How could I have come so far
(And always on such dark trails)
I must have traveled by the light
shining from the faces of all those I have loved.
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How could I have come so far
(And always on such dark trails)
I must have traveled by the light
shining from the faces of all those I have loved.
On the night table
beside my bed
I keep a small
blue ticket
One day I found it
In my pocket book
I don’t know how
It got there
I don’t know
What it’s for
On one side
there’s a number
98833
And
INDIANA TICKET COMPANY
On the other side
The only thing it says
Is KEEP THIS TICKET
I keep it carefully
Because I’m old
Which means
I’ll soon be leaving
For another country
Where possibly
Some blinding-bright
enormous angel
Will stop me
At the border
And ask
To see my ticket.
I whispered, "I am too young."
and then, “I am old enough”.
Wherefore I thew a penny
To find out if I might love.
“Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair”
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
Deep in the sub-conscious we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, outmoded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy before,
Before we we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
And echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
A never knew the loneliness of night.
Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope
I am in nature none of these
I am, being human, born alone,
I am, being woman, hard beset,
I live by squeezing a stone
The little nourishment I get.
In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.
These days the silence is immense.
It is there deep down, not to be escaped.
The twittering flight of gold finches,
The three crows cawing in the distance
Only brush the surface of this silence
Full of mourning, the long drawn-out
Tug and sigh of waters never still—
The ocean out there and the inner ocean.
Only animals comfort because they live
In the present and cannot drag us down
Into those caverns of memory full of loss.
They pay no attention to the thunder
Of distant waves. My dog’s eager eyes
Watch me as I sit by the window thinking.
At the bottom of the silence what lies in wait?
Is it love? Is it death? Too early or too late?
What is it I can have that I still want?
My swift response is to what cannot stay,
The dying daffodils, peonies on the way,
Iris just opening, lilac turning brown
In the immense silence where I live alone.
It is the transient that touches me, old,
Those light-shot clouds as the sky clears,
A passing glory can still move to tears,
Moments of pure joy like some fairy gold
Too evanescent to be kept or told.
And the cat’s soft footfall on the stair
Keeps me alive, makes Nowhere into Here.
A the bottom of the silence it is she
Who speaks of an eternal Now to me.
September 22, 2004
For Nelson: not a week has passed
since you left us. That I haven’t
Missed your guileless southern smile
Your pile of shoes on the brick
Wall in the ivy-lined house
On the cobble-stoned square
In the Meat Packing District.
Had I known you wouldn’t stay.
I’d never have chastised you for
Your eye in the video camera,
And not on the world we were
Inhabiting so enjoyably.
You were there before these
Nosy hordes, Nelson—they
Will never know the joy you
Engendered in all of us, and how much
We all loved you!
Your own Sylvia Miles
For Sylvia, a million kisses.
Few are hits: most are misses.
What chance has a superstar
To hear the far-off praises?
She glides in starlight radiance,
A nebula of gravity
Dazzling! points of light condensed
To diamond clarity.
She sparkles in the universe
Aglow with life and wit and mirth
Her levity’s alarming! In short
She’s simply charming. She conquers
Where the strong are won’t
Merely to survive.
Velasquez took a pliant knife
And scraped his palette clean,
He said, “I lead a dog’g own life
Painting a king and queen.”
He cleaned his palette with oily rags
and oakum from Seville wharves,
“I am sick of painting painted hags
And bad ambiguous dwarves.”
“The sky is silver, the clouds are pearl,
Their locks are looped with rain
I will not paint Maria’s girl
For all the money in Spain”
H washed his face in water cold,
His hands in turpentine;
He squeezed out colour like coins of gold
And colour like drops of wine.
Each cooler lay like a little pool,
On the polished cedar wood,
Clear and pale and ivory-cool
Or dark as solitude
He burnt the rags in the fireplace
and leaned from the windows high;
He said, “I like that gentleman’s face
Who wears his cap awry.”
This is the gentleman, there he stands,
Castilian, sombre-caped,
With arrogant eyes, and narrow hands
Miraculously shaped.