Simone Weil

                                      If I had seen her in Marseilles,

                                      smelling of mûre-musc soap,

                                      I would have thought her a poet

                                      as we hid from the rain in greyblue cafés—

                                      till she enriched her coffee with her blood. 

                                      At times she was almost a tourist,

                                      a young student curious about living,

                                passionate about dying.  In photographs of her,

                                she was the fixed moment among eternal blurs. 

                                      History, a firefly in her hand,

                                   wrestled in the frames of her mystical glasses.

                                      She hated the Author of her script.

                                      Her scream was prefabricated,

                                      the war to fight before

                                      the ensuing battles of buildings and men,

                                      before adopting Tarzan’s yell

                                      with all the passion of that endless afternoon

                                      in Golgotha. 

                               Tropical Dance

                                      You throw yourself into the dance

                                      As a drunk would against a wall,

                                      Your flowery dress splashing wildly

                                      Like a flower garden in a windstorm,

                                      But no flowers drop to your bare feet. 

                                      With what joy, with what marvel,

                                      I watch your hands rise, your hair fly,

                                      Your dress swing like a cape in the wind.

                                      Your mouth opens and you shout fiercely

                                      The voluptuous thrill in your squinting eyes. 

                                      Oh how you dance: is it to show your thighs?

                                      The night you suck up under your dress,

                                  A music heavy as papayas and coconuts falling,

                                      A sensual finish like morning glories

                                      Splayed for the night after a rainstorm. 

                            No Rewind

                                    Some flowers droop

                                    down the shoulders of the vase

                                    like exhausted tongues.

                                    They rebelled against themselves,

                                    refused to live.

                                    Others look away, their necks rough,

                                    their color faded

                                    into the same zone

                                    where our love disappeared. 

                                    “They don’t last,”

                                    you said, so matter-of-factly,

                                    the morning you choked them

                                    into a tight bouquet in water.

                                    Yesterday you brought me a tape,

                                    and a note in a small cream envelope.

                                    Today I listened to the wrong song,

                                    somehow missed the right one.

                                    When your hands fumbled

                                    with the tape player, when your finger

                                    trembled to my silence—

                                    “You’re a dangerous man,”

                                    your note had read.

                                    “Let’s talk about God”—

                                    and your hand orgasmic

                                    followed in its wake,

                                    I knew that today

                                    a death would separate us.

                                    Whatever music had glued us

                                    during the minutes

                                    we converted into history

                                    was frozen in the violet frenzy

                                    that rounded your eyes

                                    and the tape player

                                    that had no rewind. 

                               Stopgap

                                     It was your face that darkened over me

                                     In the back seat of your father’s car.

                                     It was your name I whispered

                                     To the moon on a hilltop in boot camp.

                                     It was your letters that fired me

                                     Through the snow to the freezing latrine.

                                     But in the Black Forest in rain

                                     I trembled like a wet bird for another. 

    

                                            Saturday Inspection

                                                    By the time they arrived

                                                    Our polished dress shoes

                                                    Were white with frost

                                                    We had stamped our feet

                                                    Walked around in our morning crate

                                                    Our Friday night preparations

                                                    Saturday morning deteriorations

                                                    But what joy when it was over

                                                    When we again were free

                                                    In our fatigues and boots

                                                    When we without duty

                                                    Could delude ourselves

                                                    Downtown in our civvies

                                                    That no war was raging

                                                    In our streets, at our table,

                                              And somebody’s jungle and rice paddies

                                                    Would not fit in the box home