Honey and Salt Read online

and you step out of the way with respect,

  with high respect, and surprise near to shock

  as you say,

  Dear God, he’s big,

  big like stupendous is big,

  heavy and elephantine and funny,

  immense and slow and easy.

  I’m asking, is love an elephant?

  Or could it be love is a snake—like a rattlesnake,

  like a creeping winding slithering rattlesnake

  with fangs—poison fangs they tell me,

  and when the bite of it gets you

  then you run crying for help

  if you don’t fall cold and dead on the way.

  Can love be a snake?

  Or would you say love is a flamingo, with pink

  feathers—

  a soft sunset pink, a sweet gleaming naked

  pink—

  and with enough long pink feathers

  you could make the fan for a fan dance

  and hear a girl telling her lover,

  Speak, my chosen one,

  and give me your wish

  as to what manner of fan dance

  you would have from me

  in the cool of evening

  or the black velvet sheen of midnight.

  Could it be love is a flamingo?

  Or is love a big red apple, and you don’t know

  whether to bite into it—and you knock on wood

  and call off your luck numbers and hold your

  breath—

  and you put your teeth into it and get a

  mouthful,

  tasting all there is to it,

  and whether it’s sweet and wild

  or a dry mush you want to spit out,

  it’s something else than you expected.

  I’m asking, sir, is love a big red apple?

  Or maybe love is goofer dust, I hadn’t thought

  about that—

  for you go to the goofer tree at midnight

  and gather the leaves and crush them into fine

  dust,

  very fine dust, sir, and when your man sleeps

  you sprinkle it in his shoes and he’s helpless

  and from then on he can’t get away from you,

  he’s snared and tangled and can’t keep from

  loving you.

  Could goofer dust be the answer?

  And I’ve heard some say love is a spy and a

  sneak,

  a blatherer, a gabby mouth,

  tattling and tittering as it tattles,

  and you believe it and take it to your heart

  and nurse it like good news,

  like heaven-sent news meant for you

  and you only—precious little you.

  Have you heard love comes creeping and cheating

  like that?

  ***

  ***

  And are they after beguiling and befoozling us

  when they tell us love is a rose, a red red rose,

  the mystery of leaves folded over and under

  and you can take it to pieces and throw it away

  petal by petal into the wind blowing it away

  or you can wear it for a soft spot of crimson

  in your hair, at your breast,

  and you can waltz and tango wearing your sweet

  crimson rose

  and take it home and lay it on a window sill and see it

  wither brown, curl black, and shrivel

  until one day you’re not careful

  and it crackles into dust in your hand

  and the wind whisks it whither you know not,

  whither you care not,

  for it is just one more flame of a rose

  that came with its red blush and crimson bloom

  and did the best it could with what it had

  and nobody wins, nobody loses,

  and what’s one more rose

  when on any street corner

  in bright summer mornings

  you see them with bunches of roses,

  their hands out toward you calling,

  Roses today, fresh roses,

  fresh-cut roses today

  a rose for you sir,

  the ladies like roses,

  now is the time,

  fresh roses sir.

  And I’m waiting—for days and weeks and months

  I’ve been waiting to see some flower seller,

  one of those hawkers of roses,

  I’ve been waiting to hear one of them calling,

  A cabbage with every rose,

  a good sweet cabbage with every rose,

  a head of cabbage for soup or slaw or stew,

  cabbage with the leaves folded over

  and under like a miracle

  and you can eat it and stand up and walk,

  today and today only your last chance

  a head of cabbage with every single lovely rose.

  And any time and any day I hear a flower seller so calling

  I shall be quick and I shall buy

  two roses and two cabbages,

  the roses for my lover

  and the cabbages for little luckless me.

  Or am I wrong—is love a rose you can buy and give away and keep for yourself cabbages, my lord and master, cabbages, kind sir?

  I am asking, can you?

  And it won’t help any, it won’t get us anywhere,

  it won’t wipe away what has been

  nor hold off what is to be,

  if you hear me saying

  love is a little white bird

  and the flight of it so fast

  you can’t see it

  and you know it’s there

  only by the faint whirr of its wings

  and the hush song coming so low to your ears

  you fear it might be silence

  and you listen keen and you listen long

  and you know it’s more than silence

  for you get the hush song so lovely

  it hurts and cuts into your heart

  and what you want is to give more than you can get

  and you’d like to write it but it can’t be written

  and you’d like to sing it but you don’t dare try

  because the little white bird sings it better than you can

  so you listen and while you listen you pray

  and after you pray you meditate, then pray more

  and one day it’s as though a great slow wind

  had washed you clean and strong inside and out

  and another day it’s as though you had gone to sleep

  in an early afternoon sunfall and your sleeping heart

  dumb and cold as a round polished stone,

  and the little white bird’s hush song

  telling you nothing can harm you,

  the days to come can weave in and weave out

  and spin their fabrics and designs for you

  and nothing can harm you—

  unless you change yourself into a thing of harm

  nothing can harm you.

  ***

  ***

  The little white bird is my candidate.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you

  the little white bird you can’t see

  though you can hear its hush song

  and when you hear that hush song it’s love

  and I’m ready to swear to it—

  you can bring in a stack of affidavits

  and I’ll swear to it and sign my name

  to every last one, so help me God.

