ONE TRIES TO COUNT THE AGES

One tries to count the ages spent
To give him hips from curving haunches
And imitate a man-like stance
Once he had achieved his balance.

There are no stories of the times
She fell before she reached the fruit,
How tall they were, how high they climbed,
Nor what they gained from their pursuit.

Some say they fell from paradise,
As we who reach for moons shall fall.
But where are they--her haunches--now?
Here, see how straight his hips are still.


^{.................................................................................................................................................................................}

1.

The flesh in bronze is black; the eyes are blank;

bone and muscle strain beneath the metal.

A man's broken nose can be remembered.

Hair runs on his head and chin like lava.

2.

The Gate of Hell is made of bronze people

Who have all melted into one hard form.

The Thinker in the transom of the damned

Sits apart from the rest and concentrates.

Below they struggle outward from the mass--

Parts not sculptured from the bronze of chaos.

Three shadows stand above them all, arms thrust

Down, in one gesture--to pull or press?

3.

Thought has only her head tilted forward

On her neck and chin. Bonnetted,

She stares intensely at the marble

From which is hewn her bodiless head.

4.

The mouth of Sorrow's head is silent.

Deft fingers curved it down in pain and scooped

A hollow in clay the size of a gasp.

But not large enough to catch good breath.

The face tilts up. The closed eyes supplicate

God or death: this way the bronze was cast.

5.

The face of Dawn is smooth and soft in stone.

The unwrought marble tufts around her head:

Her hair still hides in night. Her solemn face

Gentles in the wisdom of the light.

6.

Eve hides her breasts and face in one self-hug;

One foot cut free, except beneath, lifts,

As if to move; the other flows into

The ground she's standing on. She has bare loins.

7.

She who once was the Helmet Maker's

Beautiful Wife is beautiful no more.

The bronze is sharp as bone where flesh should be,

And where she should be firm she's melted ore--

Smelted in the helmet maker's fire.

8.

The Hand of God is like Rodin's own hand.

Thrust out of the earth with a wad of clay,

It shapes forms both of woman and man

Already moving forward to embrace.

9.

Two hands reach out from opposite sides

And curving back and up touch fingertips:

One a man's hand and one a woman's.

It's called The Cathedral: it is Rodin's.

^{.....................................................................................................................................................................................................}

THE RED AND BLACK

Or follow the free-swinging forms.

^{.......................................................................................................................................................................................................}

THE CHOICE

At my birth were all the magic signs:

My father died before I saw the light.

My mother was a virgin in my mind,

And I was born on Eve-of-Hallows' Night.

I bathed myself inside that haunted flow;

To all who sought me, asking me my name,

I spoke in riddles what I did not know,

That all the truth I have is what I am.

Bewitching world and time, O sudden fever,

The naked goddess offered brief embrace.

Such moments, taken, multiply forever.

When I refused, of course, the moment passed.

And now I try to join the scraps of vision

With only the ragged relatives of reason.

^{............................................................................................................................................................................................................}

When driving across the desert, I see Las Vegas

Bright in the distance, I think of Lyra's star,

That other Vega. I drive in a big car,

But on that unlimited speedway through Nevada,

The brilliant sports cars pass me doing a hundred.

Still, getting there, I bathe in the lights that slake

This paradise, oasis, Eden, the ache

In America's desert, this Milky Way of plunder.

We spin like marbles on a roulette wheel

Around this room. The stars are playing games

In the casino. They play millenniums

And go like billionaires into oblivion,

Leaving only twisted names

For saints to say and mumbling scribes to spell.

^{..............................................................................................................................................................................................................}

When you walk through that town, don't breathe the silt.

The streets float into air of ash and lime.

The houses have forgotten they were built,

The residents that they belonged to time.

Inquire discreetly into dead men's looks;

Walk as though you were a mere computer

Going home with an empty briefcase.

Ignore the silent wind, the crackled music.

