Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972

You, coming domestic after years to gentle the range, get out the typewriter and start back. Your tale. 1972 FOR THE useless I dreamed I referred to as you at the phone to assert: Be kinder to your self yet you have been in poor health and wouldn't resolution The waste of my love is going in this manner attempting to prevent from your self i've got continually questioned concerning the leftover strength, water speeding down a hill lengthy after the rains have stopped or the fireplace you must visit mattress from yet can't go away, burning-down yet no longer burnt-down the pink coals extra severe, extra curious of their flashing and death than you need they have been sitting there lengthy after nighttime 1972 FROM A SURVIVOR The pact that we made used to be the normal pact of guys & ladies in these days I don’t be aware of who we idea we have been that our personalities may possibly withstand the disasters of the race fortunate or unfortunate, we didn’t recognize the race had disasters of that order and that we have been going to proportion them Like every person else, we considered ourselves as exact Your physique is as vibrant to me because it ever was once: much more considering that my feeling for it's clearer: i do know what it may do and will now not do it's not the physique of a god or something with strength over my existence subsequent 12 months it's going to were two decades and also you are wastefully lifeless who may need made the jump we talked, too past due, of creating which I stay now now not as a bounce yet a succession of short, remarkable routine each making attainable the subsequent 1972 AUGUST horses in yellow gentle consuming providence apples lower than a tree as summer time tears apart  milkweeds stagger and grasses develop extra ragged they are saying there are ions within the solar neutralizing magnetic fields on the earth a way to provide an explanation for what this week has been, and the single sooner than it! If i'm flesh sunning on rock if i'm mind burning in fluorescent gentle if i'm dream like a twine with hearth throbbing alongside it if i'm loss of life to guy i must are aware of it His brain is simply too uncomplicated, i will not move on sharing his nightmares my very own have gotten clearer, they open into prehistory which feels like a village lit with blood the place the entire fathers are crying: My son is mine! 1972 IV MEDITATIONS FOR A SAVAGE baby MEDITATIONS FOR A SAVAGE baby (The prose passages are from J-M Itard’s account of The Wild Boy of Aveyron, as translated through G. and M. Humphrey) I there has been a profound indifference to the items of our pleasures and of our fictitious wishes; there has been nonetheless . . . so excessive a fondness for the liberty of the fields . . . that he will surely have escaped into the wooded area had now not the main inflexible precautions been taken . . . of their personal means, by way of their very own lighting fixtures they attempted to deal with you attempted to educate you to care for items in their being concerned: glossed oak planks, glass whirled in a hearth to most unlikely thinness to coach you names for issues you probably did now not desire muslin shirred opposed to the solar linen on a sack of feathers locks, keys containers with cash within they attempted to make you are feeling the significance of a bit of cowhide sewn round a package deal of leaves inspired with indicators to educate you language: the thread their lives have been strung on II whilst thought of from a extra normal and philosophic viewpoint, those scars undergo witness .