love poem

My mother is scared of the world.
She left my father after forty years.
She was like, Happy anniversary, goodbye;

I respect that.
The moon tonight is dazzling, is full
of itself but not quite full.

A man should not love the moon, said Milosz.
Not exactly. He translated himself
into saying it. A man should not love translation;

there"s so much I can"t know. An hour ago,
marking time with someone I would like to like,
we passed some trees and there were crickets

Weigh odds. Pray. Pay bills.
Tell truth. Love well. Serve real gods.
Meanwhile, daffodils.

*

In a lightning bolt
of memory,
I see our statue of Buddha
(a wedding gift from Uncle Gene
which always sat
on top of the speaker cabinet.
When a visitor asked,
"So, does Buddha like jazz?"
you said, "I hope so.
He's been getting it up the ass
for a long time."

It was your idea
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn"t know anything that big
could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.

I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad lib as I caress.
A soul is light when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on.

The angels I love
bicker over cod guts and snapper spines.
They joust for flounder skulls and pick the bones clean,
screaming. Their harsh, fine voices
break across my town
in a language lost to my kind,
thoughtless in the clear now of now
without death. Christ, walk down streets paved
with rain to me and you drown in my choir,
my angels beating prayer under wing
which is the want I have not loved
well. Where did my weather go? Meet me
where my hidden weather went,
where praise and rain
are never spent.

Have you love for me,
Yours my love shall be,
While the days of life are flowing.
Short was summer's stay,
Grass now pales away,
With our play will come regrowing.

What you said last year
Sounds yet in my ear, —
Birdlike at the window sitting,
Tapping, trilling there,
Singing, in would bear
Joy the warmth of sun befitting.

Litli-litli-lu,
Do you hear me too,
Youth behind the birch-trees biding?
Now the words I send, —
Darkness will attend,
May be you can give them guiding.

Love thy neighbor, to Christ be leal!
Crush him never with iron-heel,
Though in the dust he 's lying!
All the living responsive await
Love with power to recreate,
Needing alone the trying.

Her, my own sad love divine,
Did I pierce as with a knife,
Stabbed with words that seemed not mine
Her more dear to me than life.

And she raised, she raised her head,
Slow that smile, pale to the brow:
" Lovely songs when I am dead
You will make for me; but how
Shall I hear them then? " she said,
" Make them now, O make them now! "

Come let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the Earth is brief —
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief.
For standard of our love not theirs we take;
If we go hence to-day
Fill the high cup that is so soon to break
With richer wine than they!

Ay, since beyond these walls no heavens there be
Joy to revive or wasted youth repair,
I'll not bedim the lovely flame in thee
Nor sully the sad splendour that we wear.