Outcast
He sleeps along the empty street
cobwebs sticking to his clothes;
the dark and jealous lover grief
has trailed him thru the world he knows.
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Sad, Louise Louis, in English Clear filters
On Laying a Wreath
Yesterday is always calling,
"that you, dear?" Light and laughter
under the door — (as I stand outside
laying this wreath on the mound
memory marks with a monument) —
windows lit with lamps —
an intimate clatter of cups,
hassle of silver, wine jeweling a glass,
a bubble of suds, a scurry upstairs
and a banter! Pink spread. Slippers
smothered in carpet. A celluloid rattle.
The music stand in the bay window.
Sunlight mottling the battered bookcase
by the stairs where the dog is
napping . . .
I lay my wreath who know late
The Tear
Feel it drop upon your hand
Salt of wounds you understand.
Warm as breath. Shattered belief
Crystal of a global grief.
Lost Lamb
He moved as in an eddy—
a perpetual compulsion
to go contrary to the direction
his body took . . .
saying, "yes" for "no", "no" for "yes."
Winning medals for accuracy
in the exercise kept him
a one-armed driver.
Always when he and the stars
got together . . . and the katydids
drilled into his secret,
(let the laughter off
so the tears rolled out)
he climbed up over the edge
of orthodoxy——and sat
with God.
Devotion
My heart cries out
from every window, and from every sill
it peers and leans;
my heart will not be still.
Dumb beast with grieving for its kind,
I cannot make it understand —
It has no mind.
Earth's brown cupboard holds its only love;
sterile and innocent death puts its vow
of silence and of celibate surcease . . .
My heart keeps running errands useless now.
I have no peace.
Tell me, beloved, where you lie
within the fretless household, like a queen,
how can my heart know that you are dead —
what does that mean?
Shared
When swift your grief
then tight my arms
cling round the threadbare pattern — yours.
And once again I
seem to feel
the ancient black inquisitors!
Make fast the knot
that ties your heart
and does not let it burst — I know.
The arrow lodges
where the heart
throbs with the blood that cannot flow.
Nor look to me
who have no words
but clasp the pattern that you keep
For I am binding
Floodtide
We went to where the bridge had been . . .
as birds still tethered by a thread,
spanning desolation's arc
dividing stress by what we said.
One silent . . . while the other talked;
self-moving bridges as we walked.
Ah, Pity!
Ah! Pity, lying curled as wayfarers
lost, in some unguarded corner;
ah! Pity, lying in the heart,
shunted and limping as a mongrel dog
once someone's shadow of devotion.
Bring wine for Pity and crusts
from bread baked in the richest ovens!
Light candles for Pity,
perhaps she will be tempted to believe
in something more than her abandonment.
Strong men throw coins to her
and she has seen their garlands
laid against the stones
where they had said she died.
Rituals are read to her, tabernacles built
by those who say that they remember.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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