Second Childhood Read Free

be.
    This is poverty, not just
    second childhood
    in a divided city.
    But my thanks to the soul-heat
    of the one who works the register
    and shakes the bag.

    Infinite nesting pushes all matter
    towards emptiness:
    child-nodes,
    tree-droppings
    with a root element of null.
    None is always included
    in every cluster
    of children.
    Nothing in nothing
    prepares us.
    Yet a fresh light was shed
    on immortality
    for me climbing the stairs
    firm foot first.
    Everything was in the banister:
    crows on branches, crickets,
    architects, handsaws and democrats.
    Red moon at 3 a.m.

Why Did I Dream
    Why did I dream of Mohammed today?
    Through the folding sheets he expressed his relief
    that his words reached no modern critics.
    He was, he said, only a poet.
    I think I know what he meant
    like the Uzbek scenes
    that make up that whole trilogy by Ali Khamraev.
    The robot that Nebuchadnezzar owned
    was hard to pull apart or analyze without ruining
    each click.
    A series of scenes that could never take place
    might drive people to theorize.
    I tried the night after
    but woke up struggling with machines
    a helpless elder with fingers too weak to bend the bits around the neck.

Flame-Light
    In Anatolia (where I’ve never been) the saffron hills seem to border
    an ocean and the orange car lights mime the same in the sky.
    A hospital and autopsy room and the body are being ripped apart without respect:
    A heart slapped in a bucket: dirt in the trachea and lungs.
    A hospital worker was better than a physician to the body.
    Good with her hands in a bucket
    like a worker at the till in a supermarket.
    She said we have everything in reverse.
    As an example a red corpuscle flew from the corpse
    onto the collar of the detective
    who could name the properties in a drop of blood
    and this way prove there is no God.

The Cloisters
    You stand with the rest of the children holding hands.
    Your little aunt with a fox-skin on her shoulder is showing you
    unicorns in a tapestry and the words:
    “Please wash and love me.”
     
    Did she go to heaven when the membranes
    of The Book were flipped
    by the wind on the hospital roof?
    She wanted to, and not.
    Smoke from the vent gray sheets on which some days are written
    flew apart in entropy’s tendency towards a disorder seemingly insane.

Angelopoulos
    Pulpy islands streak the fog and unify the effect of gray.
    Even electric lights have contours of shade
    because there’s too much stuff from the recent past,
    a gray glassiness behind every lens.
    Silver is always weak.
    Three church spires in one little city pebbles of rain.
    Again, the electric lights: in a strand like citrine.
    Globs of errors open for the two
    gay guys railing markers over wet piers.
    A sick flag buffers in air. Why is the boy dancing?
    He’s white and seems to want attention.
    But it’s the fatherless children the father follows.

Sometimes
    Sometimes a twinkle
    gets in my eyes.
    It’s like a rhinestone
    on a prom dress.
    It shoots light
    so bright I can’t blink
    without tears.
    If I pump my temples
    with my fists
    and close my eyes
    it reddens in blood.
    This is only one possibility
    besides the metaphysical.
    Sometimes it’s
    a prick of sweat
    or a word or a prophet
    sweating at a bus stop.
    There are gangs
    who would kill to know what to name
    such a gem because there is none.

A Child in Old Age
    Every room is still a mansion to you:
    you who wants to live in an Irish hotel!
    To sit in a lobby beside the fire with your feet in a chair.
    To stare at the other children seeking asylum.

    Your brain is a baby.
    And all the ancients are in it still.
    Your heart is a channel
    and a crib for them.
    They rarely come down
    or out in the light
    but steer you awkwardly with their cries.
    Your brain is still becoming
    an independent being
    while your heart always needs air.

    I had an infant who was an orphan who lived between my ears.
    Its sobs could only be heard
    when it circled the pump.
    How it hurt!
    Another infant lived like an octopus