New Orleans, Louisiana
August, 2005
1.
How is it out? Is, from the sky,
water still coming?
Are trees out? Do you hear
their argument? Do you know
it for an argument: how to manage
(they are yelling) this weather?
Where are birds? Why are they made
clairvoyant—flitting off, fluttering
like leaves on a single branch: they know
to evacuate, to separate from the living
world, about to be changed, world,
and the trees—?
2.
Though I cannot see you
still I know it is
you: man with the hard
kiss, the touch of Scorpion in his blood.
That means life for you is absolute.
There is either hunger
or no hunger. There is either a body pleased—.
You ain’t been blue, no, no, no: the radio’s
dim utterance—the sole utterance.
This dark house. The way we move,
aimless—is that an utterance? The dishes
slowly washed: ignorance or utterance?
The weather outside, weather,
and the trees—.
3.
They are still trees, right, slamming the roof-tiles?
They are trees—the world not yet totally remade?
4.
There is either a body pleased—
or no body. Violence
or there is creation. How are they out?
Not palmetto. I mean, oak. I mean, magnolia.
Aren’t they lonely? Don’t they feel somehow
cheated, somehow violated? Here is my body
for you to use and also to protect—that
was their contract with the birds, who are gone,
who didn’t tell us they were gone. Are you listening?
Can you tell me where they went?
Tell me of their solitude. How they share it.
Tell me how to be that alone
(here is my body, Scorpio, won’t you top it?)
—together and alone.
5.
Is the body responsive?—your question.
But don’t you feel me? My body’s tremor?
My legs? My back-in-an-arc? Each trembling as if
each the alcove for where the birds go?
6.
Splinters are not trees. Trees are not
flesh. Here is the scene:
Two men. Blacked-out. Half-embracing.
As, from the sky, falls the still-coming water.
Life is absolute. There is either danger
in this house or there is love. Either fear
in the radio’s voice (your arrogance will not
protect you) or there is love. Where are the gods
now, prophecy in a hard beak? Let them say:
Your body will not be spared. Let them say: Your life
is not recyclable like the trees.