voices
in the fingers of time
from cadavers of dead hair
mountains of papyrus drawings
avenging the soprano's echoes
on oboes in Verdi's Requiem
in a cut flower of cubism
implanted in a group show
as painted dynamos of dirges
earthquakes of altos
mimics the calisthenics
in a body of primitive  awareness
over disarmed lunatic winds
of surrealistic hurricane waters
on parades of still life sails
over a strangled sunset
you detail and draw us in
a panoramic universe
by a proverbial meadow
engraved in a balance sheet
of figured white derangement
in curves and perspectives
from abstract pendulums
and urns in traffic of snow
when coined in lithographs
by jump roped gardens
of mulberry landscapes
in rondure of arcades
from a convex fantasy
on retroflexed pink tongues
punctuated on a hardened palate
with cubist incense
without any poet's opprobrium
or retrenched refinement
on autobiography
articulated by striving expressionism
of many exploded cultures
in renitent outlines
of alembic alphabets
in a stone black apotheosis
purged and flattened
by back breaking sunlight
from tentative memory
art in the above disclosed
outdoor metamorphosis
of myth and muse
the blues showering light
of a lithograph's song of love.

AT THE DEAD SEA
(for Yehuda Amichai
1924- 2000)

More than the Dead Sea
searching for minerals

we will meditate
in miracles for friends

remembering each face
at a visit from all over earth

who will rise here in words
seeking songs

on your splendid guitar
sister plays a viola for peace

you uncover an Indian sitar
near the animals of the ark

we wash in a blossoming
of Jerusalem's sunflowers

eternity reaches to atone
where no nations are alien

unknown angels sing
from the darkness of hours

each of us on a journey
reaches out for water

for my neighbor too
who gazes at us on the beach

as a song bird chorus
with hidden wings

is above our wilderness
at the day's close

we polish stone at twilight
from the darkness.

ANTHONY HECHT'S JOURNEY
(1923- 2004)

Call out to us
from a Greek chorus
and a Hebrew lament
high over an ancient mountain
you were not silent
for us emerging
with your generational voice
in the twilight
of a fevered war
in the soul of this journey
of our metamorphosis.

MARK STRAND'S TIME
(1927-2014)

That line will always be his
by the seasonal sharp wind
through the leaves clattering
in the ashen grey twilight
books in the worn knapsack
of the ancients are not strange
everything in its graces
belongings now arranged
by the blotting notes
with Homer among talisman
among city superstitious questions
at the gate breaker's quotes
frozen in psalmist silences
from silent antiquities den
shining in the exiled sun
from the fields along the sea
by Prince Edward Island
of the refugee and alien.

POE ON BOSTON COMMON

Visiting this monument
adorned with my opening
with a Bach violin solo
revised in jazz riffs
and after to visit
here on Castle Island
my hand reaches out
to the Ghost's vision
of Poe stationed on this cliff
exchanging rosin for my bow
your footsteps still embrace
the gothic and gnostic
in a hearsay heresy
to answer a vassal back
from a moment's darkness
capturing onto a poet's grace
 "No" and "Yes."

ASHBERY IN LATE AUGUST

Your nearness
by the ocean's Cape
it is a child's hand
that the fearful sands reshape
into a heaven's cloud castle
near echoes ocean's shells
held on my ditch water thumb
reading you under a carob
by tall dunes and trees
a vassal on the seventh day
wandering by like Jeremiah
in late August
reading John Ashbery
like a star of Jacob
implanted by names
on my prayer bench
as the argument of the waves
that welcome our footpath
like the French cat
saving my croissant's crumbs
by the hyacinth tied
to the motioning gusty breeze.

NERVAL'S PASSING
(1808-1855)

The quarter moon
is shaped for you
in the loft
a Romantic curtain
draped in soft black
concealing your daydreams
from repentance
in the rants from a decadent era
of the "Fleurs Du Mal"
in the underground of Paris
breaking a red wine glass
after returning
from lines at the opera house
awakening to a sound
of Rossini's ''Guillaume Tell"
a funeral passes by it seems
unnoticed in a concierge of love
no one is embarrassed Nerval
we waited for your arrival.

C.S. LEWIS'S PARTNER
(1898-1963)

My brother
searching for Narnia
O  lion of Judah
it' s in the open tablets
for Jehovah
my partner
do not delay spring's
arrival in the exodus
of manna and the birds
dance and sing O  Zion
in a Passover chorus
to bring for us
your prayer in the Torah
redeemed in your Word
to light up the Menorah.

TOLKIEN'S RINGS
(1892-1973)

The marking and making
of the Rings
hearing the Kalevala
tongue you thought
was supernatural
in Finnish
would offer crowns
some day to the King
of Kings
Oh that your poetry and prose
in words would migrate
to the British.

WILLIAM FAULKNER'S WORK
(1896-1962)

You knew by the piano
the only healing
of black and white keys
was in His charity
like music heard going forth
as Will Faulkner
the maker of a novel business
was never to stereotype
our north- south complexity
how from brutality
love would lead an exodus
in notes from slavery
to a metamorphosis
in characters that live forever
from your soft mouth
with revealing words.
open for us
with clever dexterity.

FLANNERY O'CONNER'S MEMORY
(1925-1964)

A conscience in the sun
how is it Messiah's peace
crossed all the silence of d.n.a.
to choose this one to desire
when words do not pay
lip service in a frog mouth
of the South's repentent dialogue.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD'S LAST DAY
(1896-1940)

Jazz in a topaz ring
holding out for notes
flung out the window
in the Great Gatsby
by the upright piano
drinking in to think
from handsome mirrors
shaping a face
and then a knowing wink
as the doors close.

IN NATHANIEL WEST'S WING
(1903-1940)

Take a hold of his hand
in El Centro
very quietly
stop the traffic light
for this emergency
speak into a loudspeaker
in a Manhattan tone
with the grammar,wit,syntax
in an accent of Job
roll up your sleeves
in a bearded tear
whisper it is Nathaniel West
convinced that his locust days,
identity, blood type,photo
from the lament of words
passed away here.

IN A LARKIN MOOD

In a Larkin mood
with a mod idea of impossibilities
my head suspended in the clouds
awakens from his jazz metropolis
from a riddled commentary
after reading his verse
with a melancholy libation
feeling like a mushroom
by an empty withered snow
near initialed trees
over Cambridge fields
of a soccer match
a street sign again broken
from a fugitive myth
in a hustled languor
of sullen directions
to a sleep housed
sound proof studio
as showers return
with laughter coming down
in the form of a quatrain.

A SUMMER EVENING

A summer evening
at home.
Green on a windowsill
of wet geraniums,
boxwood cats crawl
on linen closets
now cover a bed
and bare furniture,
a cat continues
to soften her food
backing away from
the iron and scrabble boards
my words falter
on my computer
as a kitchen's address book
falls into the sink,
the blossoms of geranium
are ready to be replanted
for a suited rock garden
and I'm stricken
with a poem.

CATCHING SALMON

On sea snows
beyond a sand eyed shore
shouting for a salmon
yet locating only trout
motioning with a cry of hooks
descending off the boat
by the hammers of a stream
in the dizzying of wind and bees
waking in a day dream
fish appearing in nets
bring in my cache
without regrets
among dotted lines
of the ocean
catching a glimpse
of the restless.

A BIRD IN HAND

The sea wind moves
on the telephone wire
outside my writing room
a sparrow shivers like a poet
on a threshold's new dawn
lost to deliver a conduit
in tension or extension
is a question or desire
of probabilities
on jackets of trees
as a bird has flown away
not knowing
what adequate words
will ease today or tomorrow.

