I once saw weeping in a wood
The bears that break the heart of God
When dusty grapes hung from the trees

The fish circle the seas a thousand times
a day, never diverging from the endless
path of blue opening up before them. 

Tired now, by candlelight and in the grip
Of much undoing to be done, we strip
   Away at varnish, burn old wills and deeds,

Gleaming in Monday evening candlelight.
Glass and plate and conversation and good
Fortune then unacknowledged even by

Snow fell all night and suddenly there was morning:
a startling vision from a familiar window,
   while yet an ordinary sight: a
         neighboring hill had become itself more

These days our artifacts live in dormitories,
prisons, adopted homes; the world’s museums.
Fragments of stone and bone, white figurines,

The house is humming with many lives today.
Too drowsy even for a slice of apple
or her own glass of wine, she prepares

Beginning as usual in the dark
well of an expensive late-night taxi,
you recall this scene; your father rushes

talked to my father again a dream he seemed happy
perhaps a little older than the last time       told me
he had discovered something called “le jazz hot” 

inside my mother
i make a little fist
& then i punch her