Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

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White Apples

when my father had been dead a week
I woke
with his voice in my ear
                         I sat up in bed

and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door

white apples and the taste of stone

if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes

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The Master

Where the poet stops, the poem
begins. The poem asks only
that the poet gets out of the way.

The poem empties itself
in order to fill itself up.

The poem is nearest the poet
when the poet laments
that it has vanished forever.

When the poet disappears
the poem becomes visible.

What may the poem choose,
best for the poet?
I will choose that the poet
not choose for himself.

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The Things

When I walk in my house I see pictures,

bought long ago, framed and hanging

—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—

that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,

yet my eyes keep returning to the masters

of the trivial: a white stone perfectly round,

tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,

a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,

a dead dog’s toy—valueless, unforgettable

detritus that my children will throw away

as I did my mother’s souvenirs of trips

with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,

and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.

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Nymph and Shepherd

She died a dozen times before I died,

And kept on dying, nymph of fatality.

I could not die but once although I tried.

I envied her. She whooped, she laughed, she cried

As she contrived each fresh mortality,

Numberless lethal times before I died.

I plunged, I plugged, I twisted, and I sighed

While she achieved death’s Paradise routinely.

I lagged however zealously I tried.

She writhed, she bucked, she rested, and, astride,

She posted, cantering on top of me

At least a hundred miles until I died.

I’d never blame you if you thought I lied

About her deadly prodigality.

She died a dozen times before I died

Who could not die so frequently. I tried.

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The Perfect Life

Unicorns envy their cousin

horses a smooth forehead.

Horses weep for lack of horns.

Hills cherish the ambition

to turn into partial

differential equations,

which want to be poems, or dogs,

or the Pacific Ocean,

or whiskey, or a gold ring.

The man wearing the noose

envies another who fondles

a pistol in a motel room.