Contents
Christmas Love
The Clouds of Passerines are Brittle
Coming Home
Coupling in the White Moonlight
A Crane
The Dark Blessed Night
Disregard the Stars
Eternal Love
The Grown Man
Love
Lovers Under the Bright Stars
A Lover’s Rhyme
New Spring
On a Snowy Night
Passion
Perception
The Place of Man
That Evasive Spark
To Make a Bed
Uncommon Sense
Christmas Love
Revelers swing round lamp posts;
snow flakes swirl through the air;
street lamps cast golden circles;
church bells sound in the square.
We spent the last penny in our pockets
on a drink we shared in the bar;
now night has cloaked us in darkness;
the city lights are glimmering stars.
Warehouses are shut and forbidding;
a train stops with a screech and a hiss.
We stand by the cold quick river;
I brush snow from your cheek and we kiss.
This old American town tonight
was never once so bright by day;
the cruel agonies that color our lives
have faded to a harmless grey.
In the churchyard the graves are cracked and crooked;
it’s where friends and family lay remembered;
all their smiles and laughs still treasured
on this snowy twenty-fourth December.
We’d keep the parlor lit by soft light;
while music played, shadows danced on the wall.
I knew the good times could never last forever;
I just never knew how quickly they could fall.
But night brings charming dreams anew,
and when dawn comes they’re with me still;
I’ll share them with you this Christmas Day;
we’ll let hope shepherd us, come whatever will.
The Clouds of Passerines are Brittle
The clouds of passerines are brittle:
One sharp sound, or just the turn of a thrush,
Breaks them as easily as a forced committal.
But real love bleeds as red as indian paintbrush,
And will even alone wage war against armies
With white flags plied only as tourniquets
And no uncouth tactic too mercenary.
To such cogent arrears each heart is convinced of debt—
When innocent youth is mortgaged to adolescence—
That must be paid in full before death does foreclose.
Therefore each heart puts passion before common sense,
Folly before judiciousness, immodesty before clothes.
Still, ancient wisdom would rather be untruth,
Be forgotten, lost to desert scenes,
Than renege upon the human flower of youth
And the honest love of people’s most hopeful dreams.
Coming Home
She is a woman, auburn haired,
with eyes of green and careful mind.
She looks through windows onto snow,
to mountain ranges, crisp and clear.
She’s as tough as stone, as rough as cordage,
supple as a rope or birch.
And in that cold Wyoming evening
where the mountains meet the sky,
the clouds are forming, an airy meadow,
like fields of mushrooms or beds of scallops
that grow up and white in course of time.
And coming down from that mountain,
with broken shoulder and riding slow,
is a tall man of her age,
one she’s bound herself to love.
And like Penelope she’s been watching
that rocky chine for hopeful sign,
and now at last her man’s come riding
down the slope, back into life
to make again the old ranch whole.
So the woman, standing slowly,
slips out through the cabin door
into the air that’s crisp with autumn,
chill and fair, suggesting snow.
She saddles up and rides to meet him;
she finds him beneath a lodgepole pine,
and there the two dismount and embrace,
relieved to learn their hearts will mend.
For above the firs the birds are flying:
vultures, condors, the carrion pair.
And how they’d love a crippled cowpoke
lost amidst the mountains there.
Now she and he are hugging fiercely
As the sun sinks behind the stone.
And though Death is hungry
and impatient it must find another time,
for tonight these two are coming home.
Coupling in the White Moonlight
You are as naked as my love:
Unclothed, uncovered, sensual.
White moonbeams kiss you from above
And cast shadows, still and skeletal.
My fingers touch your parted lips.
Your soft hand feels my beating heart.
I kiss your thighs, your silky hips.
You slowly spread your legs apart.
Your legs grow long in the dim light
And flower in a fine petal.
Like blooming jasmine in the night,
You unfurl and slowly settle.
Our home stands on a rocky hill.
The sea breaks against stones beneath.
Through the window white moonbeams spill,
As creamy as a hyacinth.
Love is stronger than a feeling.
Love is blood for the human heart.
Love is folk theft, without stealing,
Cares taken as subtly as art.
Dreams are deeper than the ocean.
Our sleep together is a dream.
My eyes close. I feel your motion,
Wavelike in the moonlight’s white beam.
The deep night washes over us
As we emerge from breathless drowning:
The little death, the intimate lust,
At once nothing and surrounding.
A Crane
Folded like origami,
The white crane stands
Knee-deep in water.
Like a metaphor of men
Watching for women,
The crane watches for fish.
Clouds pass
Over the still, brown water.
