into the strenuous briefness

1
The Saturday morning meadowlark
came in from high up
with her song gliding into tall grass
still singing. How I'd like
to glide around singing in the summer
then to go south to where I already was
and find fields full of meadowlarks

For Marilyn who died in January april 1

To John Bernard Myers
In the corner lot

for George Schneeman New York’s lovely weather
hurts my forehead

I. Le Bonheur

dogwood flakes
what is green

the petals
from the apple
blow on the road

mourning doves
mark the sway

Why & what is sweetness all alone?
Either that or it becomes, alas, fleeting,
Which actually helps, because of rhythm.
& there’s a pale intensity to truth, no matter
How pale it is on the levels we receive on.
I mean, the minute you invent a time interval
The more it seems to “jelly out” the excitation
Of accidents; zum Beispiel, “Saginaw, Michigan.”

O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets!
The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways,
and it rains, it will not let up,
and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s

Homage Kenneth Koch If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran
I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,

The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away
The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.”
The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made:
There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but
Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be