They come in strange ways 4/18/86 They come in strange ways looking for an image of culture all young and scrubbed dressed by magazine ads as slick as they are Mass society consuming change nothing much happens by chance as they insert themselves into our plastic genomes the null set just so And we too take vacations but don't learn languages the wheels of our chairs pushed by suppliant attendants our paths paved in plastic and glass No one will ever ask what happened to our passions after this day of measured response political poetry is no longer read in our panelled hotel lobbies The lifeless water's waves sky streaked photochemically crossed by pigeons and paragliders the sand takes the cast of our leaden bellies No chance in complacency for our resolve to gel bicep to flex, fist to clench we are so agreeable to the terms of our fate Is there any longer a right way to be or is there just being is there any need to ask even, the end so near So let lus take the sun in the waning hours of the day gamble, raise hell gently ease into our sleep no jazz, no anticipation On Hearing Koto Music Time, like a buddha breathing taken in unimaginable but livable lengths between the pulling and releasing of strings the warp and weft of spectral music absence as much as presence structured with the randomness of drops from eaves resounding on leaves or the Lucretian swerve of a note and then the man sings he cannot be described as baritone or tenor, Japanese, or sad he merely sings -- his mouth opens and all human sound comes out refracted through his crystalline voice like the bell that calls up to sit and brings us willingly to clarity Afternoon smoke scented, the wind blows across Pi'ilani and out toward the scarred island where it well fall against the patient cliffs and crouch in wait for the waves dark line of storm clouds lying beyond a sun-silvered band of sea we breathe the shimmering light, admiring the closed nature of this cameo Russian Poem 5 varied impressions her foot a slow scratch back and forth in the predawn white heel a pendulum cobalt teacups cold cuts and cream cheese cigarettes surreptitiously placed under the table face between the seats dark eyes looking back unblinking at 2 A.M. soldiers in close formation marching in the darkness full dress, weapons blue lights on troop carriers down wet streets baby carriages randomly parked on gray sidewalks outside childrens' shops the germans laughing raucously thirty bottle of champagne in an obscene row across three tables october rain slanting through the muffler Hitler's men in January stomping their feet in clouds of death as Shostakovich fought them back lips do not sheath the teeth of this political concurrence raw young men stars in their caps working in a ditch near the parade grounds inlaid floors tramped by 20,000 a day tapestries, bouled doors Rembrandt's Isaac the knife from the neck forcibly withheld the father's vacant stare here they would build a Christian cheops on the bones of serfs who worked last year with the latest master so bring on the lapis the mauve and filigreed stones that make the mosaic live! the paddle out to the submarine over the deep cool surge the board but little margin between our glistening bodies mine of pulsing blood and muscle suspended lightly on yours a fathomless sun-pierced blue out here the long black cylinder bobbing in your gentle swell must seem an imposition how much more your kin I am you would embrace me in your arms then rend my slowly with your claws the sailors on the dark deck white skinned blinking in the sun sliding like children off the round bow see us in our conjugal embrace and cannot but sense the love of two who for a moment trust For Ernest vase in the corner next to the tatami in the half sunlight of a waning afternoon anthurium, protea scatter of white paperlike flowers declining bouquet on a promontory between glasspanes chairs arranged haphazardly empty in the room dolls and animals left behind face down earlier scene of play listening quietly to wind and birds cat licking its fur then curling to sleep the dirt screens holding flies in mosquitoes out take the shadow play of tossing leaves the spiders sway webs in the eaves eight legs two by two the four slender poles of their flat world How many afternoons such as this one have come into being and faded away time hanging lightly in the moment sounds of hammering car door closing night hovering in the dreaming air how many silent spaces opened and closed in the yawning of a cat stretching in the sun in the bend of a branch bowing to the breeze how many seconds beat the wings of the fly while gray bottomed clouds promenade the sky The Storm the rats have taken the trees where they sit like small round cats in the stunted stalks of banana waiting white-faced for us to pass tonight the dogs and I will go to the dense outback of the land to source of the distant sound of water rushing -- rain bred torrent the violent storm has distilled itself into a tight motionless bundle of lightning and punctuate rumbling in the clouds over town under the brooding ironwoods the wind blows straight down the moon is half on half off and the only constellation is orion In the Tourist Hotel (Managua) the sound of leaves being swept in the small courtyard followed by water the seven days each one without fail no children no husbands just the broom sweeping wet stone in the first light What's to be done with us? our shrink with the snugly beard says separate but no one ever healed an open wound by leaving it open unless it were festering do we fester? I have a picture of you wondering about me: am I my mother? is blood magnetic? perhaps hatred polarizes? and thus the difficulty it seems in touching and seeing and listening but so often when we are inside each other and are joined beyond the press of skin the grasp of arms the pulse of blood we become the ocean's love of the land sending its steady waves crashing softly, incessantly to liberate it and the land with its strong grip of reef and black rock delivering the sea of it trembling we could embrace the images we have created of each other when they come and remember to call them back like prayer renewed in a black time time is left for us for we can live together and alone but not together and apart we can be ourselves and the other and treat our love accordingly we can remember what we feel and who we are in love