Egrets and herons
Lift their broad wings
And bear themselves
Past Spanish moss,
Live oaks,
And graying wooden docks.
Still the crane waits.
Then, with the same
Sudden, heartless nihilism
Of a gun shot,
The crane strikes.
The Dark Blessed Night
While merrily drunk on proud vintages,
while the dark new moon lies cloaked behind clouds,
while clean, industrious folk sleep and dream,
and the idle markets await their crowds,
together we forget the coming dawn,
who daily disrespects our mortal race
with her honest rays and revealing beams
that shine such hard light on each aging face.
Instead we clothe ourselves in nudity—
in the habit as that which we were born—
and sport in an echo of our lost youths
from which ease, increasingly, we are torn.
And, hiding ourselves upon each other,
make as though night shall ever cloud the streets
whose welcome blindness will never censure
our maturing souls or our tumbled sheets.
Disregard the Stars
Imagine if each of the stars was a lady
And the sky shone with their allure every night
Or if each leaf in a tree that is shady
Was a girl who was both lovely and bright
Still I would not look from your eyes
When you smile with your hands clasped in mine.
And think if each flash on the ocean
Was an old romance that sparked into flame
Or if each flicker on a land that lay frozen
Was a call to a new and voluptuous game
Still I’d use every means ever devised
To keep our loving hearts well intertwined
For it’s true that love knows no demise
When devotion and affection align.
Eternal Love
Though even love between a man and wife
can die, still love as a quality lives.
Love surpasses all close understanding.
It outlasts the rare, few sands that time gives,
for love revives anew every moment.
As often as it’s snuffed, it’s lit again.
It cannot be decisively put out.
Love is eternal and always has been.
It is passed through countless generations,
between all diverse aspects of mankind,
between folk and beast and tree and bright star—
in all ages and lands, there is love, we find.
The Grown Man
He’s sorry for
The wrongs he’s done
With his dog by his side
And a photo of her face
He’s prayed to God
But got no answer
He’s thrown a stone
Into a lake
To cast away her memory
Yet still recalls her
Sharp as the tip
Of a new knife
And he’s wept and groaned
It’s done nothing
He’s all alone in dead of night
He’s feels like hell
But it won’t be over
Cause when night’s through
He’ll see her better
In the mornin light
All the times he was gone
Chasing money
And fame
Well the little green
He earned he’s spent
And after all
Nobody
Knows his name
It’s a cold hard autumn
And already the flurries
Are coming down
There is a long cold season
That’s coming
With winds
And wolves
And memories
Of her black hair
And brown eyes
And no hope
Of ever seeing again
Her godwarmed smile.
Love
The big cities shake with the rumble of traffic;
it seems like half the poor birds are missing their toes.
The sunbeam on her face makes her look seraphic
lying amongst the white bedsheets, wearing no clothes.
It’s a cold water flat. The sink’s always dripping.
The winter sun’s horizontal; it’s weak and cold.
There’s snow on the sidewalks, so people are slipping,
and it seems, long ago, the city’s heart was sold.
Then he turns her head, and he kisses her soft lips.
She wraps her arms around him, sees his eyes above;
she spreads her slender legs; she lifts her narrow hips.
In the lonely city, they fall to making love.
A short time later, and already they’re old and grey.
That’s just the way that time goes, just the way life is.
They grew together; together grew their own way,
until neither knew what was hers and what was his.
’Cause that day, all those years ago, they traded hearts:
with good grace, he gave her his, and she gave him hers.
He said, “Life’s made of new beginnings and old parts,
but what I have you can have, and what’s mine is yours.”
And she took what he had and gave herself to him.
They gave each other everything; nothing did they save:
sharing the thoughtful moment, and the slightest whim,
till there was nothing they could give that they hadn’t already gave.
Lovers Under the Bright Stars
We lay out under the bright stars:
Saw the moon lay in her crescent,
Saw the prairie stretch out to Mars.
We felt nostalgic and prescient.
Her heart was as pure as clear ice.
My heart was hungry as a wolf.
Words came at far too dear a price.
Love lay between us like a gulf.
If she leaves here in the morning
All that’s left will be memory
Like an orange fire that’s burning
That leaves an ash that’s hot and grey.
The horses they start to snuffle.
The dog is whining to go home.
If love can come through this shuffle
It’ll last till memory is gone.
A Lover’s Rhyme
On an autumn morning, chill and fair,
early snow slicks Istanbul’s cobblestones,
baklava scents the Bosphorus air,
and caressing lovers lie as bare as bones.
Leafless branches reticulate the Charles Bridge,
while wind knots the old square’s fog;
crows stare balefully from Saint Vitus’ ridge,
and lovers vanish in the shadows of Prague.