Remember when you pass the dry saloon:

The silvered glass is cracked, the bottles broken;

The portrait and the golden girl are ruined;

The decks unstacked, the chairs and tables rotten.

No badman ever robbed the dusty bank.

There is no oxygen inside the vault.

The clock that used to turn the rusty crank

Is stopped. Inside you'll not find any fault.

Disregard the sign on the grand hotel:

It is not PARADISE, if once it was.

There is no heat, nor cover, and no bell,

And desert winds wail all night through the walls.

Keep the warmth of your own fire in mind;

Proceed toward it with a deliberate care.

Do not look back; memory is brine.

Breathe a destination from your fire.

^{.........................................................................................................................................................................................}

THE GINKGO TREE

Where four streets fork, before

The year's first freeze,

The streetlight shines through leaves.

Golden midnights

Have fallen from the trees.

Where cold winds hone

Brittle yellow puddles

Light; dried gold shines

And banks in brown pine straw.

Bare trees grow raw

Standing in winds like these.

A bird huddles,

^{................................................................................................................................................................................}

in birmingham they blew christ's face from his head

leaving four negro girls starched and dead

and a fifth black girl permanently blinded.

fly your crape banners. I heard on the radio and read

that mars was making love in vulcan's bed

when birmingham blew the face from a wounded head.

an eagle scout, with an oath, fired into the crowd

of negroes mourning the children already dead

and the child already permanently blinded,

and a policeman, on duty, fired, not quite overhead,

both bullets killing (two random negroes who stood

grief-raged where the hole was blown into god's head).

after the funerals in birmingham's negro graveyard,

the negro doctors ascertained that no eyes could

be exchanged for those of the girl who had been blinded.

the mayor had offered no eyes, but cried, they said--

because a stained glass, white-face god was shattered?

because he couldn't get Christ's face out of his head?

or because. . .? through the hole, black faces, on a scaffold,

looked out and saw the city christ saw, and cried,

cried for the girls dead and the girl blinded,

and the face they couldn't get back into christ's head.

^{...........................................................................................................................................................................................................}

I see your bones impacted in the jaws

Of coral reef, your joints grown stiff with salt.

The sockets toss no more inside their vault;

But in your eyes I see a seahorse pause

Behind the broken windows of your skull,

Suspended like a symbol of the mind

That flashes and is gone and leaves you blind--

Beside the temple of the conch--a hull

Snails and minnows borrow for a room.

Still, lonely ships stalk ports above the wrecks,

With passengers between their painted decks

Watching surface stretch, while spaces loom,

Unseen, within, beside them, like that womb

On which they glide, not fathoming its sex.

^{..................................................................................................................................................................................................}

The moon impaled on branches in the lake

Lies still in regions where there are no winds.

A silver fish bolts from the pond and breaks

The water's bond. Before it's sealed again

He plummets back into the circling deep:

All within the lucid mirror wavers

When he falls: the tall trees shake

Far beneath the surface of the waters.

Although the night is still, the moon shivers.

^{.........................................................................................................................................................................................................}

While three maroon silhouettes dance on one side,

Here you see on the opposite side of the gourd

Las piramides del sol y la luna. Now the dust

Is dancing around the ancient alter: we saw

Where priests performed the sacrifice of maidens;

Beautiful ones; the priests believed their gods

Desired them most. The devout ones kissed the knife

As they lay down to it. Many an Indian maiden

Lay down to appease the gods of the sun and moon.

The Aztecs are still fine craftsmen. The silhouettes

Are wood burnings. The tapered red tint suggests

The sun's flames or sacrificial fires.

The gourds sound flat to me. The grit in them

Or the inner rim of the shell is too soft.

Listen! Faintly you can hear a scratching.

^{.............................................................................................................................................................................................}

Now every face is masked like a Greek player's,

Each line drawn to conceal some tragic grace.

