Petit, the Poet

Fish
always accurately know where to move and when,
and likewise
birds have an accurate built-in time sense
and orientation.

Humanity, however,
lacking such instincts resorts to scientific
research. Its nature is illustrated by the following

Goya drew a pig on a wall.
The five-year-old hairdresser’s son
Saw, graved on a silver tray,
The lion; and sunsets were begun.

Goya smelt the bull-fight blood.
The pupil of the Carmelite
Gave his hands to a goldsmith, learned
To gild an aureole aright.

After the jostling on canal streets
and the orchids blowing in the window
I work in cut glass and majolica
and hear the plectrum of the angels.

My thoughts keep dwelling on the littoral
where china clocks tick in the cold shells
and the weeds slide in the equinox.

The night is cold for love,

Out of your whole life give but one moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, – so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, – condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense –
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me –

for Arthur Freeman Pigfoot (with Aces Under) Passes

The heat’s on the hooker.

Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered over with silver, brocaded
In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes, it lies there,
Warm from a woman’s soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, caressing.
Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her lingers and drugs me.
A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush the scarf down on my face,
And gulp in the warmth and the blueness, and my eyes swim in cool-tinted heavens.
Around me are columns of marble, and a diapered, sun-flickered pavement.
Rose-leaves blow and patter against it. Below the stone steps a lute tinkles.

As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spirit, my kiss.

As my foot suggests that you leap in the air with your hips of a girl,
My finger that praises your wheel and announces your voices of song,
Flouncing your skirts, you blueness of joy, you flirt of politeness,

in our village are short and to the point.
While the mourners are finding their seats
Etta Andrews plays “Now the Day Is Over.”
No one is ashamed to wipe his or her eyes.
Then the Reverend stands up and reads
the Lord’s Prayer with the mourners
speaking it with him. Then there is a hymn,
usually “Rock of Ages” or one chosen by

I

Swing by starwhite bones and
Lights tick in the middle.
Blue and white steel
Black and white
People hurrying along the wall.
”Here you are, bury my dead bones.“

Curve behind the sun again