For Carl Rakosi and Robert Creeley
Last of My Singing Fathers
In memoriam Carl Rakosi:
passed
dead
(you might say, not one
to mince words) at last,
the
century gone to bed
with you
Carl, quietly
proud
to be
Charles, Churl, free
man
beholden to none—
standing
with
laborers
on the
street, no
poet
sitting on his exquisite ass—
at
eighty,
reciting
your epic elegy on the decline
& last days of your word brother
George Oppen,
you
demanded only
silence
from your audience,
reciting
lines into the darkness
that
we all breathe
together
more deeply
into the
unmeasured silence that
the
voice itself
find its
own inner rhythm, dissolve—
a
heartbeat—
aged
sailor afloat among endless
stars
& winds, no regrets, bemused,
surprised,
aware—
you were
amused, too,
when
Allen Ginsberg gave us
oatmeal
& seaweed breakfast
then
took a call & castigated his caller
(who
would've cut his balls off,
blaming
his religion)—
bright
morning across
the
kitchen table, bowl of fruit, open door
& breeze among potentillas beyond—
so Carl
I salute you
old
friend who signed me ally
when we
read together,
who
later recommended the sephardic poets
of
the
Jewish Eagle in thought—
last
of my singing fathers—
small
wrists, fine eyes, gentle
touch,
yet
firm & kind
Two for Creeley
For Love
in
tears her
marriage
in ruins
she
poked thru
my
books until
lighting
on
Creeley's For
Love—she'd
take
that
&
carry it & keep it—
though
later
many
times she'd
find
herself
drunk
in a
ditch
crying out for
a
lover, a place to piss,
heaving
toward
some face some
hope
for lost love—
these
leaves did
see
her through
like they say—
words
postcards
scribbled
in haste—
onward,
he would
sign,
even to
a great
emptiness—
hands
folded,
the body
still,
losing
its
tension
fluids re
turning
to earth
where
gnarled
stems
furled
leaves poke
thru in
april sun—
today
as good
a day to die
as any—