Three Poems of June 25, 2008

I took one course in Poetry in (1978) by the then,NJ poet Laureate Gerald Stern; one of my favourite poems was this: Blue Skies, White Breasts Green Trees (from "Lucky Life" 1977 Lamont Poetry Selection) What I took to be a man in a white beard turned out to be a woman in a silk babushka weeping in the front seat of her car; and what I took to be a seven-branched candelabrum with the wax dripping over the edges turned out to be a horse's skull with its teeth sticking out of the sockets. It was my brain fooling me, sending me false images, turning crows into leaves and corpses into bottles, and it was my brain that betrayed me completely sending me entirely uncoded material, for what I thought was a soggy newspaper turned out to be the first Book of Concealment, written in English, and what I thought was a grasshopper on the windshield turned out to be the Faithful Shepherd chewing blood, and what I thought was, finally, the real hand of God turned out to be only a guy wire and a pair of broken sunglasses. I used to believe the brain did its work through faithful charges and I lived in sweet surroundings for the brain, I thought it needed blue skies, white breasts, green trees, to excite and absorb it, and I wandered through the golf courses dreaming of pleasure and struggled through the pool dreaming of happiness. Now if I close my eyes I can see the uncontrolled waves closing and opening of their own accord and I can see the pins sticking out in unbelievable places, and I can see the two lobes floating like two old barrels on the Hudson, I am ready to reverse everything now for the sake of the brain. I am ready to take the woman with the white scarf in my arms and stop her moaning, and I am ready to light the horse's teeth, and I am ready to stroke the dry leaves. For it was kisses and only kisses, and not a stone knife in the neck that ruined me, and it was my right arm, full of power and judgment, and not my left arm twisted backwards to express vagrancy, and it was the separation that I made and not the rain on the window, or the pubic hairs sticking out of my mouth, and it was not really New York falling into the sea, and it was not Nietzsche choking on an ice cream cone, and it was not the president lying dead again on the floor, and it was not the sand covering me up to my chin, and it was not my thick arms ripping apart and old floor, and it was not my charm, breaking up an entire room. It was my delicacy, my stupid delicacy, and my sorrow. It was my ghost, my old exhausted ghost, that I dressed in white, and sent across the river, weeping and weeping and weeping inside his torn sheet. Gerry gave me an "A" for the course and said my poems reminded him of DH Lawrence. It was another 27 years or so, before I found the ghost I am.