Precipitations | Page 4

Sojourns in Rio de Janeiro?Convent Musings?Guitarra?November
The Coming of Christ
The Death of Columbine
Duet?From a Man Dying on a Cross?Lagniappe?Hail Mary!?The Death of Columbine?Pierrot Laughs?The Transmigration of Caliban?Gundry?Viennese Waltz
Resurrection
Immortality?Autumn Night?Venus' Fly Trap?Suicide?Leaves I - IV?Allegro
MANHATTAN
THE UNPEOPLED CITY
MIDNIGHT WORSHIP: BROOKLYN BRIDGE
In the rain?Rows of street lamps are saints in bright garments?That flow long with the bend of knees.?They lift pale heads nimbussed with golden spikes.
Up the lanes of liquid onyx?Toward the high fire-laden altars?Move the saints of Manhattan?In endless pilgrimage to death,?Amidst the asphodel and anemones of dawn.
ASCENSION: AUTUMN DUSK IN CENTRAL PARK
Featureless people glide with dim motion through a quivering
blue silver;?Boats merge with the bronze-gold welters about their keels. The trees float upward in gray and green flames.?Clouds, swans, boats, trees, all gliding up a hillside?After some gray old women who lift their gaunt forms?From falling shrouds of leaves.
Thin fingered twigs clutch darkly at nothing.?Crackling skeletons shine.?Along the smutted horizon of Fifth Avenue?The hooded houses watch heavily?With oily gold eyes.
STARTLED FORESTS: HUDSON RIVER
The thin hill pushes against the mist.?Its fading defiance sounds in the umber and red of autumn leaves. Like a dead arm around a warm throat?Is the sagging embrace of the river?Laid grayly about the shore.
The train passes.?We emerge from a tunnel into a sky of thin blue morning glories Where yellow lily bells tinkle down.?The paths run swiftly away under the lamp glow?Like green and blue lizards?Mottled with light.
WINTER STREETS
The stars, escaping,?Evaporate in acrid mists.?The houses, rearing themselves higher,?Assemble among the clouds.?Night blows through me.?I am clear with its bitterness.?I tinkle along brick canyons?Like a crystal leaf.
FEBRUARY SPRINGTIME
The trees hold out pale gilded branches?Stiff and high in the wind.?On the lawns?Patches of gray-lilac snow?Melt in the hollows of the terraces.?The park is an ocean of fawn-colored plush,?Ridged and faded.?Sharp and delicate,?My shadow moves after me on the rumpled grass--?Grass like a pillow worn by a dear head.?Joy!
THE ASSUMPTION OF COLUMBINE
The lights trickle grayly down from the hoary palisades?And drip into the river.?Leaden reflections flow into the water.?Framed in your window,?Your little face glows deceptively?In a rigid ecstasy,?As the wide-winged morning?Folds back the mist.
FROM BROOKLYN
Along the shore?A black net of branches?Tangles the pulpy yellow lamps.?The shell-colored sky is lustrous with the fading sun.?Across the river Manhattan floats--?Dim gardens of fire--?And rushing invisible toward me through the fog,?A hurricane of faces.
SNOW DANCE
Black brooms of trees sweep the sky clean;?Sweep the house fronts,?And leave them bleak in sleep.?High up the empty moon?Spills her vacuity.
I dance.?My long black shadow
Weaves an invisible pattern of pain.?The snow?Is embroidered with my happiness.
POTTER'S FIELD
Golden petals, honey sweet,?Crushed beneath fear-hastened feet...
Silver paper lanterns glow and shudder?in flat patterns?On a gray eternal face?Stained with pain.
LIGHTS AT NIGHT
In the city,?Storms of light?Surge against the clouds,?Pushing up the darkness.
In the country,?Is the faint pressure of oil lamps,?That sputter,?Smothered with earth--?Extinguished in silence.
MIDNIGHT
The golden snow of the stars?Drifts in mounds of light,?Melts against the hot sides of the city,?Cool cheek against burning breast,?Cold golden snow,?Falling all night.
CROWDS
SUMMER NIGHT
The bloated moon?Has sickly leaves glistening against her?Like flies on a fat white face.
The thick-witted drunkard on the park bench?Touches a girl's breast?That throbs with its own ruthless and stupid delight.?The new-born child crawls in his mother's filth.?Life, the sleep walker,?Lifts toward the skies?An immense gesture of indecency.
NEW YORK
With huge diaphanous feet,?March the leaden velvet elephants,?Pressing the bodies back into the earth.
SUNSET: BATTERY PARK
From cliffs of houses,?Sunlit windows gaze down upon me?Like undeniable eyes,?Millions of bronze eyes,?Unassailable,?Obliterating all they see:?The warm contiguous crowd in the street below?Chills,?Mists,?Drifts past those hungry eyes of Eternity,?Melts seaward and deathward?To the ocean.
CROWDS
The sky along the street a gauzy yellow:?The narrow lights burn tall in the twilight.
The cool air sags,?Heavy with the thickness of bodies.?I am elated with bodies.?They have stolen me from myself.?I love the way they beat me to life,?Pay me for their cruelties.?In the close intimacy I feel for them?There is the indecency I like.
I belong to them,?To these whom I hate;?And because we can never know each 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