Know

Every morning I create the world anew:
When I die, the world dies with me.

You who carry the gentle illusion that it is you
Who freshen the world each day, not I,

Know that you too are doomed to obliterate
All you see and love. This is the only task handed on,

And carries no inherited virtue, for man’s life is vanishing thought.
Each generation flatters itself: the present is no runner’s baton

But simply a tide, receding in order to be forgotten,
Successfully wiping the world clean.

[2005]

Macon, Georgia

From the bottom of night
through the ravine
at the end of our street
go back, go back
faint shuffle of a train passing
slowly, not to wake anyone
go back to sleep, go back
a steady line of freight
moving through the South, men on board,
wives somewhere at home
in bed in another state
go back, go back to sleep
faint dreams of a train passing
slowly through the ravine of night
the country will survive

[1998]

Poem For Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931)

Your cornet was the first jazz I ever loved—
How it flashed, and sang, and always shyly
Slipped away. There was not much in this life
You were sure of except the music in your brain,
And that music was always surprise.
I heard you first when I was a boy,
And imagined you an elder brother
Out there dreaming somewhere,
Watching evening swallows dip over a summer lake.
You are there still, beyond my manhood
And those few muffled recordings of eighty years ago.
A friend of yours called it right:
The sound came out of that cornet
Like a girl saying yes.
You are out there somewhere, Bix,
Beyond the ridiculous legend,
Beyond death of pneumonia at twenty-eight.
Come on, boy. Come on and play.

[1979]

Rey de la Torre

Your guitar, from another room—
Old friend. With that minuet
The garden at home came back to me:
Tall honeysuckle blooming again;
A cat recommending sunlight sleepily;
Myself, intimate with morning.
I had forgotten until you played.
Now for the life of me
I cannot remember that minuet.
Never mind. Somewhere all moments merge.
This summer in the garden I will think of you.

[1979]

Voyage

Navigate sleep: when day disappears
Like land sliding suddenly below
The stark familiar horizon,
Let the tide carry you
Far out on the summoning waves—
Though the only mast
That stands against blue sky
Is the tree at your moonlit window,
And the only deck with the heave
And swing of ocean to it
Is the end of your bed,
Pitching beneath your restless foot;
And the oaken ship’s wheel
Clutched tight to your chest
Is no more than a clump of feathers
Encased in white sailcloth—
Hold on to that bright reflecting water
Until the glow of afternoon fades,
Night arrives and secrets with her;
All the streams of air engulf.
Go below, now, to your low-ceilinged cabin
With hammock of sea-rope slung across
And candle sputtering out;
Safe in a drawer there,
Your dreams in a
Salt-stained leather sextant’s case.
Come up on deck with it, different now;
Seen through sextant eyes, the waves
Are mere extravagance. But
The horizon is a line drawn
For sailors; and even at night,
With that instrument in your hands,
True position is always knowable,
Safe course foreseeable, and home port
Recognizable, until the stars drop
One by one from sight
And other lands, sudden
And near at daybreak,
Claim you for their own.

[1976]