\\
! A CHILD'S GARDEN OF GODS

The summer that my mother fell\\
Into the hole that was herself,\\
We children sat like china dolls\\
waiting mutely on a shelf\\
      For the horror to be done.\\

My Father, who'd begun to drink\\
Jasmine from a turquoise cup,\\
Was practicing his yoga when\\
      That dark mood swallowed Mama up.\\

When autumn came, like birds on wire,\\
Tilting forward in our rows,\\
We waited for our father to\\
Rise from his Oriental pose\\
      And save the fallen lady.\\

We stood around the stone-cold stove\\
The day her secrets gave her back.\\
She ran, and though her hair was damp,\\
And though her fingernails were black,\\
       Our mother still looked pretty.\\

She made a fire to thaw us out,\\
And after we were nicely browned,\\
She hugged us each, and told us all\\
About her travels underground.\\
      Her eyes were black as coffee.\\

She showed us bits of root and seed,\\
And other treasures found below:\\
Eyetooth of mole, old human bone,\\
And jewels she'd hidden long ago.\\
       Things buried always grow.\\

It's winter still.  Our father sits\\
Cross-legged with an empty bowl.\\
Unmoved in the deserted yard,\\
He stares with perfect self-control\\
        Into a wall of snow.\\

         ***

\\
! TO ANTONY, FROM CLEOPATRA\\

Sweetest where her seed is kept\\
And wrapped the way a mother's arms\\
Are wrapped about a newborn babe,\\
The evening is a dark red rose\\
Whose petals layer on layer close\\
Around the hush, their lushness kept\\
      In heart within heart within heart.\\

Husky, bluesy, brimming, dark--\\
The city sings, and in her throat\\
The harbor swells, a vast Amen,\\
The sunset gleams, a gospel note,\\
The night is soul turned inside out,\\
A paradise whose lights recede,\\
      Arc beyond arc beyond arc.\\

On Hallelujah Boulevard,\\
Discarding silken scarves at dusk,\\
The city struts, a gorgeous slut,\\
Who slithers and who shakes until\\
Her thighs glitter like black gutters\\
And her eyes are alleyways\\
      Where thieves whisper Quick! in the dark.\\

Singing:\\
I'm the Honey could'ja, could 'ja\\
In the Hootchy-Kootch-Kootcher;\\
I'm a temptress, I'm a tigress, I'm a tart.\\
I'm a woman with thick hips\\
And thickly painted lips.\\
Oh Honey, smear your fingertips\\
      In the ache of my innermost part.\\

The secrets there laid bare at last\\
As thighs like moonlit bridges part,\\
Infants curl and sailors moor\\
In the milk white arms of girls\\
Who rock them while the city sleeps,\\
An ancient sow with drooping teats\\
      And love folded into her dark.\\

Till like a night made vivid by\\
The tears that shine in Egypt's eyes,\\
Everything that's old and cheap\\
Is transformed by something deep--\\
A rose, unfolding from the heart\\     
Of innocience its scarlet layers\\
      Of art without art without art.\\

 * * *
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