Collected Poems

SPEAK

4Tu Fu woke shuddering on a battlefield Once, in the dead of night, and made out The mangled women, sorting The haggard slant-eyes. The moon was up. 5I am hungry. In two more days It will be spring. So this Is what it feels like. SPEAK To speak in a flat voice Is all that I can do. I have gone every place Asking for you. Wondering where to turn And how the search would end And the last streetlight spin Above me blind. Then I returned rebuffed And saw under the sun The race not to the swift Nor the battle won. Liston dives in the tank, Lord, in Lewiston, Maine, And Ernie Dory's drunk In hell again. And jenny, oh my Jenny Whom I love, rhyme be damned, Has broken her spare beauty In a whorehouse old. She left her new baby In a bus-station can, SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER 149 And sprightly danced away Through Jacksontown. Which is a place I know, One where I got picked up A few shrunk years ago By a good cop. Believe it, Lord, or not. Don't ask me who he was. I speak of flat defeat In a flat voice. I have gone forward with Some, a few lonely some. They have fallen to death. I die with them. Lord, I have loved Thy cursed, The beauty of Thy house: Come down. Come down. Why dost Thou hide thy face? OUTSIDE FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA Along the sprawled body of the derailed Great Northern freight car, I strike a match slowly and lift it slowly. No wind. Beyond town, three heavy white horses Wade all the way to their shoulders In a silo shadow. Suddenly the freight car lurches. The door slams back, a man with a flashlight Calls me good evening. I nod as I write good evening, lonely And sick for home. 150 ...