One spring day in the serried Balkans,
where the granite rises in a sagittate spine,
amidst meadows and wildflowers two lovers lie talking,
deaf to the world in the midst of that chine.
Each lover’s story is like a scene in an arras,
woven by hand from Kabul to Paris,
in the dells, the cities, and the lands in between,
where time doesn’t matter in the weave of the scene.
New Spring
The memories of raw winter fade like youth
before the season’s budding daffodils.
We used to walk this narrow path together
from our home to the crest of the bare hill.
There we stopped to watch whitecaps and sea oats.
Just as often, we stayed home, nude in bed.
While the coffee steamed over a blue flame,
I kissed your ribs, and you let yourself be led.
The dogs lazed, and dust dappled the light beams.
Such are the warp and weft of the past’s loom,
whose fabrics are of unstylish design.
I moved houses when the hyacinths bloomed.
I left behind our old, bayonetted ghosts.
Such battle-weary and war-torn phantoms
are taxing partners for the jaunty soul,
and will hold a wistful mind at ransom.
I left pining wraiths in our kitchen and field,
where, with great care, we’d raised violets and phlox.
So, when spring came, and the air’s clean perfume
was beholden to fields of wild lilacs,
my mind involuntarily recalled you.
But I’m holding hands with a new lover,
so I take the unsought reminiscence,
lay it back among ivy and clover,
and walk with her from those bygone places,
into the sunlight that warms our faces.
On a Snowy Night
What have we here—now, with the last guests gone?
Passion. Love, at last, after patient years.
A muffled night marbled by scudding clouds.
On the floorboards, your pooled dress of chiffon.
A couple out beyond an old frontier.
Without a whisper, our hearts make a vow.
Looks are enough. Moonbeams touch the curtain,
band the wooden floor, shine in the mirror.
Outside, deep snow frosts this pale Thanksgiving:
covering roads, leaving paths uncertain.
The present leaves the future no clearer,
but tomorrow must await the living.
Passion
Passion, amid that fair skulduggery that is Time,
teach me no more hard lessons;
leave me only love—soft as a pheasant, fine as rhyme,
old as space—till my passing.
Perception
In the climactic anarchy of sex—
When the various passions are
Kaleidoscopic shards
Of colored glass,
scattered on a marver
For the gaffer
To roll a molten gob through—
Then disorder is at its most understandable.
Night lightning flashes,
Illuminating distant hills;
There’s a gasp of perception.
All the anarchy assembles
Into a sudden, coherent shape.
The forking, electric wires vanish.
Darkness falls again.
Groping, searching for a spark—
What lit
This planet’s immense and antres chamber,
Provided that brief, enlightening flame?
Later, when reflecting on that quick glimpse,
One already muddled,
She finds in it
Fatalism and independence,
Care, instinct, and hedonism:
The growth and transience
Of two human lives.
The Place of Man
There are moths circling the patio light
As she talks to him of justice and love.
His drink is sweating in the warm night,
And his skin is cool beneath the stars above.
She talks of rats in the WFP food, of dogs behind doors.
She speaks of fake soldiers in military dress,
And of the deceptive quiet in wars.
She talks, and he listens with no feeling or stress.
Somewhere, somewhere, she is telling him,
There ought to be virtue and decency.
Somewhere, here perhaps, she says again,
There ought to be a merciful society.
Still the moon shines high up in the sky.
He thinks that it’s a quarter of a million miles away.
There the stars tremble before his very eyes,
So far off that they’ll be lost come day.
And, of course, she’s right. So very right.
And if he could take all the world’s ills
And burn them, in a blaze to light the night,
Then he would, and damn the stars, the moon, the night’s chills.
For just a single night, if he could, he’d turn it all to day,
And like some great seething god, set the world aright,
And leave the good folk in a better way,
Then so he would. But no one has such might.
Late that night, they fall to making love.
And after it is over, and she lies curled,
He thinks that it is not the role of god above,
But man’s sole sphere, to better rule this world.
That Evasive Spark
Passion is present in summer on lakes
where the sun singes swimmers’ bronzed skin.
Carefree ardor may be increased with wine:
at table with olives, cheeses, and gin.
Even when unconscious there is desire,
haunting—unwillingly, unsought—our dreams.
With lightning and loud thunder come fervor:
the wilderness begets wildness, it seems.
But while July lakes, repasts, sleep, and storms
may each decorate a pretender’s stage,
only love infuses into its making
that evasive spark that quickens each age,
that makes consequent the source of a boast
and raises creation to its utmost.
To Make a Bed
She pats the white pillows.
