Rosh ha-Carmel

Tending to the vine in the vineyard—

in God’s own vineyard, the vine—

with slow care, husbandry, skill,

in readiness for the day you fear:

the fire, the bullet, the knife and the bomb;

exhaustion of the body, the hollow in

the belly; fear of insanity, of aneurysm,

dementia, the brain; fear of forgetting

your purposes, and the uses of love.

O Lord, you know well that I

want only to do some work

that will be useful to you, some

pleasing occupation, not shrinking

from labor and want, but eager

to take up plowshare, sickle, shovel, rake:
O Lord, let there be such a thing for me.

Sweeney Defiant

Amid the tables and the chatter of guests

falls a comfortable hush, and deep-despised

Sweeney stands with a glass of stout,

and the oracles

and judgments of his god—lifting glass,

composes self (a crooked smile,

sneering voice), coughs once, begins attack:

                        Boston Brahmin,

                        dressed in black,

                        the nat’ral aristocracy,

                        inherits merit

                        from ancestral bone

                        and transplanted virtue

                        in the earth.

                        Past midnight,

                        with his mistress,

                        professes love:

                        Sounding notes upon your fingers,

                        it is impossible

                        that this body should die, I

                        love you like fire from my atom heart.

                        Impossible to die, yet Beatrice was not

                        beloved for body (Oho! says Sweeney,

                        shining, think’st me unschooled? No, but

                        I have seen your secrets, tender secrets,

                        and I have weighed them slight), and how

                        then shall I love you so while you yet live?

                        How shall a love like ours not flee the

                        fearful summons, the rising light?

                        Adieu, adieu, adieu, je t’aime.

                        So, saith Sweeny, our Brahmin goes

                        out in shadow, fearing like a guilty thing

                        to be taken by the dawn rising on

                        th’Everlasting Day.

                                                          To courtly love!,

Sweeney says, drains his foaming glass.

He sits, in time the moment’s past.

The joke finds no approval in his companions’ eyes,
but Sweeney sits smiling, by many there deeply despised.

Echter Herbst

Northbound through Jersey where the rumble strips

glitter in the evening gloom, I heard Nina

sing apocalyptic. The petrol smell of artifice,

centrifuge Manhattan pulls creation like electron

spin. The inspiration of the semi-truck spirit (keinen

Friede, sondern ein Schwert)—

Bring down power, Lord,

power

Power, Lord,

bring down—

Your high-built walls were too few to keep out

the fox-eyed Christ. Had you not heard?

The kingdom is like a mustard seed.

I watched the long, slow spiral of

martyred leaves glide down over fences

and furrow lines. Like a chastened thing,

I took my rest in shade, matching
minor keys to harvest months.