NERVES

They may injure
or harden you
like fishes bellies
bloated on flypaper
what conduit of bubble
is a poet's antennae
to atone
waiting for a syllable
from sea to stone.

TURGENEV'S SPORSTMAN'S SKETCHES

Let us call on your day-dream
walking through dusty woods
over Byezhin meadow
minding family horses
of the Sportsman Sketches
telling childhood ghost stories.

It is cold for March
in tiny hamlets the sun envies
you have no prince's room
there are few candles burning
by the campfire you wish
outside the tub
in the wintry bristling air

A foreign correspondence
awaits you inside
oven birds are at the windows
watching the horseshoes
as echo bells ring
at noon
to munch on an apple.

TCHAIKOVSKY BATHING

It seems to be a river
brothers will not find him
only slim waters stroke and play
a love song for "The Enchantress"
but this is no idea for a swim!

A violin sounds
out of crystal pools
catapults to wave
over the bridge
floats the head bubbles
and babbles
in a helpless landing
trying to fathom his footfalls
but only the ballet music
of Swan Lake
pricks over pirouettes
of a wet suit leech's body.

AUDEN'S DEPARTURE
(1907-1977)

In the wrinkled memory
of a French mirror
on a now braided face
you toothed a bas relief
through a holed up
mad century
in your faithful poems
where we know each other

Reaching for a handshake
in the Big Apple
for my visible guest
drawn to his presence
with an acrid image
waited for his appearance
you already know,

Speaking of life's exile, grace
bravery in a future recollection
of our letters
it was out of Bloomsbury
he spoke of his betters
in these almost tame days
boasting of his opposition
to any political war gimic
or an ignition of private games,

As a modern watchful poet
with a transparent greeting
over a public read
we discover our bench
with slippery aster flowers
near a wine bottle and napkins
we're on a search for phrases
within a prophetic hour
of a late Auden
at a sunlight meeting.

ATWOOD IN THE LIGHT

Exodus in the skull carved port

and curved Canadian light

a novelist climbed out of the docks

recalling the communicable story
in a dim candlewick season's
reading for us

by grey stone appearing gulls
in driftwood on the mid-Atlantic
fish feeding by salt waters
foretells all the darkened disasters
in the Atwood lore
on an articulate dog-star morn.

FRANZ KAFKA'S WAIT

Forgive my intimacy, Franz
but it's your anniversary
even at your age
has again murdered
your birthday cake
with a hundred candles
East and West the Castle
has become a concentration camp

A beetle crawls towards me
in the dimness of a mind's eye
as it sleeps and moves
along the gray slate walls
the swing of metamorphosis
gathers in time,fate, space

You like an ancient prophet
expected a steel insect
called this creature into being
a human inspector
from this Oswiecim-Auschwitz
waits for you, Franz
in our memory's long corridor
where your two sisters perish.

ALFRED DOBLIN'S ALEXANDERPLATZ

A montage
reflecting the darkness
of each moment's somnolence
hell bent and death pale
in double-faced monolgue
chiseled by action
and roving dialogue
in troubled reactionary days
when love or politics
in the know
meant a sentence of no and yes.

GUNTER GRASS' DAY
(1927-2015)

From bitterness
at his own Party loyalties
briefly carrying a suitcase
of blank verse
in Nazi and Stasi luggage
amid the crude language
of silence and defiance
at his own bitterness
of the brown- red shirt age
shows no change
in any artsy metamorphosis
from an expressionless century
of a rudely stated envy
from any political extremity
in a contest of a Nietzchean will
beating up upon a fluency
from a Manichean over kill
in an inflated German currency
from a psychosis thrill
which in a cut -throat tongue
in a canard of a hung over time
crashes  and cashes
in a stock market plunge
leads to the humanity of crime.

GEOFFREY HILL'S HOUR

In the name of deliverance
from niches
of the oppressed wrongs
on uncut tall grass
by Oxford's pedagogues
sounding off in England last voice
from history's sleeplessness
in the eloquent guilt
of capital and capital punishment
in phastasmagoria's art screens
from an art movie house
where a runaway enters
a midnight showing
of "The Long Distance Runner"
on retroflexed tongues
spoken in riffled criminal files
from Birmingham's shelf
in the rictus mouths of judges
sentencing himself
to political purgatory
after reading Plato's dialogues
collapses by candlestick
closes his hands
while drinking ale
in a pub at Gatwick
ready for an armaments conference
in a Nato Royal passenger plane
with a Tory former pilot
nick- named Pontius
his Dresden mother pacing
like Lady MacBeth on the runway
feeling damned sorry for herself
has blood on her own hands
on a conscious daily nightmare
about millions of skeletons
of good citizens
lost in caves, mountains, seas
cemeteries, crematories
trying to taste Easter lilies.

CHARLES PEGUY'S CROSSROAD
(1873-1914)

In the shame of a belly
crying out for life on earth
in the stranger's messiah
of a cradled rest
on childhood's seven stories
from Brazil's favelas
last standing building
covering the highest angels sent
over words made flesh
in Joseph's torn fringes coat
near a wellspring
on the cave's creche
in a distant village
from a hand-out of bread
and wine
left on the wooden spoon
from a soup kitchen
in the open space
of lemon wedges and stars
needing a heaven
of comfort
in the days of awe
where fair Archangels
move slowly in Siberian snows
and exiles dive for escape
in caverns for freedom
from eagles wings
where a visionary glory
rests on black shoulders
of Soweto's songbirds
in the meadow morning
and tendrils arise
on parched fields
of green, purple and pink
you are with your blotter
dodging ammunition
loving enemies
in the roll calls of madness
with your memories
scrolled in the heart
from a child's hand
of holding up the Torah.

DAVID JONES' LEGACY
(1895- 1974)

On the names for God
from windmills call
of the streams of life
from the rivers of wellspring
and lilacs softened
by a flawless Evergreen
in perpetual prophecy
of golden candlestick
over library shelves of dust
we find you, always young
among stones by sleep houses
a spring rain shower
a revelation passing
of another generation
in the planted seedlings
between blue hills
asking for words
hungering to speak out
and hand over the rings
of your engagement
in your lost murmur for love
at the edge of the age,
we celebrate reflection
of the sunset and eventide
over the river
in a visionary silence.

THE LAST BERGMAN

The last Bergman's
"Smile of a Summer's Night"
in the loud speaker
a boy sneaks into
the art theater
at the midnight showing
sheltered in his on speech
recounting our dark media's
wish for a black comedy
in the snowy solitude
of titillating Northern lights
we wish to opine by charades
from faceless bones
you speak to us
when images crowd our memory
even now
bent over in the back seat
of our persistence.

LISTENING TO VIVALDI'S "SEASONS"

The red haired priest
of the Fall gloria
may be gone but his music falls
on the foliage of Umbria's hills
lighting the whispers
whirring to burst in sunlight
of planted bulbs
with the harvest in play.

Awaiting winter
always an exile
with a refuge for a friend
in a barter for warmth
toward the year's ending
in an impromptu moment
of the smallest town's survivor.

Spring is attentive
outside us
tasting the coolness
of a peach
all trees leafed
and carved with rain
into the roof with violins
hearing a wilderness of notes.

Summer fools us
as if we lost our way
homesick for house greens
or together on back porches
where the old perspire
unreported
and the youngest dream aloud.

MIKLOS RADNOTI'S LAST DAY

In an an unclean blouse
verse clings to your mouth
indelible eyes for words
which remain
on forced marches
to feel the grief of us
not shaved
bruised and exhausted
from centuries of injustice
with outstretched arms
in a gravel pit like Joseph
your brothers surround you
or cry out on trains.

