FORTUITOUS NOISE

20

Up the River
Big City Blues
Love Affair
Three on a Match

Ed said
to magnify stingrays
so I did

Why is it so simple
this thinking
of outrageous brutality?

The rain returns
frozen, sparkling noisily
in the empty fireplace

at work and at home

I scale the fire escape
in order to scrape
the bus engine again

with my breathing

It’s a terrible and wondrous
weight, this
ceaseless mingling

in space

21

A marvelous barbarism
A blue pill
A precarious accord

Then it was night
again, every negated thing

testing shadows
against our brown stoop

I, who even
today am frightened
by carolers—

their terrible singing grins

In an amnesiac land:

amnesiac oranges
amnesiac bridges
amnesiac glaciers

22

One must be very humane
to say “I don’t know that”

Is there use
in telling

others the words
of others?

Are we allowed to imagine
Adam as a child?

I name people’s cats
I name them: Dirtwater, Thirsty, Cloud with Bones

As a child I wondered endlessly
over the pronunciations

of words such as ‘the’

If we move fast enough
in arbitrary ways
nobody will see us

I dreamt I was entered
by the spirit
of my grandfather

which called itself a current
of fortuitous noise

23

Sexual music—is there any

other kind?

Birdsong
Eyesong
Amsong

The musicality of animals
oscillates in compulsion
like an eyelid

The choreography of the tick
is not small

because it is (relatively) small

The choreography of the tick
is small because it is

not restive

Art is of the animal

instantaneous