& speaking of Eliot. . . here's the concluding section of my endless poem, Forth of July:


8

Old men should be explorers.


I lay on the tattered sofa
near Lucky. Her little clay
fisherman tested the Secchi
depth with a black-white O.

Feathered black in Voronezh,
an arrow flew from Muskovy
with a grain in its beak
like sun along a knife-edge.

*

In a garden of huge routes
I found a spear pivoting near
the ides of April. This is where
St. George pinned up the involuted

pattern: star to star,
Janus to July (your hand
plunged into the red wound
with clover, pennyroyal, myrrh).

*

I’ll be in Indiana
living in a shanty
shanty (grainy
boxcar–Hiawatha)

with a cloverleaf
for mercy seat–
red, white, violet
(el Bluejay’s nef ).

*

Fire licked the Rome
of your smile, indivisible
Petrogram–where RW
touches Jerusalem

and threads knot
above Las Cruces.
The nef rows, rows. . .
palms, heartbeats, light.


5.28.2000