INTO THE VISTULA

Into the Vistula,
the remains of fascism
mirrors,uniforms, combs
the jut in the river
of buried breaths,
the once soft dreams
mouths turning to pray
for survival
stars crossing over
the still lungs, ribs,skins
a time of relapse
and so many tombstones
an earth mad at itself
hoping for the arrival
of atoning liberation.

MARCEL PROUST'S Q AND A

Those eyes which question
and answer in the mirror
if I am a fanatic twin
or merely frantic
from a panic attack
of hypochondria
how germs in a camera
of my own imagination
reach in mimosa and anemones
of the sea beach at Combray
even in my childhood bath
fearful of the outside air
the death wish which won't leave
hearing an anonymous
French horn
and my own violin playing
the Franck sonata which lives on
searching for new appearances
characters, forms, expressions
in the snow storm
paler than the birch tree
outside grandmother's windows
invited by the warm sand echoes.

THOUGHTS ABOUT DOSTOYEVKY

Lying on the beach
with Notes in the sand
from the underground letters
of my own imaginative dark body
feeling your exiled gathering
from anemones of floating shadows,
it would be better to read you
in the winter boyish snows
or by the city's zoological gardens
or the Ural mountains
from here by the peaceful sea
in the middle of a nowhere sound
as we walk through the mud
feeling an undertow
of horseshoe crabs
when your stuttering words
suffuse with mine,
perhaps each century
a world is suddenly revealed
even as we yawn by the ocean
amid my closed body
of waters dragging to encircle
the lower depths of injury
of one who cannot tear himself
from the hot stare of terror
drowning us in our fears.

FORD MADOX FORD'S DINING

Blue gentian shirt worn
by the tea cupped noon
you ask to hear Beethoven
or leitmotifs,only something
German on the Dresden piano-
the sun tears in
from the jalousie windows
you place of napkin
four square before your plate
interwoven with leek and schnitzel
carefully folding your black tie
and stare at the firedogs
speaking of Conrad and the sea
volunteering to sign after dinner
the latest novel centered
in the ghastly first world war.

SIMOME WEIL'S WAY

You sit cross-wise in that pew
among the barefoot and the poor
recounting prayers in the fount
from exile, flights from Egypt
deportation and auto-fe.

Trying to cleanse the mind
in the inheritance of pure spirit
yet knowing the knots of history
intellect and a poet
sinks through headaches
fenced in pain.

The warmth which pulses
out of philosophy
the underground in Paris
in hiding from camps,
expatriation, searches
sounding an elocution for God
you are in the churches.

That weeping in your bones
which burn thin
as you give away honors
with ration cards
to the laborers
in a sense of tragedy
marking an Iliad thesis
your perfection to atone
caught up in your works
a holiness as you pass away
in a metamorphosis
yet virtually unknown.

McLUHAN TRIBUTE

Bygone words
but not beyond reach
of excommunication
in sense of time
what advertises to us
about our choices
in mysterious brave
new world feelings
affixed to a Platonic search
separating the good
with stop-gap possibilities
of a changeless exchange
in play at neon signals
of cunning descriptions
knee high circles the syllables
blending in a rapport
of whip lashed radio waves
from revolutionary bubbles
in gestures of the medium
over the McLuhan spot
saving him on star channel 9.

CZESLAW MILOSZ'S WARSAW

In a picture card Warsaw
above dwelling places
whispers at this dawn
of a spiritless past
in ravaged war
from a totalitarian eye
under the sun's footprints
of sleepless rag pickers
by horse drawn cart,
who will admit us to memory
at the first hour
of the day sky
out of exile, after forty years
lit by birdsong miracles
with the wind a solo by itself
in the acts of dusty dreaming
his books on orange crates
listening to Chopin etudes
near a Gogol novel
you, Czeslaw
in a pilgrimage's walk
by a chorus of half fight
song birds by radiant branches
near chimney mesh sparrows
this morning is no longer
rooted in silence
in a still age of homesickness
sinking between premature fear
with the bread
of a departed friend
knowing what lies
in the courtroom
of history and expatriation
from sleep houses and death camps
in thoughts of earth, ashes, roads
those voiceless hours
from four leafed tears
of a mute sun shower
waits on a wandering revelation.

YANNIS RITSOS'S ROAD

Writing Sunday on a page
by an exile's diary
one wave at a time
on the sea curve of colors
knowing the colonel's curse
though familiar to a poet
walks on Ritsos's road
where sleeping air dies
on patient stones
from myth's escape
with a cold wine skin
of freedom
with an oxidation
of Mycenae's memory
of politics is revived
where tongues of fire
signed verse imagines
the fathers' warm sleep
housed in a hidden face
of bare- iced music sheets
by Athenian scrawled papers
and yellow journals
amid a skeptical pen
in abstraction
walking down known street
in a prophetic time
of fugitive justice.

A RUSSIAN MASS IN AMERICA

Leaning over the rails
at the communion watch
from alpha to omega
a student forgetting electrodes
of the medical department
next to us
with a Harvard accent
telling of miracles
on Assumption Day
that a woman of ninety
returned here from her coffin.
Only excommunicated words
rise from the choir
those warm high voices
rejoice at Lent
after the snow of Archangel
with crossword puzzled faces
reading "Crime and Punishment"
in Russian tea rooms
no one here
has forgotten
Stalin has six letters.

BASIL BUNTING'S WAY

That weather turnings
in Briggflatts
agitating the fine lines
at the hub of a Sunday morning
as bells under a rain water drops
over hospital cab emergencies
signal a punctured tire of time
with a purple weary hand
from a halfway house

you need not despair
on Basil Bunting's way
the immaculate moments
will spare all solitude
laughing in the relief
of a newspaper's headline
embraced by the traffic
as sprinkled showers
in an overcast sky
after a halcyon solstice
of a poet on a park bench
notices a black swan
frozen in the lake
in a discreet echo

HARBOR TOWN

Though the jetty
walking for miles

from Soho's winter light

of a faltering city

a poet rests on a bench

near the lantern lamps

the sea under the bridge

at the lowest point

as barges of the ages
drown without transparency
in the riptide

though dream whirlwinds

of a lonely trumpet sounding
on the dock

excusing the vocal madness

of a sailor who searches

for his navy cap

through a green look-out port.

A POET REQUESTS

You saw him from the back
walk up the steps
his face was worn
out of exile
a stain on his coat
the poetic doubt he attaches
to the importance of this visit
the scrupulous echo of mind
abstracted in the empty stare
disconcerted by the coffee
percolating on a tiny stove
watching as through a telescope
mirrors of stars
speaking for alembic hours
on the decline of symbolism
as we meet as the brass door
knowing what my riff suffices
on a jazz language never learnt
that dreams do make sense
that there was a Homer
Villon and Rimbaud.

U.C.LA. EXPECTATIONS

The unread to rise
by graffiti walls
punk music enfolds
a case study
of a former starlet
who dated someone advertising
auto bodies on Dragnet re runs
courting a T.V dietitian
who stands by the son
of a skin headed wretch
now a career machine politician
and space technician's
third wife
who hides in his cave
then expect no light
for somnambulist night owls
at the hot coroner's verdict
on the last rock musician.

WOLE SOYINKA'S DREAM

Lagos was free
not forgotten in the sun
of pollution or war
from funereal pajamas
in dancing labyrinths
of a green filled
sanguine countryside
when exiles return
like battered lilies
and fires on moonlit ponds
rise to salute the evening.

