Read New and Selected Poems for Free Online Page A

among many
Much-used books,
The rare one you must own
Immediately, the one
That makes your heart race
    Â 
As you wait for small change
With a silly grin
You’ll take to the street,
And later, past the landlady
Watching you wipe your shoes,
    Â 
Then, up to the rented room
Which neighbors the one
Of a nightclub waitress
Who’s shaving her legs
With a door partly open,
    Â 
While you turn to the first page
Which speaks of a presentiment
Of a higher existence
In things familiar and drab . . .
    Â 
In a house soon to be torn down,
Suddenly hushed, and otherworldly . . .
You have to whisper your own name,
And the words of the hermit,
    Â 
Since it must be long past dinner,
The one they ate quickly,
Happy that your small portion
Went to the three-legged dog.
Window Washer
And again the screech of the scaffold
High up there where all our thoughts converge:
Lightheaded, hung
By a leather strap,
    Â 
Twenty stories up
In the chill of late November
Wiping the grime
Off the pane, the many windows
    Â 
Which have no way of opening,
Tinted windows mirroring the clouds
That are like equestrian statues,
Phantom liberators with sabers raised
    Â 
Before these dark offices,
And their anonymous multitudes
Bent over this day’s
Wondrously useless labor.
Gallows Etiquette
Our sainted great-great-
Grandmothers
Used to sit and knit
Under the gallows.
    Â 
No one remembers what it was
They were knitting
And what happened when the ball of yarn
Rolled out of their laps
And had to be retrieved.
    Â 
One pictures the hooded executioner
And his pasty-faced victim
Interrupting their grim business
To come quickly to their aid.
    Â 
Confirmed pessimists
And other party poopers
Categorically reject
Such far-fetched notions
Of gallows etiquette.
In Midsummer Quiet
Ariadne’s bird,
That lone
Whippoorwill.
    Â 
Ball of twilight thread
Unraveling furtively.
Tawny thread,
Raw, pink the thread end.
    Â 
A claw or two also
To pare, snip . . .
After which it sits still
For the stream to explain why it shivers
    Â 
So.
        Resuming, farther on,
Intermittently,
By the barn
Where the first stars are—
In quotation marks,
As it were—O phantom
    Â 
Bird!
Dreaming of my own puzzles
And mazes.
Peaceful Trees
    in memory of M. N.
    Â 
All shivers,
Dear friends.
    Â 
Is it for me
You keep still?
    Â 
Not a rustle
To remind me—
    Â 
Quietly, the healing
Spreads—
    Â 
A deep shade
Over each face.
    Â 
•
    Â 
So many leaves,
And not one
Lately stirring.
    Â 
So many already
Tongue-shaped,
Tip-of-the-tongue-shaped.
    Â 
Oh the sweet speech of trees
In the evening breeze
Of some other summer.
Speech like sudden
Rustle of raindrops
Out of the high, pitch-blue
Heavens.
    Â 
Lofty ones,
Do you shudder
When the chain saw
Cuts one of you?
    Â 
Would it soothe,
If for all you voiceless,
To high heavens
The one with the rope round his neck
    Â 
Were to plead?
    Â 
•
    Â 
Forgive me,
    Â 
For the conjecture
I’m prone to—
    Â 
Restless as I am
Before you windless,
    Â 
Whispering
To the Master Whisperers
    Â 
Of their own
Early-evening silences.
My Beloved
    after D. Khrams
    Â 
In the fine print of her face
Her eyes are two loopholes.
No, let me start again.
Her eyes are flies in milk,
Her eyes are baby Draculas.
    Â 
To hell with her eyes.
Let me tell you about her mouth.
Her mouth’s the red cottage
Where the wolf ate grandma.
    Â 
Ah, forget about her mouth,
Let me talk about her breasts.
I get a peek at them now and then
And even that’s more than enough
To make me lose my head,
So I better tell you about her legs.
    Â 
When she crosses them on the sofa
It’s like the jailer unwrapping a parcel
And in that parcel is a Christmas cake
And in that cake a sweet little file
That gasps her name as it files my chains.
Hurricane Season
Just as the world was ending
We fell in love,
Immoderately. I had a pair of
    Â 
Blue pinstripe trousers
Impeccably