from Space Sonnets
i
The Rain
As if lit by lightning in the storm
through the tall conference window, the high
single oak tree crazily
blowing like a fountain in the rain
is here still; the global talk of peace
has passed on, as wars and peaces pass,
the flooded roads that kept us in that place
are dry again. It is the tree that rests
crazily in this quieter place;
this quieter wind, that leaves undisturbed
the troubled windowpanes, finds in the ear
small leaves to rustle. All words come to this
the silence and to discover
one more time, There is this other world
iv
Because we were so certain that our love
was a transcendence not a capture,
an entrapment the words want, acquire,
even enjoy, all of them transitives
to larger selfishness, unfreedom,
till she, as we say, objecting, went away,
freeing us by her absence, to enjoy
this relaxation It will come
as a surprise, the impulse like a breeze
to be a child, but a child no longer
impelled by want, enjoying these
strange interstices between desires
on the street, quite suddenly
walking nowhere in particular,
ix
And down the huge swollen river blunder trees,
bits of houses, crates, patios, logs
with bobbing pelicans, a cat, a dog,
I envy them that rocking. It arouses
a memory of peace,
forces passing through us, no voice
in this movement not yet entrusted with the choice
to suck or be free
the speaking in first awkwardness
after cataclysm, intimacy
not repeatable. The animals, all of them
are looking downstream, as if they expected
that rest we have forgotten the ocean.
From: Crossing Borders (Selected Shorter Poems), NDP, New York, 1994.