BELGRADE, LATE 1999

A terrible memory
of living bombs
in orange remembrance
of the air's flesh
leaning on human footprints
of the solitary earth
a city's face turns pale blue
and overnight a river
floods a violent brown
by winter's cold eye
to lean on your land
with empty chairs
unwitnessed by the world
notched out of echoes
and screams
from lapses of timeless dawns
where the rain shadows trees
and moving children
roll away behind stones
in a mountainous inheritance
of assassin's mourning
on a thousand bandages
in deserted stations.

1945 BERLIN

Daily nightmares
are blasted open
in suitcases of swastikas
slogans and weapons
taken away
scattered to the ashes
the wrinkled politics
of what's left of
chimney factories
now the belly bureaucrats
are respectable judges
like the dishonorable press
are not even pissed
by the new arms makers
and old auto manufacturers
they are already back
having a manicure
with their new wives
and every passer by
is a collaborator.

IN THE JAWS OF SATYAJIT

Watching Pather Panchali
with an almond face
weeping like a runaway boy
in the half naked matinee
with an instant dialogue
to screen in
the episode
wishing to command silence
from my real lover's life
rolling over
the motion picture.

LAMENT OF PENELOPE

Your hero so human
yet always suggestive
not forgetting in silence
of the gods to bereave
in the gift of a lotus flower
as an enchanted chimera
from another journey
still hid on a shelf
of the tent's wall.

You should praise yourself
in your labor of sighs
when he took off
for the islands
not javelined into exile
free from your watchful eyes.

It may seem terrible
as the riddle of your life
or even fraud or blasphemy
as a wise wife not to grab onto
or be bothered by gossip
by bedroom whispers
on the country's lips
with any more of this business
of this constant boredom
it's no giant sorrow
to be suddenly amazed
when dusty clouds
on the horizon
will raise Ulysses up tomorrow
in a lament for your freedom.

ACTING UP

At the Coolidge theater
watching Woody
and being shamed
at a laughing twink
in the next seat
having returned home
to for late rehearsal
and a soft drink
with only a caretaker's
kindness for an understudy
who writes graffiti
without regret
on the laundry wall
that he is a jinx
in my kitchenette
his language is not rough
now lemon cough dropped
in a larynx of his lines
newly rehearsed
after five hours of exhaustion
to ask in a calm voice
if there is any more of a curse
before tomorrow's performance
until two wineglasses appear
now broken in the nook
there can be no chance bitterness
unless my play be mute
and all engaged voices
are on remote.

WRITING ON WALDEN POND

Time seems unapproachable
or my abstract words
left undone
you swear a garden angel
could appear here on the grass
as hunger leaves us
we gather shells and stones
taking an oath to nature
by the ragged shore
where Thoreau still walks
dreaming alone
on an Indian blanket
then bathing in the waters
under a dreamt sunshine
of a hundred years lore.

BAY TIME

Again the August
airless aroma
with tourists taking
a snapshot of cranes
somewhere lost by Bay time
by the spraying waters
over Cape Cod
with cameras in hand
encountering Martha's Vineyard
when roses of late summer
rule the street
and low wind graffiti
is more than any sky written off
in Coastal school diaries
by the walls of half light
home harboring the shore
as sailboats from riptide waters
out from the Atlantic
are glimpsed by songbirds
among voices and dialogue
of the Azores
with lobster fishermen
taking a sponge bath
wishing to dive in riptide waters
our tinted knapsack opens
full of brooks, Brie
and blood oranges
hearing bird calls and crickets
as chestnuts and acorns
drop veiled by the sun
unearthing memory
by the seaweed beach
while a whirlpool of crickets
are heard by nature's chimeras
whisking by arid echoes
of a ship's topsail marathon
now under oak and elm trees
over the advancing joggers
walkers and bicycle riders
as if in a lasting mile run
reaching for any ocean breeze.

 RUNAWAYS

Why do you not return
everyone of you
to share your eyes
at the piano
is it too much to ask
for one of you to appear
and share the Dutch shore
after the war
and occupation
with the sun on your faces
to the Holland house
is the attic still cold
when summer is here
or the memory of the coat
of many colors in memory
of the Coastal arrivals
full of children's tears
too much in the blinding sun
yet we want tenor voices
of prophecy
and a thousand word songs
sailors wrote on cargo ships
to again be heard
and greet the lost waves,
over exiles of carnage and death
there are rumors of your survival
in a visionary daughter
that outlast the summer waves
keeping us alive
by the waters and light
of day stars.

SOMEWHERE ULYSSES

On the boundless shore
your voice still leaves
its fleece of legend
after your journey
ceases its laughter
and slaughter
Ulysses your bronzed shadow
drifts regrettably
in skiffs
never gone far
like a blackbirds memory
on the pitched deck
never imagining
a bard's Homeric poetry
would still be heard
on Ionian radio waves
over a grin at sailboats
emptying white sands
all swallowed up
by rumors of your return
in the form of a lifeguard
whose smile picks up lovers
from Athens cargo voyages
by beaches of our exile
on crystalline blue waters
over glittering tall ships
ready for a return trip.

AUGUST AT NEWBURYPORT

At seaside
over a handful of waves
sleepless by sunflowers
in a noon's reluctance
of hay fever
to reach out
in gestures on burning rocks
to find a home harbor gazebo
and leave my bicycle
with a blind gesture
to an abandoned landscape
in water colors
joined by ocean gulls
on shifting tiny clouds.

BLACKOUT

When you run
for the train
the lights go out
in the underground
on a world without memory
wanting to acknowledge
a few stops of mercy
to anyone who will outlive
the random darkness
outside this labyrinth
on signals of earth
in counting stones
on every path
by elm, sky,hyacinth,
the last strawberry eaten
in a Bergman scene
or a planted bulb
outside your window sill.

SYLVIA, SYLVIA

Day after nights
in your sleepless armchair
discarding words
fortune cookies
even popular love songs.

On with your trench coat
to feel the bristly air
of Cambridge
while changing lipsticks
full of transatlantic gums
you forget the night movies,
ridiculous confessions
with revised nostalgia.

Now, walk through terminals
of tuned-out justice
with caved of reason
and taut sweet shops
covering up furious shoulders
of emergence room embraces.

STOP FOR THE MOMENT

Mine is a universe
in urn and ashes
leaves blushing
in the falling acorns
learning always
of the disappeared ones,
on a run for eight miles
by a marathon
waiting at the sea's lighthouse
making waves
amid dolphins,
seeking peace
from combat zones
believing like the prophets
in the rising of dry bones.

A DAY OF PARABLES
(For Denise Levertov in memory)

We pass at a noon hour
hearing birdsong
near Cambridge bookstalls
and remember the water music
from the Esplanade tables
along the Charles River
by Weeping Willows
wanting some chowder
where we poets
read on the Common
at the peace march
which gets louder
as we read our parables
near the Mayflower pulpit.

AT THE CHARLES RIVER

Easing the summer
at the Charles River
translating Baudelaire
on an Esplanade bench
with tree shade
tall grass has grown
no wiser,
inhaling the blue wind air
with sailboats on the dim sea
on a diffusive August noon
the river runs by marathon
over the hub's memory
as dizzy acorns fall
from weary Oaks.

AUGUST AT CAPE ANN

We stare at a back page
in a used bookstore window
Everything moves me
even shadows of songbirds
over the streetlights
by unwritten stones
near the Good Harbor
every drink is a savor
by Gloucester's rocks
and tall greensward dunes
even by late thunder squalls
you long for the sea
finding a tortoise shell
white upon coral
all seems infinite
in my snorkeling
and immortal to reach out
on the white sands beach.

