The Martians(136)

VISITING

No one on Mars has a home

ceaseless wandering motel to motel

those friends I had all moved along

most will never cross paths again

strange to think each life is only

a few years long

settle down in your habits

same thing every day

food rooms streets friends

you can think it will go on

forever

AFTER A MOVE

One night I half awoke from a dream

And struggled up to go to the bathroom.

Past bookcases to the foot of the bed, left through

The doorway, touch the wall—but it wasn't there.

  Emptiness: timeless moment, dark nowhere,

  The space between the stars—

Ah. A different bedroom

With no wall there, no bookcases—

A straight shot to a different bathroom,

In a different apartment.

I realized where I was and

A whole world slipped away.

CANYON COLOR

In Lazuli Canyon, boating.

Sheet ice over shadowed stream

Crackling under our bow.

Stream grows wide, curves into sunlight:

A deep bend in the ancient channel.

Plumes of frost at every breath.

Endless rise of the red canyon,

Canyon in canyons, no end to them.

Black lines web rust sandstone:

Wind-carved boulder over us.

There, on a wet red beach—

Green moss, green sedge. Green.

Not nature, not culture: just Mars.

Western sky deep violet,

Two evening stars, one white one blue:

Venus, and the Earth.

VASTITAS BOREALIS

The red rock and sand are all under water

that we ourselves pumped out of the ground

drowning what little we knew at the time

of this place as it was in the air

like gas burned off in a welder's fire



The whole world flicking before us like fire

tossing its orange flames into the air

that was not here at the time

we first stepped out on this ground

where everything is writ in water

NIGHT SONG

The baby cries out

I get up to check

He is still asleep

I go back to bed



So many hours

Spent like this

Awake in the night

The family asleep



Wife moves her leg against me

Wind pours in the south window

Rumble of distant night train

Crickets' vibrant electric chorus



Thoughts pulsing up and down

Mind ranging here and there

How many times

DESOLATION

Above the dip of the pass float clouds.

Sunbeams spray the skyline ridge.

White granite, orange granite,

Patches of snow. A lake.

Clustered in rocks,

Trees. Shadows.

The lake ripples its

Chill snow reflections:

Fish, breaking the surface.

Blooming circles on the water,

Why can't the heart grow as fast?

ANOTHER NIGHT SONG

Toss and turn in rumpled sheets

Hot but cold. Small pains

Smolder in the flesh.

Gears of the mind half-engaged:

The years grind jumbled and broken.

Regret, nostalgia, grief-at-nothing,

Grief-at-something, worry at this and that,

Anxiety without cause, confusion,

The past: remember? remember?



Shards of painted glass. Memory

Speaks in a language

You no longer understand.

The future you understand too well.

Pain in the knee, prescient

Sighs from the wife,

From the boys in their room—

With redoubled effort, sleep, sleep!

SIX THOUGHTS ON THE USES OF ART

for Pierre-Paul Durastanti and Yves Frèmion

1. What's in My Pocket

I remember during my year in Boston

I was walking alone at sunset by the Charles

The riverbank all covered with snow

The trees black spikes against the sky

The river's surface a glossy sheen



Cold hand thrust into down jacket pocket

I felt a book I had left behind

Title forgotten just a book any book

But suddenly all I saw was joy

2. In the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth

The passage when each section

of the choir begins to sing

a different song and the orchestra echoes

these parts or adds their own in a

thick fugue during which so many

melodies are being sung at once they can

only be grasped as whole sound it always

occurs to me Beethoven wrote

this music when he was entirely

deaf for him it was all just patterns

on a page he had to imagine the confluence

of voices singing in his mind he had

to be a novelist

3. Reading Emerson's Journal

“Grief runs off us

Like water off a duck"



Ah Waldo Waldo

If only it were so

But it is the verso

Grief seeps in us

Like a blotter takes ink

4. The Walkman

Running to Satyagraha

I saw a hawk soaring

and every turn every shift of its wings was

sung aloud in the sunny air

5. Dreams Are Real

The day passes into a book

For a time we are outside

Time at sea in an open boat



Rogue waves hit from nowhere

Cast into the next reality

Shackleton saw a wave so big



He thought it was a cloud

The boat rolled under and came

Up in a new world later



On South Georgia Island

Sleeping in a cave he leaped

To his feet shouting and hit