Sometimes something like a second washes the base of this street. The father and his two assistants are given permission to go. One of them, a woman, asks, “Why did we come here in the first place, to this citadel of dampness?”
I never saw that land before, And now can never see it again; Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar Endeared, by gladness and by pain, Great was the affection that I bore
To the valley and the river small, The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,
I lived here nearly 5 years before I could meet the middle western day with anything approaching Dignity. It’s a place that lets you understand why the Bible is the way it is: Proud people cannot live here.
The land’s too flat. Ugly sullen and big it pounds men down past humbleness. They Stoop at 35 possibly cringing from the heavy and
Do not embrace your mind’s new negro friend Or embarrass the blackballed jew with memberships: There must be years of atonement first, and even then You may still be the blundering raconteur With the wrong story, and they may still be free.
If you are with them, if even mind is friend, There will be plenty to do: give the liars lessons Who have heard no rumors of truth for a long time
Foreword to “Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch” This poem is more properly a “dance poem” than a song or chant because the element of repetition is created by movements of language rather than duplicating words and sounds. However, it is in the spirit of ritual recitation that I wrote it/ a performance to drive away bad spirits perhaps.
The story behind the poem is this: a man and woman who have been living together for some time separate. Part of the pain of separation involves possessions which they had shared. They both angrily believe they should have what they want. She asks for some possession and he denies her the right to it. She replies that she gave him money for a possession which he has and therefore should have what she wants now. He replies that she has forgotten that for the number of years they lived together he never charged her rent and if he had she would now owe him $7,000.
She is appalled that he equates their history with a sum of money. She is even more furious to realize that this sum of money represents the entire rent on the apartment and implies that he should not have paid anything at all. She is furious. She kills him mentally. Once and for all she decides she is well rid of this man and that she shouldn’t feel sad at their parting. She decides to prove to herself that she’s glad he’s gone from her life. With joy she will dance on all the bad memories of their life together.
Hardly a ghost left to talk with. The slavs moved on or changed their names to something green. Greeks gave up old dishes and slid into repose. Runs of salmon thin and thin until a ripple in October might mean carp. Huge mills bang and smoke. Day hangs thick with commerce and my favorite home, always overgrown with roses, collapsed like moral advice. Tugs still pound against the outtide pour but real, running on some definite fuel.
Sometime during eternity some guys show up and one of them who shows up real late is a kind of carpenter from some square-type place like Galilee and he starts wailing
Right after the bomb, even before the ceiling And walls and floor are rearranging You and themselves into a different world, You must hold still, must wait for them To settle down in unpredictable ways, To bring their wars, shuddering, To an end, and only then should you begin Numbly to feel what freedom may be left To your feet or knees, to your elbows Or clenched fingers. Where you used to walk Or lean or lie down or fix your attention At a whim or stomp your foot Or slump in a chair, you'll find a new Architecturally unsound floor-plan To contend with, if you can move
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