STILL LIFE

To have met in the snow
under the statue
of Praxitiles and Michaelangelo
at the public library steps
was too wonderful
for my Muse's sensibility
in a seance of  words and art
possessing the Old Masters,
surviving of memory
in the corners of fictive love
meeting in Paris
to play racquetball and tennis
wearing periodic sweat pants
as we observe spring birds
around for awhile
at Seine St. Denis,

Let's go to a museum.

ANTI ESTABLISHMENT

Today right and left
are frightened
of what is orthodox
and are enlightened
to turn ahead or back
the clocks
of a denouement
in politics
from the government
to a novel paradox
of being in sentiment
anti establishment.

ON BEING NOVEL

Dreaming in a cul de sac road
of Balzac demanding paper
after a daily nightmare
with a cropped headache
of writer's block
imagining a soul is being
guillotined somewhere
in Paris,

"Help me,"
he says to the actor
her red gown thrown
over the baroque sofa
as in a romantic season
of opera buffa
nibbling on foie de gras
offering his lover
a gold snuff box
in a silver age case
hoping for his table mate
a space to stay the night
bowing in a jaunty manner
with a panic attack
getting a revision
in his body language
by drinking cognac
on this powder blue night
lighting matches
Honore chairs a meeting
amid his brick a brac notes
remembering a chapter
full of scratches and notes.

GROWING UP AND DOWN

It may take all spring
this growing up and down
childhood rarely
shares its first appearance
or barters for warmth
in winter's breath
a day dream commences
to witness its pleasure
or make way
for its clearance
at a round trip morning
at a playground of leisure
planted by gardens
under shadowy cirrus
flashes in rain clouds
children standing by evergreen
and wanting no pardon
amid the presence
of a single crocus
and a chorus of song birds
wishing on no one to witness
us over by the county creeks
everyone hides from the flood
or merely takes a peek
along the riverbeds
discovering how to praise
a bruised adolescence.

WINTER STREET

What lives
on branches
is a few breaths away
frozen on geraniums
discovering landscapes
of chill cheated gardens
as snatched up winds
on raw whispers
remember a second self
shaping a figurine
on the windowpane shelf

A sunflower child
wanders on Winter Street
on the cold pavement
her feet are bone stiff
in the frozen underground

She walks to the Atlantic
jumping over the mounds
of snow on the Common
by history's dusting shadows
and thick flakes
justice collecting
in her blue blood prey
wanting to feel green again
to kindle spring.

IN BLUE FLIGHT

It is a time
of migrating
in blue flight
as a chorus of birds
wait for their wings
in the black forest
but politely ask
for life
and exodus

Only the stones
are heavy
in the gravel pits
only the wind is cold
on these dark days
leaves us ashen
a sparrow leans down
from the branches
but steals our bread

Soon the call of gulls
will shadow us
amid bells of the city
when blood is frozen
in snow mounds
hidden in mountains
on the ground
and missing persons
suddenly appear
their souls are rarely found
beneath a cloister
by the sunflower and hyacinth
everyone is a stranger
in war's labyrinth
or angels asking a friend
to admit him ,admit her
this hour.

MATISSE DREAM

Quiet wanders
the landscape at Collioure
waves by a plumb line
unsure of the print
with three bathers
at April noon
with an imperceptible rain
you walk painting
in a belly up memory
of spring at last collecting
its sunlight
until you emerge
as in a limpid apparition
in half-dressed rhythm.

KLEE'S HOUR

A snapshot
over the sidewalk
blinds the climbing
luna moth
and the raw egg
of conscience
to open a voice
from blinding fatigues
at the silence
by the window aisle
and light bulb corridor
on a noose for art
roping in intrigues
all electric
as jackstraws of terra cotta
in bare backed lava
pull with crushed terror.

DUSTY

Dusty Springfield
clothed by Soho
from London, New York
to Boston harbor
on a poster loneliness
always played herself
unlike the lip sync
blues at camp
she trembled
as we ate tangelos
on board.

YOUR IMAGE

Knowing the abacus
of the dying
in a Bach chorus
of the Passion
enjoying the actor's
fast living celebration
after performing
in Beckett's Godot,
the mirror of solitude
and solace of spring
upon centuries of rock
amid the urchins
in evaporated cities
hearing prayers of the dead
standing by the orthodox
after human and natural
disasters to affirm life,
the matchless cubism
of Picasso and Matisse
the joy of lost war photos
and songs of troubadours
which overrun the rivers
after the snow and floods
of our childhood rescue.

WAR SAW US

War saw us
moving on Polish trains
a moment longer
you imagined an angel
would smile in the rain
or a house would open
to shelter a smile
hope smolders
for a crumb of bread
amid vast chimney smoke
no one whispers
or spoke about
in a fresco
painted in the sky.

HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

Putting away rattles
and old toys
of woodblock prints
and scarred photographs
imaging being on quiet grass
before the snowy flash
surrendering blood and bones
to an inferno,
only the wind may hears us
touching a handful of urns
by the sea,
even the strawberries
do not taste the same.

SHOW US AN EXILE

Where is the sea
for us, an exile to wave
us over the horizon,
there is an echo of clouds
understanding the snow
those children abandoned
among a flight of angels
in a blue Chagall
prisoners in time of war
crying out as laborers
in the barracks hall
cursed amid
the dust and stone
with hypnotic spells
in an alembic calendar
of words, stars, smoke
that goes up in chimneys
reaching up to atone
higher and higher
up to Jacob's ladder
in bone dry hunger
and thirst.

1944 VISITOR

If you became
as dust
a stone in quarry
or vague light
near a red flash
for execution
clinging on
one breath
or a plumb line
on the final solution's
landscape's map
in the general's will
and testament
for war and death
you would not be sorry
to leave or go home.

ROTHKO

Whether in yellow
or orange yellow
at chapel
in Houston
or in Boston
or at Moscow's windows,
from Salem's harbor
or Jerusalem Road
in our contemplation
Rothko's eye
is never lazy
but rises
from our shadow
altering all
in the sycamore shade.

UP ON JOY STREET

Beacon Hill
was not so quiet
in the icy November
as Robert Lowell
passed show dogs
near a hydrant
on Joy Street
under a lantern's twilight
by red brick cornices
of my college days,

If only I could call back
to you from life's mystery
a professor would day "Yes"
to a writ of congealed voices
translate you as a novice
from the thick darkness
as a poet-confessor in history,

Perhaps the evergreen trees
has dropped their acorns
to remind us
of a chorus of song birds
still wounding
my perpetual adolescence
as a marathon passes by
angled by a scholar's eye
hearing water music
over the Charles River
my memory of this hour
never parched or drowned
over the mythic bridge
where sailboats load
to deliver passengers
to the emerging underground.

INTERMEZZO

It was always
in New Orleans
you returned
to the blues
muted language
increased by St. Charles St.
in a blinded sun storm
sitting on a bench
someone reads the news
playing solitaire
and free canasta
feeding the sparrows
in your own horizon
reading the Fleurs of Baudelaire
hearing the four-handed piano
and a Creole French tune
from a bacchanalia's bar window
discovering love songs
in a roaring sonata
breathing from hallways
of a star's lost time.

DUTCH MEMORY

Looking over the grass
a boy on a bicycle
apologizes to himself
when sister
was taken away
on this road
outside Amsterdam
finding a sunflower
coming up from earth
to remind him
of a Van Gogh painting
sister loved
and spoke of
before the war
that night she dreamed
by her windowsill cot
of the wheat and tares
wondering what survives
the hiding cares
in gardens of hyacinth
tulips and daffodils.
over mountains or caves.

