Precipitations | Page 5

other,
Or be anything to each other,
Though we have
been the most,
I sell so much of me that could bring a better price.
RIOTS
As if all the birds rushed up in the air,
Fluttering;
Hoots, calls, cries.

I never knew such a monster even in child dreams.
It grows:
Glass smashed;
Stores shut;
Windows tight closed;

Dull, far-off murmurs of voices.
Blood--
The soft, sticky patter of falling drops in the silence.

Everything inundated.
Faces float off in a red dream.
Still the song
of the sweet succulent patter.
Blood--
I think it oozes from my finger tips.
--Or maybe it drips
from the brow of Jesus.
THE CITY AT NIGHT
Life wriggles in and out
Through the narrow ways
And circuitous
passages:
Something monstrous and horrible,
A passion without
any master,
Male sexual fluid trickling through the darkness
And
setting fire to whatever it touches.

That is the master
Bestowing a casual caress on a slave.
Quiver
under it!
VANITIES
BREAD POEMS
LULLABY
I lean my heart against the soft bosomed night:
A white globed breast,

And warm and silent flowing,
The milk of the moon.
EMBARKATION OF CYTHERA
Like jellied flowers
My inflated curves
Melt in the peaceful
stagnance of the bath.
If I were to die
I would resist the final agony

With only a faint quiver
From my escaping thighs.
CHRISTIAN LUXURIES
The red fountain of shame gushes up from my heart.
I throw back my
long hair and the fountain floats it out
Like a fiery fan.
My wide
stretched arms are white coral branches.
The liquid shadows seek
between my amber breasts.
But the fire is cool.
It cannot burn me.
NARROW FLOWERS
I am a gray lily.
My roots are deep.
I cannot lift my hands
For one
thin yellow butterfly.
Yet last night I grew up to a star.
My shade
swirled mistily
Seven mountains high.
I lifted my face to another
face.
The moon made a burning shadow on my brow.
Washed by
the light,
My sharp breasts silvered.
My dance was an arc of mist

From west to east.
EYES

There are arms of ice around me,
And a hand of ice on my heart.
If
they should come to bury me
I would not flinch or start.
For eyes
are freezing me--
Eyes too cold for hate.
I think the ground,

Because it is dark,
A warmer place to wait.
AFTER YOUTH
Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth!
Exotic colors in the
lamplit darkness of wet streets,
Musk and roses in the twilight,
The
moon in the park like a golden balloon...
Then to awaken and find the shadows fled,
The music gone...

Empty, bleak!
My soul has grown very small and shriveled in my
body.
It no longer looks out.
It rattles around,
And inside my
body it begins to look,
Staring all around inside my body,
Like a
crab in a crevice,
Staring with bulging eyes
At the strange place in
which it finds itself.
THE SHADOW THAT WALKS ALONE
The silence tugs at my breast
With formless lips,
Like a heavy baby,

Attenuates me,
Draws me through myself into it.
I sit in the
womb of an idiot,
Helpless before its mouthing tenderness.
The
huge flap ears are attentive,
And the soundless face bends toward me

In horrible lovingness.
BIBLE TRUTH
To die...
Oh, cool river!
To float there with nothing to resist--
One ripple of silence spreads out from another.
My spirit widens so,

Circle beyond circle.
I hold up the stars no longer with the pupils
of my eyes.
Hands, legs, arms float off from me.
I melt like flakes
of snow.
I am no more opposed.
I am no more.

THE MATERNAL BREAST
I walked straight and long,
But I never found you.
I was looking for
a hill of a hundred breasts,
A hill modeled after the statues of Diana
of the Ephesians. I was looking for a hill of mounds hairy with grass,

And a place to lie down.
AIR FOR G STRING
White hands of God
With fingers like strong twigs flowering
Rock
me in leaves of iron,
Leaves of blue.
Hands of God
Fashioned of clouds
Have finger tips that balance the
almond white moon.
The pale sky is a flower
White tipped and pink
tipped with dawn.
White hands of God gather the blossoms with
fingers that hold me, Cloud fingers like milk in the azure night,

Weaving strong chords.
DESTINY
I am lost in the vast cave of night.
No sound but the far-off tinkle of
stars,
And the cry of a bird
Muffled in shadows.
The light flows in remotely
Through the hollow moon,
Dim strange
brilliance
From waters beyond the sky.
Groping,
I listen to the
harsh tinkle of the far-off stars,
Feel the clammy shadows about my
shoulders.
THE RED CROSS
HECTIC
I
Ruby winged pains flash through me,
Jewel winged agonies:
They
vanish,
Carrying me with them
Without my knowing it.

II
Pain sends out long tentacles
And sucks.
When I have given up
struggling
He takes me into his arms.
ISOLATION WARD
We are the separate centers of consciousness
Of all the universes.

We vibrate statically on a trillion golden wires.
Our trillion golden
fingers twine in the weltering darkness, And grasp tremblingly,

Aware in agony
Of the things we can never know.
THE RED CROSS
Antiseptic smells that corrode the nostrils
Crumble me,
Eat me
deep;
And my garments disintegrate:
First my nightgown,

Leaving my naked arms and legs disjointed,
Sprawled about the bed
in postures meaningless to the