from Hotel Wentley Poems by John Wieners
[Blogger won't let me do the fancy spacing without some HTML magic I haven't the stamina to figure out right now so I improvise with dashes that are just spaces in the orig text. Sorry JW.]
At least the game is over
-------------------------and the line lengthens
Let us stay with what we know.
That love is my strength, that
I am overpowered by it
------------------------desire
------------------------------that too
is on the face: gone stale.
When green was the bed my love
and I laid down upon.
Such it is, heart's complaint,
You hear upon a day in June
And I see no end in view
When summer goes, as it will,
upon the roads, like singing
companions across the land.
Go within man, if you must,
but leave us markers on your way.
South of Mission, Seattle,
over the Sierra Mountains,
the Middle West and Michigan,
moving east again, easy
coming into Chicago and
the cattle country, calling
to each other over canyons,
careful not to be caught
at night, they are still out,
the destroyers, and down
into the South, familiar land,
lush places, blue mountains
of Carolina, in Black Mountain
and you can sleep out, or
straight across into States
I cannot think of their names.
This nation is so large, like
our hands, our love it lives
with no lover, looking only
for the beloved, back home
into the heart, New York,
New England, Vermont green
mountains, and Massachusetts
my city, Boston and the sea.
Again to smell what this calm
ocean cannot tell us. The seasons.
Only the heart remembers
and records in the words
of works
we lay down for those men
who can come to them.