II
Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand.
In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as you list. Bind me close to you with nothing.
I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the night clasping the earth in my breast.
Make my life glad with nothing.

Hours fly,
Flowers die:
New days,
New ways:
Pass by!
Love stays.

It stalked him to the end of fear,
like clockwork, down each Gothic street
of Königsberg, as if it knew
precisely when their hands would meet.

kamakhya on nilachal~
pilgrims trekking together
to the mother's womb

--
(Note: The temple of Goddess Kamakhya on the Nilachal or Blue Mountain, near Guwahati, in Assam (India) is a centre of Tantric cult of Hinduism since remote ages. It is a prominent Shakti-peeth, where the mother goddess is worshipped in its 'yoni-mudra' form.)

With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka's hat.

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Just because
people love your mind,
doesn't mean they
have to have
your body,
too.

Just a little more
And we shall see the almond trees in blossom
The marbles shining in the sun
The sea, the curling waves.
Just a little more
Let us rise just a little higher.

In western fields of corn and northern timber lands,
They talk about me, a saloon with a soul,
The soft red lights, the long curving bar,
The leather seats and dim corners,
Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cutting ham,
And the painting of a woman half-dressed thrown reckless across a bed after a night of booze and riots.

Paula is digging and shaping the loam of a salvia,
Scarlet Chinese talker of summer.
Two petals of crabapple blossom blow fallen in Paula's
hair,
And fluff of white from a cottonwood.