RIMBAUD'S ESCAPE
(1854-1891)

Finding out
how perishable verse
escaped all the pallor
of speechless brainwashing
from parental storms
you make mirrored gestures
and temperamental faces to hide
from a troubled look
with a cyclone of words
and your doubled up Muse
you escape Paris
for a Morocco book
without injury from any roulette
unembarrassed
leaving no imagination
or shame from Verlaine's bullet
and the optional joker
of a lost game
in exile and detention
of a lyrical correspondence
to insure your name
with myth, identity or nation
a smile not gone wrong
Rimbaud, you are free
and risen by fourteen stations
outside with a prison song.

KIERKEGAARD'S HOUR

In the quiet dawn
adorning God
even before our socks
are darned on our feet
or breakfast is served
late that we imagine
in a Sunday sermon
on sin and the paraclete,

From heady mornings
under shade trees
and in love with the world
and our pride is hurt
in laughter of a child
on bumptious balloons
or over the breeze on swings
even when we turn
the clock back
in somnolent evenings
we turn to a poet
walking in streets
marked Dane
with his glasses off
taking in the rain.

BUDAPEST VISIT

The hotel
nodded you in
your name
on a passport
from a registry
in a pre war family
of anonymity
visiting by Monday.
on a parting first shadow
by Monday,
covered with no many lives
in a labyrinth
of rivers of exile's blood
yet yearn to survive
awakening like angels
in a rising flood of memory
once cursed is alive.

ISTANBUL, AUGUST, 1999

Here in the Istanbul library
before any blackberry
was discovered
pulling out
an initiating dictionary
with a red crescent cover
after an earthquake
wakes me up from my bed
watching an assurgent
Ottoman sunrise
after finishing nectar tea
an archaeologist exploring
the country's lost bones
and carcasses
crushed from rock
in nature and historical acts
no art has been compromised
in a two minutes of a clock
now among artifacts
I'm running out of time
and words in moon lit ash.

PARIS, 1999

November's morning
leaves you by the Seine
you suddenly remember
Watteau in the rain
flowing bird wings
surrounding his shadow
in a weathered radiance
from the white rooms
of feathers passing
outside museum windows
among my iodine of poems
on an embarrassed day
for a small circle
of Paris friends,
a desolate art book
seems like an older century
before the war
a book store
opens on a busy street
in a fin de siecle lore,
citizen,why pretend
we want more.

WARHOL'S NIGHT OUT

Those Sixties days
of Warhol's night out
in the Factory
when genius is annoyed
and rent is due
your life is spent
so why argue
about cost or salary
lost love is free
as a founder's pop art
when everyone is a superstar
or a bounder
playing on their art's fantasy
from your insomnia's
enamored world
why get hammered
for your cursed insight
on flirting drama queen
tabloid film
or unrehearsed musical words
until we hear by chance
from crowded laughter
sudden shots on a jammed gun
as an ambulance pulls over
to take Andy away
after boasting Valerie Solanas
wounds the art critic
Mario Amaya in the hallway,
why selfishly try to hurt
you, Warhol
a talented religiously-oriented
Polish soul who needs to be nursed
will sweat it out and perspire,
what days of the Sixties
by the unemployed you hire
until in your own Freudian slips
you are cursed by its death toll
like so many Sixties politicos,
how we admired your tapestry
when on art's roll call's inspire
you become bolder
by the boastful camera lens
as your shoulder now bends
who can sleep
as art takes a qualitative leap
and we all make amends.

POUND AT RAPALLO

Why hold a grudge
a century or more
before your sculpture
at Rapallo
and racy Olga Rudge
when your whole life
from penury myth to Muse
fills with conspiracy
why not blame other enemies
and a goddess of justice
wills to name and unloose
in a war's metamorphosis
it will only be a bell toll game
from a Judas kiss
on millions of still life souls.

PICASSO MEMORY

Touring the Prado
remembering the lines
of El Greco
in your paintings
 "The old Guitarist"
of Picasso
came to my memory
the symbolist visionary
in the midst of myth
of the blinded beggar
drifts by me
a great space
on the horizontal wall
touched by the light
in a blue cubism.

BEACH AT RAPALLO

What colors
are unforgiving

in deportation

inquisition,

degradation

every decision

of your dedication

to the living

and the dead

Felix Nussbaum
(1904-1944)
for your arrival

in the beach
at Rapallo
to be carefree here
and smile
at your painting
yet expecting
in a vision

what leads to death

without survival

before liberation

a fixed hope for revival

yet in your creation

there is a breath life
by the sea and sand
of every exile

take it.

READING HENRY JAMES

It's summer reading time
watching golf matches
on the tall greensward grass
the August dog day sun
passes over the hammock
reviewing Henry James's dialogue
in his "The Golden Bowl"
at my side of high toned fiction
with the bridal fever
back at Eaton Square
with Adam Verver,
and the Italian Prince
always at liberties peril
aware of his pivotal poverty
and Maggie's free fervor
in this paradoxical diction
with irony as the language
of its juror's word source,
all the miracles evidently
lost in love's infidelity
on its own obstacle course.

BON VOYAGE

With painted crates
filled with a carriage
of cloud and lugen berries
with Igor and Galina
all ready to board
up to the riverside
and carry over to crystal lake
and take a swim
by unmade river beds
with us hardly awake
taking red wine and vodka
in three cups
by dishes of caviar
and Danish cheese
over these cathedral gray hills
with my still life palette
pulsing with nature aside
over this warm landscape
with a sure understanding
in an art of hours
near the musk of a storm
gathering by bird feathers
we will quiver like lilacs
as in Stockholm, Scandinavia
by warm garden wall flowers
hemmed in by perfection
thinking twice
if we are in Eden's paradise
by a river so close to home
sometimes asking
to extend every divine moment
out of all nature's schools
in late summer's creativity
as you sponge and sail
out by cool waters
in your orange kayak
putting on a thin snorkel mask
to swim in fresh waters below
questioning are we really here
already near the peaceful edge
of the shore by river beds
at our nature's zen garden
at peace in perfect weather,
a poet relaxes
on an Australian outback chair
near Newton's back benches
with chocolate almond bon bons
our French snacks and fare
as Galina in a lovely soprano
Russian voice suddenly opens up
with an early aria
from Glinka's opera
"Ruslan and Ludmila"
based on Pushkin's poetry
which we all read
over an Indian beaded blanket
making us all proud,
nearby a tent we are
in a forty winks sleep
on white sheets
near Zeus's and Athena's statue
in her hands are divinities
beneath a stone wing goddess
Nike carries a palm branch
and staff to the marathon runners
as a wondrous messenger of victory
here on an August noon
we believe in a metamorphosis
hearing squalls of thunder
by the cliff,
writing on papyrus papers
from blinding writing notes
for my new play's dialogue
hearing a chorus of wrens
in a brief sun shower rain
by this unorganized marathon
yet scarcely keeping
my eyes open later in the day
near the newly fallen acorns
by white oak trees
at the small ditch waters glen
shooting the breeze
in riffs of a smooth jazz tune
reading Emerson, Thoreau
and Whitman along Walden pond
taking photos with my light camera
as a dog watcher of two
out of school:
a mini Doberman Pinscher
named Ruby and Daphne
a blond golden Retriever
run to their reflective pools.

