Author of Every Room We ever Slept In. Founder and director of YMCA National Writer's Voice, and Century films, he teachs in MFA programs in Bennington College and The New School.

Here's a corny card I found in an old shop

on Main Street —two angels

who don't hesitate to kiss each other's lips.

I walk into the market with the greatest of ease

and buy a yogurt and low-fat potato chips.

And a woman strolls in and buys a quart of milk

and no one admits it is something else she wants.

They sit around the fireplace at night and dram

they have a fire burning inside them, too. Why

is it so difficult for them? Sure,

I am standing outside their windows as if

it were a natural part of life.

I have something I meant to say. It's a rare moment

when the loves of the past walk from the fire.

In August the salt-spray of the sea-town

I live in settles

on the sidewalks. And the one eating

with his mouth open,

talking endlessly about shoes

is gazing out

on the harbor. I hate him because

to say he is mad is to say

his troubles are not like mine. I find others

like me, hands in pockets,

walking into the movie theater, their voices

softening, with a faint melody,

as the house lights go off-white-to-yellow,

black —everyone partners

against the bright world outside.

I am not ashamed

of the tears on my face. But, outside,

the stories of others

do not move me. I buy some tea and cookies,

talk to no one.

I'm afraid if I come

I'll sound like someone

I don't know—luoder, deeper

and repeated over and over,

every soft-flung syllable,

salt-spray of irregular breathing.

Even the possibility of it

doesn't move me,

thinking about it in front of her.

Excited, and wanting like anything

to fuck her,

everything gathers itself up

inside me and then abruptly stops.

I'm from another planet, I say,

opening a bottle of wine on the bed.

I can change before the dark does.

A city hushed, reduced to breathing

into her ear,

for so long the moon

no long round but a tunnel

toward the river.

Is this okay? It's so much better

when I don't ask.

(Born in Swansea, England, in 1914 - New York 1953)

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shakll calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

The conversation of prayers about to be said

By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs

Who climbs to his dying love in her high room,

The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move

and the other full of tears that she will be dead,

Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise

Into the answering skies from the green ground,

From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed.

The sound about to be said in the two prayers

For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies

Will be the same grief flying. Whom shall they calm?

Shall the child sleep unharmed or the man be crying?

The conversation of prayers about to be said

Turns on the quick and the dead, and the man on the stairs

To-night shall find no dying but alive and warm

In the fire of his care his love in the high room.

And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer

Shall drown in a grief as deep as his true grave,

And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep,

Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.

Who

Are you

Who is born

In the next room

So loud to my own

That I can hear the womb

Opening and the dark run

Over the ghost and the dropped son

Behind the wall thin as a wren's bone?

In the birth bloody room unknown

To the burn and turn of time

And the heart print of man

Bows no baptism

But dark alone

Blessing on

The wild

Child.

I

Must lie

Still as stone

By the wren bone

Wall hearing the moan

Of the mother hidden

And the shadowed head of pain

Casting to-morrow like a thorn

And the midwiwes of miracle sing

Until the turbulent new born

Burns me his name and his flame

And the winged wall is torn

By his torrid crown

And the dark thrown

From his loin

To bright

Light.

When

The wren

Bone writhes down

And the first dawn

Furied by his stream

Swarms on the kingdom come

Of the dazzler of heaven

And the splashed mothering maiden

Who bore him with a bonfire in

His mouth and rocked him like a storm

I shall run lost in sudden

Terror and shining from

The once hooded room

Crying in vain

In the caldron

Of his

Kiss

In

The spin

Of the sun

In the spuming

Cyclone of his wing

For I was lost who am

Crying at the man drenched throne

In the first fury of his stream

And the lightnings of adoration

Back to black silence melt and mourn

For I was lost who have come

To dumbfounding haven

And the finding one

And the high noon

Of his wound

Blinds my

Cry.