The bed is not her own,
as light carries through tall windows
onto the marital pattern.
From room to room, she straightens
and makes the tattling sheets.
She scrubs and cleans the wash basins;
she dusts the powder room.
Affairs between the man
and wife have gone unknown,
though Sarah sees what goes unsaid
when it comes time to clean:
the way tall waves are made in storms,
the sheets have creases,
unexplainable otherwise,
except through men who forget,
who smooth their wives while leaving creases.
Yet Sarah almost can’t hate this man,
his lust and greed, so far apart
from how she would stand if she were in his stead.
It is as if he is oblivious as a child.
Yet hate him she can. It is not impossible.
Sometimes her hands, as if unwilled,
do rip and tear covers, hurl them quite far,
away from that bed. As if the sheets were masts
in gales at sea, they flap with her strength.
She shakes them, wanting to shake the past
affairs and sins away. One washing isn’t enough.
Through shaking, flapping, the creases go.
Action is best, to calm one’s nerves.
She thinks of him, as she replaces the soap:
out with the old, in with the new.
She scrubs at him in the shower,
with each hard swipe, a bit of grunge is gone.
The lines of black mildew erode
under her strong cleaning.
Her mistress enters, the bright woman,
with hair that rolls and curls on her shoulder
and eyes that flash like a quick bird.
“Are things well, Sarah? How is your day?”
And Sarah, quite near revealing all,
now stops and starts as he walks inside,
filling the room with a presence unwanted.
“Oh yes, Miss,” she breathes.
“Indeed. Everything is well.”
“We’re pleased with you,” Rosalyn says,
her arm snaking around her husband’s.
“You do good work in here and in the rooms.
The beds are made with tight, hard folds—
you have energy in your small bones.”
“Yes, ma’am” says Sarah. “It’s conviction
for jobs done well. One thing I know—
that clean bedrooms can make a mind the same.”
He says, “If it’s the same to you, please leave
my shelves the way they are. I like a mess.
I have my things the way I remember,
and touching them would mean losing them.”
“Yes,” Sarah says. “I understand you.”
“But you do do your job, I think, quite well,”
he continues. “The showers are clean,
the place is dusted, the rooms are neat.
Why, you could hardly tell a person lived here!
Everything dirty washed away!”
Quite cheery, he vanishes, pecking Ros’ cheek.
They wait moments.
She stares at Sarah, woman appraising woman.
Servant and mistress relations quite gone.
“What’s wrong? I see something that’s strange in you.
You know something,” says Rosalyn.
“Something that maids can learn when they do work.
What do you know? Is it about, well, him?
Don’t lie, dear Sarah, the shame is not on you.
But, I… I think I know already. It is an affair.”
She leans against the wall.
Her dress seems weak, heavy:
as if the cloth were thin armor,
as if the pearls were made of lead.
“Is it?” says Rosalyn. “Is there someone he’s known?”
“I hate to say it,” Sarah says. “No, I care little for him—
I mean I hate to hurt you, dear.” She takes Rosalyn’s hand.
Her hand is warm and weak, unlike the girl
that Sarah knows as being strong and fierce.
Every strong heart can break.
“But I don’t mind damaging him. He cares
only a small amount for you, I think.
When washing, I am scrubbing him off you.
I scrub away the day, the night, the times
when he and she make love like animals.
Not like people. Not like humans. Not like couples.
Their love is expensive—too expensive!—
because it costs another. It costs you much, I think.
I pay for it also, a price no one should pay.
Yet I pay not as much as you.”
“Oh!” says Rosalyn. “Is it—oh! No! I don’t care!”
They sit with soundlessness for a long time.
At times, silence can clean a wound, can heal a pain.
They hear him hum, a warm and wild and joyous sound.
It comes from in the hall.
Then he calls her by name, “Oh, Rosalyn! Rosalyn!
Rosalyn! Where, dear, are you?”
She does not speak.
The calling drifts away. Perhaps he went outside.
Perhaps some work is in some need of doing.
Perhaps the lawn is going to be mowed.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
All that is important is that the sound is gone.
The joyous hum is gone.
“I must not sit for long,” says Rosalyn.
“I must better him, move on now.
But I don’t know where to begin or how to start.
This dirty, filthy thing is stifling me. What can I do?”
“Here,” Sarah says, handing her a sponge. “I will help you.
First we should rearrange his shelves. We have our tidying to do;
sometimes it does good to clean and work.
Sometimes it does good to erase his memories.
Sometimes.”
Uncommon Sense
Sometimes after a frightful storm
We must burn our bridges to keep warm.
David Murphy 