ON SUMMER STREET

You are reality
on Summer street
energized by the sunshine
discovering a young poet
now walking up
the Fine Arts museum steps
by sleepless French windows
nearby visiting Rene Magritte
by the reading room
opening up to his "Empire of Light"
through sleepless windows
watching a grackles nest
glow by white marble stones
resting on wellspring shadows
of daffodils, aspens and asphodels
cupped and coupled by wrens
passing under night lanterns
by the flickering tall grass
now mustering a seized vision
covered by early Fall's leaves
a red bird wings and feathers
burning from the sun
into a now blinded shade
on the Common's park bench
examining Dickinson's words
by the waters glen and glade
watching at the Fenway pond
of bright red turtles and ducks
by lily groves, dunes and trees
on moistening lukewarm waters
as robins rest on Greek statues
calcined in folklore's insolent myths
of painted arrows and bull's eyes
piercing our lost memories
to wish for open hands
in a Moses fishing rod
praying for halibut
salmon, mackerel and cod
over the Atlantic ocean
as a caterpillar rides
on my right shoulder
a wise woman walks
motioning with an Asian parasol
to keep her from the heat
watching her borderline smile
passes by us with weary feet
as the poet not wishing
for any public disclosure
in his private posture
whirls on a branched hammock
as if in God's sorrowful mystery
of his secret phrase of words
hides him in a fissure of rock
near a chorus of songbirds
and graying pigeons
finding strawberries
on unmade river beds
reading Whitman in the woods
along the sailboats at Bay
he carries the berries in a basket
to his neighborhood
stretched out
for a long August day.

NOT THE COLORS

Not the gaunt colors
of a still life
discovered in
a portrait of Zadok
the priest, by Handel
we played on timpani
and strings
but the candle images
freely smudged at the back
at my great aunt's visit
to the coronation date
harboring her own face
by the Thames river gate
we are like early morning birds
thirsting and lately hungry
as a poet fishing for words.

BY THE IDAHO BIRCHES

By the paper birches

of my back yard
on my winter vacation
everything is first light
in this hinterland

away from the shadow

of a cliff stone bird

who catches a Siamese cat

on a jetty of my sleep

I'm driven by a sled

in the linear snow

the sun rises in Moscow

by the tidal pull

of my ink dream bed

from a first collection

near the shed

holding my  own papers

of bone sinking words
far from home

in the bluest eye, it seems

of my Idaho recollection.

NOT TOO EARLY

Not too early
in Soho
to play a Bach solo
in a familiar pattern
on my viola and cello
of a string player
ready for his recital
aired on all the open rivers
off the isle of Manhattan
always delayed
by a telephone call
from squalls of a snow storm
with their covert faint flakes
by a cold piece of sky
with a memory always sent
by a secret mail delivery path
holding a warm love letter
as my sudden wrath
is quickly waned away
at newly painted hallways
on the last day for rent
by a business telephone call
from my uncle or aunt
or my avant garde bon vivant
from the subway's underground
saying goodbye for a better today
yet alarmed by the school bell
near the park bench
where I write my music
yet suddenly falling silent
under the warm French lamp
knowing this I.O.U. fool
also needs a stamp
forsaking a panic attack
or a primal scream
when you awake
for a trial of your back
or from a personal attack
wishing feel better or safe
as any partisan to smile
by interpreting Joseph's dream
as any Egyptian exile.

OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS

Shadows of a spider
outside my window
up to the ceiling
by the rising pane
feeling like an outsider
just passing through
my doors
like a driven exile
or any stranger
no one ignores
as tiny drops of rain
float on an early hour
revealing doubled images
by my stopwatch
catching a bit of sun
arranging my hours
at the string of my day
in a morning prayer
without a rope of delay
watching a bocce player
throw the ball
along the troubled highway
concealed by wall flowers
he murmurs by the bridge
filled with muddy traffic
he retrieves the ball
near the fallen leaves
now turning brown
in a low ridge garden
near a mote of hope
without panic or guess
of pardon to survive
then retrieves the ball
in the upland glen
as I'm the only witness
writing it all down
as in psalm 45
a ready writer
with a lively pen.

SCHOOL VACATION

Still trudging through
Long Beach's bubbles
my friend is all smudged
keeping underwater
with snorkel practices
yet now reaching out in songs
for Bernadette
from the mud of day dreams
by warm sunny blankets
of outdoor accidents
his sports bandage treatments
under thunder rainy squalls
yet this laughing acquaintance
survives it all
by his taking cover
from a liberal household
filled with a private arbiter
of his business of family secrets
in perpetual parental storms
as a metamorphosis
of one's one geography
comics,history and statistics
leaning on intermittent devices
with his own pale ices
some brief hours of scrutiny
of our own tiny disbelief
spelled out in a lesson plan
for this young man bicycled
up from a far country
from heat waves
on a thousand bridges
and sandy roads
in this dawn by the sea
our feet in blue water
presenting me
as a friendly apprentice
in our art class
his painting of a torso
shaded by chiaroscuro
unraveling a young spirit
in a poet set to sail.

CINEMA AUTEUR

Let's blame it all on Visconti
"Ludwig,"
"The Damned," "Ossessione"
it's easier to go beyond the pale
as fans posturing
at his films reviews
and cross-dressing our egos
screened, spliced and
and patched up music
in a pictured neo-realism
becoming a color painted diversity
snatched in a manic phase
of a demanding personality
Luchino, coming back
late from the Italian library
well read and artistically literate
in his own roost and palace
rarely charitable or considerate
as a fan of Proust and Callas
playing a poetic recording
of a chorus of Don Carlo
an elaborate Traviata
and La Sonnambula
Visconti with a comic sense
of the funereal
gnawing at the projection
of transforming his mother
into fragrances,mountains
castles in his media business
loving his lyrical romances
in visceral split screens,
jump cuts and images
prancing alone as a Hamlet
without an Ophelia
by his own subtle mirrors
of a solo musical Narcissus
by an abandoned single bed
with its solitary white emptiness
but there is no chatelaine
in his brainy tricks for publcity
along with sound chances
of defeating brown fascism
by red hammer and sickle
there is a sigh of rain
on every bicycle in Rome
now broken down
by his poetic window sill
wishing to wrap himself
in the celluloid closet
knowing how many lires
will pay for his artistic deposit
of theatrical celebrity.

AN EXILE

Praised be the blues
you play the strings
on your Catalan guitar
over the sea coast
when you arrive at sixteen
from exile with your family
off shore by the lighthouse
in shawls of a refugee
at Ellis Island
clothed in mystery
in a humble summer night
a Chinese guy offers
you a Cantonese green tea
with buttered toast
by the flapping winds
in the new home harbor
by a chorus of birds
who sing of your exodus
in your first poetic words
of lyrics uttered in broken
English grammar
from obscure sources
and spoken as you hammer
your unlocked tongue
connected to a musical love
with a picture of Manhattan
above the sun at the dock
with your token history
now pictured in camera
as a Hallelujah
and Glory be is sung.

NOW CLOSING

In Davis Square
Johnny D's Uptown
carefully read my lines
now it's closing down
now at T.T. the Bear's
BZ's plays were on
the 1990's now are all gone,
so I'll walk by the university
as in"Left out in the Rain"
playing his
 "One day at Paris's Grill"
now over the bridge
to the Common
lest we forget to remember
"Cambridge Quartet,"
is a last swan near M.I.T.
where we put on"The Other Side"
at the time of the Marathon
how time tunes to wind us up
and then like Sam Adam's beer
runs away down our cup.

