Pilgrimage

First published in The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 12, No. 3, (Summer, 1990), pp. 50-52.

We drive home, the valley floor
flooded with darkness, the baby inside you floating
head down, swaying when the car
turns, a sleeper within
a sleeper. A glove

of moonlight on my hand, I remember
the lake in Maine, my friend angry,
challenging me to swim with him across. We vanished

and reappeared in the swells, flailing,
filling and emptying our hands. I found him floating
on his back, his face warm in the sun, the lake
holding him, hiding him. I won't

wake you, a shadowy rush
of farms and meadows the way they streamed past
the train to Barcelona, you and I sleeping uneasily,
the racket of hammering rails in the tunnels, and out,
the ocean beside us, calm in moonlight.
We stopped, jarred awake
in our little berths.

We climbed into the bus where your purse
was picked-it must have been there-crowded into
the aisle, the small boy behind you,
his terrific concentration.

We got off too soon, and walked
block after block of urban housing: blank,
evacuated. What appeared to be a mountain of rubbish

heaving itself in spires and geysers into the sky
was La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished nightmare
Temple of the Holy Family, an empty shell

as if bombed out, tilted
treelike columns spiraling upward, parabolic
arches and helicoidal surfaces, an eerie warping,
flutter and undulation of angel and snail, its domes
and cupolas encrusted with broken tiles,
cups, plates, and pieces of glass,
called by the local people
The Cathedral of the Poor.

HOSANNA in glitzy letters descending the bone tower,
we read on the Porch of Hope the repeated
motif of "Help us."
We entered: words
everywhere, prayers carved on the shields
of the angels, epistles written as if on parchment,
psalms and gospels engraved over the vault, the length
of the transept, and under the dome,
even the leaded windows woven
with the anagrammatic names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,
the Temple breathing gently, the grottoes
and tender doors of a human lung.

He is buried inside, who finished
his dinner of raw vegetables, almonds, and a glass
of milk with a slice of lemon floating in it, a silent,

peevish man tying the bag of food to his lamp,
away from the mice, a jungle of wires,
looping parabolas weighted
with sacks of sand, the Cathedral
hanging upside down from the ceiling of his studio,

who going to pray was struck
by a streetcar and hurled aside, who was not
recognized because of his clothes, who was taken
to the charity ward of the Hospital of the Holy Cross,
a beggar with a string of celery in his beard,

who had on no underwear, who said good-bye
to the clockmaker who, for 25 pesetas
went 52 times a year to wind
the Temple's clocks, who died
for three days, the church throbbing in his imagination,
whose death mask was fitted by his friend,
the sculptor Flotats, gently pressing the warm clay
into his ears, his eye sockets, remembering
the bridge of his nose,

who knew his church would never be completed,
where the work is the worship,

who said: we make all forms within, like bees.

Porcupine

First published in The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 2, (Spring, 1998), pp. 82-83

Who are you
calling stupid, he growls,
wawling at the back door, snapping and snuffling, your old dog

pierced
like Saint Sebastian. We close
the pliers and make him wince, plucking the quills. What was it,

passing at night,
its helmet and javelin-rattle,
a secret animal dragging its quiver through the leaves? We see

its work, the boned
sapling slipped from its sugary sleeve,
the corner-post gnawed through letting the shed slump, and now

this gory dog,
the barbed spears working
deeper, the slow trajectory of arrows into the heart and lungs.

It is love,
this animal whine, our hands
bloodied, tugging the needles from his lips, his tongue? Is it

the roar of glory,
the headlong blind rush, the creature
cornered, backing toward him, quills bristling? What makes him

gnash, his face
smutched, puffy? What makes him
forget himself, and hound it down, and seize it in his mouth?

Choir Invisible

First published in The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 2, (Spring, 1998), pp. 81-82

Rain and wind
all night dragging the fleshy blanket
of petals over you, crimson, hectic, what do you care, the stiff

bud, the bunched
tissue swelling open, the flouncy
nodding blossom bending its stem to the grave? We scan the names

and dates, the rose
smothered in weeds, the rose
opening its lips, spreading the fingers of a hand, the Old World

rose a tidal
surge of scent and psalming bees,
this deep-rooted flowering thicket of memory, the upward gushing

rose of my life,
this late, lush bloom, the waste-
paper wads cluttering the runners, crumpled, infolded, a white

spider crouching
in the milky petals, the fallen tree
flailing its roots, the old crow walking like a man. A headstone

heaved over,
smacked open with a sledge,
the marble gleams white as the meat of a coconut, the vandals

of time and tools
and words at work, their furtive dash,
a brief fluorescence: honey-gold with a coral stamen, or the red

catch of sex,
the seed-hip fat and fertile, the rampant
hedge rose a nervous burbling of voices and laughter, Grandmother

Rose tugging
her needle, the Polish rose
red like a shriek, odorless, thorned to the root, or the bluish

petals of a name
she calls, opening the door, and setting
down her bags, calling, and listening, but no one is there.