Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

To a Friend

Father Dog-face barks without a sound, The penny candles stare me down. You were so close I could have touched the dead Childhood in your face, Left my mother’s house a bride With a light, Night-light, dawn, to be by your side All night, But wanting pity, pity stood Between us in your face. Nothing troubles the dark: the last Tiffany windows are out. Their ghosts Might be my dutch uncles; pity it’s summer, they’re out of the city. To a Friend I cannot give you much or ask you much. Though I shore myself up until we meet, The words we say are public as the street: Your body is walled up against my touch. Our ghosts bob and hug in the air where we meet, My reason hinges on arcs you draw complete, And yet you are walled up against my touch. Your love for me is, in its way, complete, Like alabaster apples angels eat, But since it is in this world that we meet I cannot give you much or ask you much. You go your way, I mine, and when we meet, Both half-distracted by the smells of the street, Your body is walled up against my touch. 48 door in the mountain My body sings at your table, waits on the street And you pass empty-handed, till when we meet I have been so far, so deep, so cold, so much, My hands, my eyes, my tongue are like bark to the touch. Waiting Ask, and let your words diminish your asking, As your journal has diminished your days, With the next day’s vanity drying your blood, The words you have lost in your notebooks. Ask—do not be afraid. Praise Him for His silence. What I love to ask is what I know, Old thoughts that fit like a boot. What I would hazard clings in my skull: Pride intervenes, like an eyelid. All sound slows down to a monstrous slow repetition, Your times of reflection become a dark shop-window, Your face up against your face. You kneel, you see yourself see yourself kneel, Revile your own looking down at your looking up; Before the words form in the back of your head You have said them over and answered, lives before. O saints, more rollicking sunbeams, more birds about your heads! Catherine, more Catherine-wheels! Sic transit gloria mundi, The quick flax, the swollen globe of water. Sic transit John’s coronation, mortal in celluloid. Underground roots and wires burn under us. John outlives the Journal’s 4-color outsize portrait Suitable for Framing, flapping, no color, No love, in the rain on the side of the paper-shed. dream barker 49 ...