Burning the Letters

I made a fire; being tired

Of the white fists of old

Letters and their death rattle

When I came too close to the wastebasket

What did they know that I didn't?

Grain by grain, they unrolled

Sands where a dream of clear water

Grinned like a getaway car.

I am not subtle

Love, love, and well, I was tired

Of cardboard cartons the color of cement or a dog pack

Holding in it's hate

Dully, under a pack of men in red jackets,

And the eyes and times of the postmarks.

This fire may lick and fawn, but it is merciless:

A glass case

My fingers would enter although

They melt and sag, they are told

Do not touch.

And here is an end to the writing,

The spry hooks that bend and cringe and the smiles, the smiles

And at least it will be a good place now, the attic.

At least I won't be strung just under the surface,

Dumb fish

With one tin eye,

Watching for glints,

Riding my Arctic

Between this wish and that wish.

So, I poke at the carbon birds in my housedress.

They are more beautiful than my bodiless owl,

They console me—

Rising and flying, but blinded.

They would flutter off, black and glittering, they would be coal angels

Only they have nothing to say but anybody.

I have seen to that.

With the butt of a rake

I flake up papers that breathe like people,

I fan them out

Between the yellow lettuces and the German cabbage

Involved in it's weird blue dreams

Involved in a foetus.

And a name with black edges

Wilts at my foot,

Sinuous orchis

In a nest of root-hairs and boredom—

Pale eyes, patent-leather gutturals!

Warm rain greases my hair, extinguishes nothing.

My veins glow like trees.

The dogs are tearing a fox. This is what it is like

A read burst and a cry

That splits from it's ripped bag and does not stop

With that dead eye

And the stuffed expression, but goes on

Dyeing the air,

Telling the particles of the clouds, the leaves, the water

What immortality is. That it is immortal.