AN UNWRITTEN LIFE

An written life
seems dismantled

until our dream verse
is complete

as a stop watch on a runner

is suddenly smitten
by the marathon heat,

when we are on the defensive

in our syllables star of shame

to gamble, forget and forgive
our lost,secret,or rattled
for which we must tame
just to take the matters
of meters in our rhythmic cause
to adjust our musical hands
from scattered thoughts
for the panegyric laws remain,
on our beautiful table
we ate in a repast of grammar

our language's delicious fruit
yet sometimes wish at our plate
to be as shellfish now mute,
as a pastoral poet with a story
we run a victory lap
at the marathon
hearing the claps for a laureate
yet hammer our roots
from any self made quarrel
we continue on
finding in our thesaurus' mind
the right rap in any dispute,
like a heavenly songbird

with its own sunflower dish
remembering where he once swam
off the Blue Hills lake
where under the August rays
we salmon fish,
masked by small gulls
a few sparrows call to sing
entering at my geranium window
awakening the neighborhood
outlasting shadows

on floral bushes to be heard,

remembering after the war
the poor Russian urchins
and orphans who took bread
with all their gall and nerve,
breaking it above the cupboard
to serve us at the cookie jar,
we ask for a sugary connection
for just that pronoun or verb
in our bakery's confection,
for it's not an easy game

to write poetry into perfection
not unlike pitching pennies
near the curb,
wishing for a lexicon's right word

to give us satisfaction

like a green tea, confection or herb

without a gaff's partisan reaction
to the dictionary's adjective

wanting a perfect paragraph
not willing to lose any expression
from any colorful photograph

or lost telegram's reflection

in a daily lively T.V. scam

or to leave us alone to believe
only in the garden's primrose
or like Adam's promise at Eve

wish to find the right trajectory

to parachute and seek pardon
over every Eden's word

with an anagram's own history
to scramble, land and disclose;
for poetry is a creative mystery,

being as rambling herald or Beat

or like Dizzy Gillespie
Judy Garland or Ella Fitzgerald
working riffs at dancing feet

knowing at downtown crossing

someone is walking by the street
recalling his own quotes,
another is in a red sports car
disclosing her business notes
in a relaxed  new summer outfit
or a guy at the music bar

as a sax or trumpet player thirsts
with his critic's notes,

a starry eyed beggar is in trouble
offering a gentle curse

when life stops at the traffic lights

at Mondrian orange or red 

another pedestrian goes crazy
and manic in a tiff,

someone sees his double instead

another is in a panic to wed,

a brother drops his vegetables
by chance
on the farmer's market table
Esau forsaking his own
anger and defiance

wanting assurances like Abel
for an Almighty blessing
or like David, a poet and shepherd

as a small child had a staff
for his reliance to lean on
we hear his ominous laugh or cry
as we read of the psalms
in a glorious epitaph's goodbye.

IDEAS

When ideas crowd us
suddenly on a beach
or at the supermarket
searching for a peach
or when Nina nods off
kneeling at church
during her daily morning Mass
or at the unveiling of the sacraments
or someone makes
a railing disparagement of God
or at a past or current government
in a master class on Dickinson
or the noon sun dries out our clothes
putting miracle thoughts on the line
and life discloses the good
from all human disasters
as clear as alabaster or wine
or we read John Donne metaphysically
in his metaphors as divine
watching the birds as harvesters
during an August recess
we pick up wood as words
and can only guess
how they become yours or mine.

A NEWS DAY IN VENICE

Overgrown with tall grass
with pawns on a chessboard
August directs you
to a paper cut and iodine
after reading the Venice news
when laughter from the comics
even fails your word's mood
by a new sky writing line
keeps me awake as the wings
of the beckoning gulls covers
over my blank verse metamorphosis
and interpreting my day dream,
waiting for the heat wave
to assign you to a bluish sea
filled with seven swans
we're diving off familiar docks
by the flying gulls
in the home harbor quay
near the tourist ships
on a weekend holiday
we survive on the ocean's barge
floating at the highest tide
to encircle my kayak journey
assembling a large tube by my side
from a feverish sandy beach
knowing in the news
in a Seventies time of images
a reporter will publish texts
or a camera  showing
their T.V. secret sightings
of us on rope's lorries
back to back
or trying my sorry hands
at poker
as certain as I'm playing
the blues next morning too
so you play your guitar
near a motioning tourist boat
brooding near the rocks
by the jacaranda plants
silence covering us
from the shouting faces
by runners on their marathon
races by as the sunset leaves us
until the curling stars are out
as a my neighbor Diana
the actor in my last play
disappears as a huntress
with her understudy proctor
as the goddess hovers by
covering me with secret kisses
with favors for our late afternoon
reads me back my poem
until it is regretted to be late
with birds flying in the winds
in Venice's twilight of the moon.

ANNA AKHMATOVA'S CENTURY

All her lovers have left her
to take cover
for the underground
only novel thoughts
of past artistic dreams
seem keep to her alive
wishing to harness bells
of Tchaikovsky's 1812
blaze above her roof
needing repair
empty and damp
from a hundred days
of rain in the summer air
with too few birds on trees
crying gulls,
and swans off the river
hide by a refuge and bees nest
near the cold movie house
of this city's glare
where actors greatness played
in Chekhov's "Three Sisters"
as performance art
there is now a motionless despair
in an unfinished yearning
Anna putting aside the world
for wisdom's discerning
in a trampled demolished time
and all her friends
have gone far away,
all the names of the dead
in exile, revolution and war
has taken their call
in a chorus of Da Rimini
so many souls scattered
and slaughtered from immobility
all shadow days of her century
have left her
the newsstands are empty
except for the Arbat headlines
of crimes against humanity
humiliated with fainting brows
even your son Lev is gone
only the wind gnashes
over the breezes on the Neva
yet on radio Moscow
there is Mozart, con brio
and in words and letters
of her legacy
will slowly do her part.

GRANDMA MENDES

Perhaps because grandmother
is Spanish
to expect tragedy
is already one
to keep in silence
in this century of Civil War
for a poet to deny
history's wronged words
is to have vanished
by farewell songbirds
when morning wears
her own children out
by her ungovernable piano
in her rented rooms
overgrown with Joaquin Rodrigo
feeling at home
with a Segovian lesson
on her Catalan guitar
resting now in her orange groves
tasting the imagination
of a child's surprise
in her prisms of dark eyes
you expect
to adopt her optimism,
even options of miracles
are the easiest day dreams
above stars in the open canopy
to brambles and trees
under the tabernacles we love
as children to enter in.

AUGUST AT CAPE ANN

We know how quickly
the excitable rain
will quicken a crowd
at our outside jazz gig
playing in a trio recital
of sax, piano and bongo
on the beach-red sand
in late afternoon's exodus
at a summer's vacation day
deserted for a five minute break
as the sunshine returns
with runaways and black birds
knowing miracles
are for the weekend leave
of a returning veteran actor
in his motel
expecting to hear
from his over heated agent
during the torture
of his rehearsal week
unpacking his itinerant gear
hoping to remember the words
for BZ's play "Opera Bluffs"
by his epigrammatic mirror
as a poet wanders alone
by the rough  blue white sea
watching the kites
on a parasol sky
under thunder and lightening.

ON THE CHARLES RIVER

Grass has grown
no wiser. Permit me
to speak just tonight
as an adviser to nature
asking the trembling wind
on my orange kayak
to be less vocal,
exhale to expunge
the cool sailing ship air
as my blowing sax riffs
from a Garland tune
cover my finger tips
with Dizzy notes
sponging tousled kisses
from my chafed lips
provoke a July of laughter
between lonesome children
from a near- by tourist boats
below the visionary sky
not being a late comer here
forgive me, Charles
on this your river
smile with one wave to us
by a chorus of songbirds
to the under handed runners
on sun timed torsos
by cruising bacchanals
in glacial and facial memory
on this canal of a crystal sea
near the Esplanade's trees
where this poet played
by burdocks and jonquils
in a floating anniversary
of a thrilling jazz parade
life motions the currents
along the Atlantic ocean
as a metamorphosis of memory
chills the warm breeze.