night

I am eagle; don't be fooled by red silk
heels that sound so much like clanking clay
on hardwood floors where you and I one night
did lay when there was no heat left
to warm a chilling breast,
when your dense chest fell wet on mine.
I found a feather when you left,
it lay upon a pillow drenched in you.
Perhaps it was inside. It matters not,
as I have since then eaten it
and cannot prove to you that
it did, in fact, exist.

Before I'd ever heard your name

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,

Drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
damned bar's sloppy wet, it soaks
part of one of your shirt
sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you
wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a
beer, she stinks of swamps, presses
a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't
know if you're a cop, a killer, a

Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written
only when the poet is clad in black underwear.

But that's Jorie for you. Always cracking wise, always where
the action is, the lights, and the sexy lingerie.
Poems, she said, were meant to be written
on the run, like ladders on the stockings of a gun moll

Between the dusk of a summer night
And the dawn of a summer day,
We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,
And we bade it stoop and stay.
And what with the dawn of night began
With the dusk of day was done;
For that is the way of woman and man,
When a hazard has made them one.
Arc upon arc, from shade to shine,
The World went thundering free;
And what was his errand but hers and mine --
The lords of him, I and she?
O, it's die we must, but it's live we can,

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
II
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.
III
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

I own a solace shut within my heart,
A garden full of many a quaint delight
And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,
Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
Shining things
With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close
The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind
Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,
Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,
With content
Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o'erhung with gems
Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies

Before the Altar, bowed, he stands
With empty hands;
Upon it perfumed offerings burn
Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.
Not one of all these has he given,
No flame of his has leapt to Heaven
Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,
Forked, and darted,
Consuming what a few spare pence
Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence
In idly-asked petition.

His sole condition
Love and poverty.
And while the moon
Swings slow across the sky,
Athwart a waving pine tree,
And soon

The songs I made from joy of earth
In wanton wandering,
Are rapturous with Maytime mirth
And ectasy of Spring.
But all the songs I sing today
Take tediously the ear:
Novemberishly dark are they
With mortuary fear.
II
For half a century has gone
Since first I rang a rhyme;
And that is long to linger on
The tolerance of Time.
This blue-veined hand with which I write
Yet answers to my will;

He stared at me with sad, hurt eyes,
That drab, untidy man;
And though my clients I despise
I do the best I can
To comfort them with cheerful chat;
(Quite comme il faut, of course)
And furnish evidence so that
Their wives may claim divorce.
II
But as this chap sobbed out his woes
I thought: How it's a shame!
His wife's a bitch and so he goes
And takes himself the blame.
And me behaving like a heel
To earn a filthy fee . . .
Said I: "You've had a dirty deal."
"What of yourself? said he.