Journey
after Miltos Sachtouris
When I was walking up the street
and the moon burned my hands
the baker’s daughter the owl would awaken
then I’d go out and call the Night
When I was wading down the river
the tanner had nowhere to sleep
her secret wounded me in the chest
then I’d go out and call the Night
When I was going up the stairs
and quails were tangled in my toes
and pulling a man by his hair
then I’d go out and call the Night
When I was going down the stairs
and roses were growing in the sink
waiting there for me to speak
then I’d go out and call the Night
And when I’d take to the street again
and iron grew from the ground
and any gratitude writhed in blood
then I’d go out and call the Night
Burgau to Ulm, Bundesland Bavaria
Two foxes hefted the remains of a pigeon,
within the shadow of an onion-domed steeple,
and from the train’s window, watching: you, me, no one,
mooning the winter through, wishing work to be done,
holding out for bits of money like most people—
like a fox hefting the remains of a pigeon
that had landed to rest its wings and lost everyone.
We’re there now, holding the scene, an example
in our heads, a window through which you, me, no one,
can view your childhood home, the thin, scrambled sun,
and the sickness that drives you to sleep. Our couple—
as two foxes heft the remains of a pigeon,
dragging and chomping bits of bird to fill their own,
the world just darker, colder—rest a little
within the train’s window. There’s you, me, and no one,
all failing to arrive on time at the station,
our lives framed against the February chill,
where two foxes heft the remains of a pigeon
while watching, as a train passes, you, me: no one.
Little Notes On Painting
Take a Spanish painter and put him in Paris. Take a Greek
painter and put him in Madrid. Take a Quebeçois painter
and put him in Paris, too, and a German and a couple
more Spaniards and also a Greek-born Italian. You wouldn’t
believe what I’m doing now. I’m up very late. I’m placing
an American painter in Albany and hoping school
will be cancelled tomorrow. There are fewer and fewer days
like this left; they fall like uses for wax paper. Don’t ever
mention abstract artists to my face or my books, my friend, for
who owns a house and has never been kissed in one? Right?
Take a Russian painter and put him in New York beside
a Mexican painter. I am two feet from the bed; the pillows
and blankets are swelling and rising towards the ceiling.
Take a Javanese painter and put him in Cairo.
The phone won’t ring anymore. I called a street artist
‘Picasso’ but thought better of it as all those women were
going down on him one at a time and bearing him children.
Take a little-known Nova Scotia folk painter and put her,
posthumously, in Cleveland or Skopjë. The mattress is filling
with honey and the box spring is humming like bees; my hand is
in my pyjama bottoms. I stop and say, it isn’t love
that makes you weak, to the night table or maybe the bed frame.
Take an Italian Futurist for example. Take a 19th century
Japanese print and slip it between the mattress and the box spring.
Take a pregnant painter by the hand. I’m home and touching
the unborn child of her easel. It would be nice for a night
if silence was the colour of water but it would be nicer
to sleep in the desert. Take a stolen Brueghel from
the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and bury it
on Easter Island. I arrange the sheets every morning
to resemble Mount Athos so that every night I sleep
on God’s arm. What did I say about abstraction?
Take a British painter from a home he’s not once ever loved
and ask him why he never paints the same thing. Take a moment
to join an art school, the aristocracy or merely buy
a beret. A photograph of a painter’s palette is no good to
anyone and the sky outside is nothing like Van Gogh.
I just wanted to say that the moon’s going down.
I remember every moment. Thank you.