Out of poverty
To begin again

With the taste of silence
On my tongue

Say a word,
Then listen to it fray

Thread by thread,
in the fading,

The already vanishing
Evening light.

So clear, it’s obscure
The sense of existing

In this very moment,
Cheek by jowl with

My shadow on the wall
With its long, gallowslike,

Contorted neck
Bloodied by the sunset,

Watching and listening
To my own heartbeat.

*

This is breath, only breath.
Think it over, friend.

A shit-house fly weighs
Twice as much.

But when I tell the world so,
I’m less by a breath.

The struck match flares up
And nods in agreement

Before the dark claps it
With its heavy hands.

*

As strange as a shepherd
In the Arctic Circle.

Someone like Bo-peep.
All her sheep are white

And she can’t get any sleep
Over lost sheep,

So she plays a flute
Which cries Bo-pee,

Which says, poor girl,
Take care of your sheep.

*

On a late afternoon of snow,
In a small unlit grocery store

Where a door has just opened
With a long, painful squeak,

A small boy carries a piece of paper
Between his thumb and forefinger

To the squint-eyed old woman
Bending low over the counter.

It’s the paper I’m remembering,
And the quiet and the shadows.

*

You’re not what you seem to be,
I’m not what I seem to be.

It’s as if we were the unknowing
Inmates of someone’s shadow box,

And its curtain was our breath
And so were the images it caught,

Which were like the world we know.
His gloves as gray as the sky

While he held us up by our feet
Swaying over the earth to and fro.

*

We need a marrying preacher.
Some crow, praise be,

By the side of the road
With a bloody beak

Studying a wind-leafed
Black book

All of whose pages are gold-edged
And blank,

While we wait, with frost thickening
On our eyelashes.

*

The sky of the desert,
The heavens of the crucified.

The great white sky
Of the visionaries.

Its one lone, ghostlike
Buzzard still hovering,

Writing the long century’s
Obituary column

Over the white city,
The city of our white nights.

*

Mother gives me to the morning
On the threshold.

I have the steam of my breath
For a bride.

The snow on my shoes
The hems of her wedding dress,

My love always a step ahead,
Always a blur,

A whiteout
In the raging, dreamlike storm.

*

As if I shut my eyes
In order to peek

At the world unobserved,
And saw

The nameless
In its glory.

And knew no way
To speak of it,

And did, nevertheless,
And then said something else.

*

What are you up to, smart-ass?
I turn on my tongue’s skewer.

What do you baste yourself with?
I cough bile laced with blood.

Do you use paper and salt?
I bite words as they come into my mouth.

And how will you know you’re done?
My eyes will burn till I see clear.

What will you carve yourself with?
I’ll let my tongue be the knife.

*

In the inky forest,
In its maziest,

Murkiest scribble
Of words

And wordless cries,
I went for a glimpse

Of the blossomlike
White erasure

Over a huge,
Furiously crossed-out something.

*

I can’t say I’m much of a cook,
If my heart is on fire with the onions.

I can’t say I’m much of a hero,
If the weight of my head has me pinned down.

I can’t say I’m in charge here,
If the flies hang their hats in my mouth.

I can’t say I am the smart one,
If I wait for a star to answer me.

Nor can I call myself good-for-nothing.
Thanks to me worms will have their dinner.

*

One has to make do.
Make ends meet,

Odds and ends.
Make no bones about it.

Make a stab in the dark.
Make the hair curl.

Make a door-to-nowhere.
Make a megaphone with one’s hands,

And call and make do
With the silence answering.

*

Then all’s well and white
All day and all night.

The highways are snowbound.
The forest paths are hushed.

The power lines have fallen.
The windows are dark.

Nothing but starlight
And the snow’s dim light

And the wind wildly
Preaching in the pine tree.

* 

In an unknown year
Of an evil-eyed century,

On a day of biting wind,
A tiny old woman,

One foot in the grave,
Met a boy playing hooky.

She offered him a sugar cube
In a hand so wizened

His tongue leapt back in fear.
Saying thanks.

*

Do you take this line
Stretching to infinity?

I take this white paper
Lying still before me.

Do you take this ring
Of unknown circumference?

I take this breath
Slipping in and out of it.

Then you may kiss the place
Where your pencil went faint.

* 

Had to get through me
On its long, long trek

To and from nowhere.
Woe to every heartbeat

That stood in its way,
Woe to every thought…

Time’s white ants hurrying
The rustle of their feet.

Gravedigger ants.
Village idiot ants.

*

I haven’t budged from the start.
Five fingers crumple up

Over the blank page
As if composing a love letter,

Do you hear the white night
Touching down?

I hear its ear trumpets,
The holy escutcheons

Turning golden
In the dying light.

*

Psst. The white hair
Fallen from my head

On the writing paper
Momentarily anonymous.

I had to bend low
And put my eye next to it

To make sure,
Then nudge it, ever so slowly

With the long tip of my pencil
Over the edge of the table.