BE QUIT OF BEING SEEN
It’s a story old, like bribing a teller to yoke
a great geranium to dust your sleep
with soft applause. In martyrs’ sleep,
pain’s price is fairer. Buds withstand the slant
gouge of rain, and sun in equal measure.
And if that means a war can hasten, bolt
in place, and run aground, its limit has
a face. So it can be dealt with.
Glib light
in autumn fluents veins and girds the hand
you shake with. Someone’s near and cold
heather snapped by an assuring wind.
You will not leave the drapes ajar, to bar
that one from entering.
You saw the look
that stranger wore down in the well. You know
to tell him so would spook him, carve a gray
aside into the day and leave an ache
where swifts rest, fluting. If he makes
a move to wipe the sun stung in his brow,
go let him go.
To save him isn’t worth
not knowing why that yellow jacket dropped
from your lamp like a milken eye, and rolled
to tell what it had seen, and twitched in want
of being near, but stopped and saw the look,
whether yours or its, yet still failed on,
in love of being. Watch. Its ailing face
is brighter than what eyes it sees inside
the cloakish morning wet, the curt degrees
of red on backs of necks and ankles.
Most
martyrs, even if they live to burn, won’t
go asking you for kindling. Up out
the well in that chapped-leafed sphere of sky
why does mostly no one think to be kind.