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cups
    and know this grease that floats
    over the coffee will one day stop our hearts.
    Eyes and fingers drop onto silverware
    that is not silverware. Outside the window, waves
    beat against the chipped walls of the old city.
    Your hands rise from the rough tablecloth
    as if to prophesy. Your lips tremble…
    I want to say to hell with the future.
    Our future lies deep in the afternoon.
    It is a narrow street with a cart and driver,
    a driver who looks at us and hesitates,
    then shakes his head. Meanwhile,
    I coolly crack the egg of a fine Leghorn chicken.
    Your eyes film. You turn from me and look across
    the rooftops at the sea. Even the flies are still.
    I crack the other egg.
    Surely we have diminished one another.
The Blue Stones
    If I call stones blue it is because
    blue is the precise word, believe me.
    — FLAUBERT
    You are writing a love scene
    between Emma Bovary and Rodolphe Boulanger,
    but love has nothing to do with it.
    You are writing about sexual desire,
    that longing of one person to possess another
    whose ultimate aim is penetration.
    Love has nothing to do with it.
    You write and write that scene
    until you arouse yourself,
    masturbate into a handkerchief.
    Still, you don’t get up from the desk
    for hours. You go on writing that scene,
    writing about hunger, blind energy —
    the very nature of sex —
    a fiery leaning into consequence
    and eventually, utter ruin
    if unbridled. And sex,
    what is sex if it is not unbridled?
    You walk on the strand that night
    with your magpie friend, Ed Goncourt.
    You tell him when you write
    love scenes these days you can jackoff
    without leaving your desk.
    “Love has nothing to do with it,” you say.
    You enjoy a cigar and a clear view of Jersey.
    The tide is going out across the shingle,
    and nothing on earth can stop it.
    The smooth stones you pick up and examine
    under the moon’s light have been made blue
    from the sea. Next morning when you pull them
    from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.
    —
for my wife
Tel Aviv and
Life on the Mississippi
    This afternoon the Mississippi —
    high, roily under a broiling sun,
    or low, rippling under starlight,
    set with deadly snags come out to fish
    for steamboats —
    the Mississippi this afternoon
    has never seemed so far away.
    Plantations pass in the darkness;
    there’s Jones’s landing appearing out
    of nowhere, out of pine trees,
    and here at 12-Mile Point, Gray’s
    overseer reaches out of fog and receives
    a packet of letters, souvenirs and such
    from New Orleans.
    Bixby, that pilot you loved,
    fumes and burns:
    D——nation, boy! he storms at you time and again.
    Vicksburg, Memphis, St Looey, Cincinnati,
    the paddleblades flash and rush, rush
    upriver, soughing and churning
    the dark water.
    Mark Twain you’re all eyes and ears,
    you’re taking all this down to tell later,
    everything,
    even how you got your name,
    quarter twain, mark twain,
    something every schoolboy knew
    save one.
    I hang my legs further over the banister
    and lean back in shade,
    holding to the book like a wheel,
    sweating, fooling my life away,
    as some children haggle,
    then fiercely slap each other
    in the field below.
The News Carried to Macedonia
    On the banks of the
        river they call Indus today
    we observe a kind of
    bean
        much like the Egyptian bean
        also
    crocodiles are reported
    upstream & hillsides grown over
        with myrrh & ivy
                   He believes
    we have located the headwaters
    of the River Nile
        we offer
    sacrifice
    hold games
        for the occasion
    There is much rejoicing &
                   the men think
        we shall turn back
    These elephants their
    emissaries offer
        are giant
    terrifying beasts yet
        with a grin he yesterday
    ran up a ladder onto
              the very top of one
        beast
    The men
                   cheered him & he
    waved & they cheered him
        again
    He pointed across the