Collected Poems

she'd known all along of that

other woman I was keeping in town.

And I fear, my friends,

I am yet to hear

the last of it.

Knowing Robs Us

Knowing robs us of wonder.

Had it not ripped apart

the fearful robes of primordial Night

to steal the design that crafted horns

on doghead and sowed insurrection

overnight in the homely beak

of a hen; had reason not given us

assurance that day will daily break

and the sun's array return to disarm

night's fantastic figurations—

each daybreak

would be garlanded at the city gate

and escorted with royal drums

to a stupendous festival

of an amazed world.

One day

after the passage of a dark April storm

ecstatic birds followed its furrows

sowing songs of daybreak though the time

was now past noon, their sparkling

notes sprouting green incantations

everywhere to free the world

from harmattan death.

But for me