21.
Don’t live forever they don’t count
the stars
it’s a kind of broken pavement
music gushes out of crevices each gap
a sore
earth is the ventriloquist who tunes
our lips
the cries of children turn out to be
grownups turn into conversation
Whitman wrote nothing but the cries
of children
our only real poet avoided writing
poems
I call it semaphore because he bears a sign
I can’t read it can you? A sign of
itself
a revelation of revelation a storm in
the mirror
no air left to write the answer
down.
22.
A raft is remembrance
should you wake beside direction
and where we went an apple gate
dark with understanding and a touch
so later off the esplanade one Danish ship
seen in a sluice of fog a word
misused
loved for the juice of it the slip of
mouth
the president waved from his open car
I stood on the corner with John
Kennedy
one rainy afternoon when Carthage
fell
forgive the immigrants the land cried
out for
the white man failed the lesson of
the earth.
