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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