  And if a fat bumbling shopworn court clerk tells me,

  Hold up your hand, I’ll hold up my hand all right

  and when he bumbles and mumbles to me like I was

  one more witness it was work for him to give the oath to,

  when he blabs, You do solemnly swear so help you God

  that in this cause you will tell the truth,

  the whole truth and nothing but the truth,

  I ’
ll say to him, I do, and I ’ll say to myself,

  And no thanks to you and you could be more

  immaculate

  with the name of God.

  I am done.

  I have finished.

  I give you the little white bird—

  and my thanks for your hearing me—

  and my prayers for you,

  my deep silent prayers.

  Offering and Rebuff

  I could love you

  as dry roots love rain.

  I could hold you

  as branches in the wind

  brandish petals.

  Forgive me for speaking

  so soon.

  ***

  ***

  Let your heart look

  on white sea spray

  and be lonely.

  Love is a fool star.

  You and a ring of stars

  may mention my name

  and then forget me.

  Love is a fool star.

  Morning Glory Blue

  The blue of morning glory climbs fences and houses.

  It is a Gettysburg Union blue setting itself against

  a morning haze.

  The blue of morning glory spots and spatters a rail

  fence.

  The fence zigzags and the morning glory staggers on

  a path of sea-blue, sky-blue, Gettysburg Union blue.

  High Moments

  Keep this flower to remember me by.

  So she told him.

  Keep this, remember me, remember.

  Fold this flower where you never forget.

  Put me by where time no longer counts.

  Then come back to a sure remembering.

  Night itself, night is one long dark flower.

  She said night knows deep rememberings,

  All flowers being some kind of remembering

  And night itself folding up like

  many smooth dark flowers.

  Find me like the night finds.

  She measured herself so.

  Keep me like the night keeps

  For I have night deeps in me.

  Flesh is a doom and a prison.

  Flesh jails those only flesh.

  Air speaks nevertheless,

  spray, fire, air,

  thin voices beyond capture

  save only in remembering

  the luster of lost stars,

  the reach for a wafer of moon.

  Let us talk it over long

  and wear cream gold buttons

  and be proud we have anger and pride together,

  remembering high loveliness hovers in time

  and is made of passing moments.

  I have kept high moments.

  They go round and round in me.

  Mummy

  Blood is blood and bone is bone.

  All bloods are red and all bones white.

  The beginning is being born.

  The end is being dead.

  The magnificent repeated themes of line and color

  forming the final exterior of a Pharaoh mummy

  try to appeal otherwise and fix an affirmation

  of the blood there yet and the bones there yet.

  Nevertheless and for all the exquisite patterning

  The blood is dry as dust and the bones obey no voices

  Telling them to rise and walk.

  Some such Pharaohs are born with a name,

  one more of a line of names.

  Some such Pharaohs die with music and mourning

  and sleep under careful epitaphs.

  Yet they and the scrubs, the rabble, the hoi polloi

  end in the same democracy to never fail them all,

  to be true to each, to render the blood and bones

  of high and humble the dust of homage.

  This is the timeworm chant of the grand democrat

  Death: dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

  For them all, scrub or wellborn, the hustle, the race,

  the hullabaloo, is over.

  They no longer earn their livings.

  They no longer take what is handed them.

  Old Hokusai Print

  In a house he remembers in the Howlong valley

  not far from bends of the Shooshoo river

  where each of the leaves of fall

  is a pigeon foot of gold on the blue:

  there is a house of a thousand windows

  and in every window the same woman

  and she too remembers better than she forgets:

  she too has one wish for every window:

  and the mountains forty miles away

  rise and fade, come and go,

  in lights and mist there and not there,

  beckoning as mountains seen on a Monday,

  phantoms traveled away on a Tuesday,

  scrawls in a dim blot on Wednesday,

  gone into grey shawls on Friday,

  lost and found in half lavenders often,

  back again one day saying they were not gone,

  not gone at all, being merely unseen,

  the white snow on the blue peaks no dream snow,

  no dream at all the sawtooth line of purple garments.

  Can a skyline share itself like drums in the heart?

  One Parting

  Why did he write to her,

  “I can’t live with you"?

  And why did she write to him,

  “I can’t live without you”?

  For he went west, she went east,

  And they both lived.

  Ever a Seeker

  The fingers turn the pages.

  The pages unfold as a scroll.

  There was the time there was no America.

  Then came on the scroll an early

  America, a land of beginnings,

  an American being born.

  Then came a later America, seeker

  and finder, yet ever more seeker

  than finder, ever seeking its way

  amid storm and dream.

  Old Music for Quiet Hearts

  Be still as before oh pool

  Be blue and still oh pool

  As before blue as before still

  Oh pool of the many communions

  A wingprint may come

  Flash over and be gone

  A yellow leaf may fall

  May sink and join

  Companion fallen leaves

  The print of blue sky

  The night bowl of stars

  These far off pass and bypass

  Over you blue over you still

  Oh pool of the many communions

  Now hold your quiet glass oh pool

  Now keep your mirrorlight blue

  They come and they go

  And one and all

  You know them one and all

  And they know not you

  Nor you nor your mirrorlight blue

  Only old music for quiet hearts;

  Personalia

  The personal idiom of a corn shock satisfies me.

  So does the attack of a high note by an Australian mezzosoprano.

  Also the face and body blow punishment taken by the boilermaker who won the world’s championship belt.

  I find majesty in the remembrance of a stump speech by John P. Altgeld explaining his act as governor of Illinois in the pardon of four convicts.