I gaze through holes of plaster to perceive

In eyes that glaze some secret flaw, a chance

Reflection of my own. Yesterday

I did not seek their eyes, I drew them out.

Today through robot realms I ask my way

And furies hide the clues. No one sees

My crime, and I must go unrecognized--

With mask to wear and lines I must recite

Without a cue. The other players too

Will have their own disguise and alibis.

^{..........................................................................................................................................................................................................}

Gaugin had ruthless eyes. That tropic boy

With ax raised near the fire, in concentration,

Is poised between the last swing and the next one.

Never swinging. The wood does not decay.

The fire is never fed and always burning,

Preparing for a night that's always near.

The peahen leads her striding peacock toward him;

Her head another blue rock on the ground,

Her dung-sienna feathers match the ground.

They do not see the women by the house,

Whose lines are more alive than any others.

Except the wild background's, beginning where

His mind is moving in the whole design.

The last judgement comes to paradise daily:

The inhabitants are ignorant of its coming and going.

^{.............................................................................................................................................................}

A pitch blue pigeon

With an orange eye

Jewelling his temple

Cocks his head at me.

He perches on my red

Tile porch roof

In a roasting sun

Without burning or blinking.

Frozen by the window

Over the terracotta

I turn into a statue.

My sun-changed face is stone.

Cool on that baked clay,

Fixing my fixed gaze,

He turns into a blaze

In my obsidian eye.

^{.............................................................................................................................................}

The curtain always open, night after night

He sits facing the piano, the shapeless audience

Waiting passively beyond the glare at his right.

The crows are sleeping. Dance, you corn-toothed scarecrow,

Before that sharp wind clips your yellow hair

And the crows peck the grain out of your grin.

That wind, whose music makes you spin, blows

Your clothes against your sapling bones, searches

Patches and pockets, fills you through your flaws.

Throw your limber sleeves up toward the moon

And twist and turn in time with any tune

That the wind sings, until the rain drums.

The farmer did not gaud you there to cling

To the frame that jigs you in the swaying field.

Each wind that tries you gives you some new flair.

You are a scarecrow while there is a rag

To flutter with, and you must dance

Until the nightmare ends and leaves your bones

Lashed in sunlight, laughing in the air.

^{...................................................................................................................}

This snowflake, resting in this raven wave

Of hair, could argue with the Milky Way

That it has constellations in its night,

Whose stars, within a different temperature,

Contest the heat of any atmosphere.

Somewhere, a woman whose hair is darker yet

Is being coy with one who moderates

Between their universe and our snowflake,

And he is giving us the time I give

The lovers in this snowflake to make love.

^{........................................................................................................................}

      The Inseparables                                                         

              (What Brassaï said)     

    I know an old spinster

    who makes artificial flowers

    for couturiers.

    She lives in a garret

    surrounded by birds.

    She has a male lovebird

    always left free

    whose excessive love

    she sometimes rewards

    with a celluloid doll.

    He plays with it passionately.

    When he throws himself on it,

    you would think he meant to rape it.

    The female she brought him

    became violently jealous.

    I made a photo sequence

    of the doll and the bird,

    like Leda and the swan.

    One day I found the bird

    sitting on a porcelain egg.

    Trimming a flower, the old lady

    said male lovebirds hatch too,

    and that hers when the mood comes

    sits on that china egg

    and cannot be moved for three weeks.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS   Versions of these poems first appeared in The Back Door, Chiaroscuro, Crazy Horse, Emory University Quarterly, Georgia Review, Impetus, Kamadhenu, Mutiny, Prairie Schooner, Prospect, Shenandoah, Southern Poetry Review, and in an anthology, Southern Poetry Today, 1961, edited by Guy Owen and William E. Taylor.  Except for the first and last of these poems they were all written between 1959 and 1965, though some have been published more recently.  The last poem, "The Inseparables," is based on a prose paragraph in Brassai's Picasso and Co.           Copyrights 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1972, Van K. Brock.