Collected Poems

THE MINNEAPOLIS POEM

A CHRISTMAS GREETING Good evening, Charlie. Yes, I know. You rise, Two lean gray spiders drifting through your eyes. Poor Charlie, hobbling down the hill to find The last bootlegger who might strike them blind, Be dead. A child, I saw you hunch your spine, Wrench your left elbow round, to hold in line The left-hand hollow of your back, as though The kidney prayed for mercy. Years ago. The kidneys do not pray, the kidneys drip. Urine stains at the liver; lip by lip, Affectionate, the snub-nosed demons kiss And sting us back to such a world as this. Charlie, the moon drips slowly in the dark, The mill smoke stains the snow, the gray whores walk, The left-hand hollow fills up, like the tide Drowning the moon, skillful with suicide. Charlie, don't ask me. Charlie go away, I feel my own spine hunching. If I pray, I lose all meaning. I don't know my kind: Sack me, or bury me among the blind. What should I pray for? what can they forgive? You died because you could not bear to live, Pitched off the bridge in Brookside, God knows why. Well, don't remind me. I'm afraid to die, It hurts to die, although the lucky do. Charlie, I don't know what to say to you Except Good Evening, Greetings, and Good Night, God Bless Us Every One. Your grave is white. What are you doing here? THE MINNEAPOLIS POEM to John Logan I . I -wonder how many old men last winter Hungry and frightened by namelessness prowled SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER 139 The Mississippi shore Lashed blind by the wind, dreaming Of suicide in the river. The police remove their cadavers by daybreak And turn them in somewhere. Where? How does the city keep lists of its fathers Who have no names? By Nicollct Island I gaze down at the dark water So beautifully slow. And I wish my brothers good luck And a warm grave. 2. The Chippewa young men Stab one another shrieking Jesus Christ. Split-lipped homosexuals limp in terror of assault. High school backfields search under benches Near the Post Office. Their faces are the rich Raw bacon without eyes. The Walker Art Center crowd stare At the Guthrie Theater. 3Tall Negro girls from Chicago Listen to light songs. They know when the supposed patron Is a plainclothesman. A cop's palm Is a roach dangling down the scorched fangs Of a light bulb. The soul of a cop's eyes Is an eternity of Sunday daybreak in the suburbs Of Jua'rez, Mexico. 4The legless beggars are gone, carried away By white birds. The Artificial Limbs Exchange is gutted 140 And sown with lime. The whalebone crutches and hand-me-down trusses Huddle together dreaming in a desolation Of dry groins. I think of poor men astonished to waken Exposed in broad daylight by the blade Of a strange plough. 5All over the walls of comb cells Automobiles perfumed and blindered Consent with a mutter of high good humor To take their two naps a day. Without sound windows glide back Into dusk. The sockets of a thousand blind bee graves tier upon tier Tower not quite toppling. There are men in this city who labor dawn after dawn To sell me my death. 6. But I could not bear To allow my poor brother my body to die In Minneapolis. The old man Walt Whitman our countryman Is now in America our country Dead. But he was not buried in Minneapolis At least. And no more may I be Please God. 7I want to be lifted up By some great white bird unknown to the police, And soar for a thousand miles and be carefully hidden Modest and golden as one last corn grain, Stored with the secrets of the wheat and the mysterious lives Of the unnamed poor. SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER 141 ...