FOR YOUNG POETS
People talk about flowers
all the time just like
they talk about nuns
and pianos but hardly
anyone can explain exactly
what they are for
how exactly they work
do they choose to go
into the cloister
and become a certain
hue the sun can pass
through attracting notes
that come from a wire
struck by a wooden hammer
or did they hear
a voice once or for many
years that said if you
focus all your love
on this single blade
that doesn’t
feel anything something
will fly by and touch
your keys with powder
on its wings and make
music only you were
destined to hear
in the meadow when
you hear it stay there
and wait your calyx
will open it’s true
when it does no
matter what they say
there will still be time
for just a little while
keep that music
for yourself
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SONG
I take my book of spells
that don’t work
and my silent megaphone
outside at lunchtime
and scream at the sky,
I am leaving
my job as assistant
caretaker of everything
that will only matter
after it has been approved
by the standing committee
of associate ghouls
that never meets,
their silent laughter
around a circular table
wanders into the chapel
then makes the endless
fountain of bylaws
bend while the statue
of the founder watches,
we all know he will rise
one day and meet us
where we are
to destroy us,
when I leave I will take
all the empty manila folders
that held twilight’s forbidden thoughts
and this crying bowl
someone else’s mentor
handed to me the day
I crossed the cobalt
oblivion river,
I will burn my parchment
outside the new recreation facility
then go live
with my green ache
on a very low hill that does not
look down on anyone.
THE DEATH POEMS OF ULALUME GONZÁLEZ DE LEÓN
lots of poets
speak to the dead
or so they say
but who dies
on purpose
so she can speak
to the living
who gives
one last breath
back to the world
then stays
some time longer
to speak in the ear
of one who loved her
or maybe just us
her recorders
I don’t know
whether ghosts feel
that’s a subject
for the mystic
I am not
I want to know
what is past feeling
only for myself
a silver taste
appears in my mouth
so I drift away
to the pages
the death poems
I join them again
she spoke
one last time
into our ears
then without sentiment
went elsewhere
FEBRUARY
I couldn’t get the copier to work
so I stared at it like a monolith
stares at an ape wishing
it would use the tools
provided for its evolution
outside the birds divide the spoils
regarded by some squirrels nobly
paired in colloquy
on a promontory the lions
outside the abandoned library
guard archaic enthusiasm
you can only touch
under a green lamp
with authenticated eyes
poems are so strange
it seems no one needs them
but really we die
in our own hearts
someone is always just about to have written
their eyes dispensing
tears of hilarity
the final beam of sunlight
has wandered onto my forehead
ELEGY FOR TUESDAY
The phone rings
and someone tells you
another great poet died.
Now you have to tell
sleep it has lost
its most curious denizen.
Most of the world
doesn’t know
it’s a death mask
in a glass case.
One cloud says
I was the one
who taught her
you can start
anywhere and end up
explaining everything.
Another replies
you were just
her apprentice
of resembling.
Yes it’s true
you can read her book
and still find
the door to the past
and yes the war
survived her
but not her poems
secretly continuing
the work of wondering
all the wrong things.
PALANQUIN
When I was a child I used to read
such long books summer went on forever
my room was filled with trees
a blue river flowed above me at night
I was surrounded by a yellow house
I did not yet know the difference between silences
in the longest one a king could never be killed
because he always rode by himself
In his palanquin, his solitude was his armor
I pronounced it in my mind
on the final page the war for the emerald
had ended and another loomed
I can’t remember if he married the ghost
he had seen in the park when he was a boy
or the daughter of the relentless
assassin patiently waiting in the sequel
when I say it now it resounds in my skull
I’m still not sure how it should sound
it’s like one of those names you see
carved into a stone in those old graveyards
you can find in every city if you have enough time
RAINER MARIA RILKE
I don’t want to hear about translucent stones
or precisely how much anyone desires
to be near the great secret of death
or the death of the great secret
I don’t want to listen to some figure
wearing velvet who knows flowers
know absolutely everything
when they remorselessly distinguish themselves
from the grass then without complaint
return to the earth
I am not really interested in truth
or understanding why I cram
the ultimate cookie into my mouth
and later solemnly tell my son
to be happy he’s learning a life changing lesson
by getting some raisins instead
and no I don’t care how he went to Paris
and wrote lectures to his wife
about the immaculate art that sleeps
each night ever more uncertain than usual
in some closed building
and how we must learn to draw
an abandoned bomb shelter
only the neighborhood children remember
then enter it while those aforementioned
flowers with their blank eyes do not regard us
I just want to study Marina Tsvetaeva
who wrote him in a frenzy starving
she said all poets are Jews
which to me means unlike Christians
we cannot be forgiven merely by asking
we just have to follow all the rules
and go to summer school
even in winter so our hearts
covered in leaves can like he said
in its green invisible walls survive
