Home > Work > The Complete Poems
1 " Love slays what we have been,That we may be what we were not. "
― Kenneth Rexroth , The Complete Poems
2 " Marthe Away (She Is Away)"All night I lay awake beside you,Leaning on my elbow, watching yourSleeping face, that face whose purityNever ceases to astonish me.I could not sleep. But I did not wantSleep nor miss it. Against my body,Your body lay like a warm soft star.How many nights I have waked and watchedYou, in how many places. Who knows?This night might be the last one of all.As on so many nights, once more IDrank from your sleeping flesh the deep stillCommunion I am not always strongEnough to take from you waking, the peace of love.Foggy lights moved over the ceilingOf our room, so like the rooms of FranceAnd Italy, rooms of honeymoon,And gave your face an ever changingSpeech, the secret communicationOf untellable love. I knew then,As your secret spoke, my secret self,The blind bird, hardly visible inAn endless web of lies. And I knewThe web too, its every knot and strand,The hidden crippled bird, the terrible web.Towards the end of the night, as trucks rumbledIn the streets, you stirred, cuddled to me,And spoke my name. Your voice was the voiceOf a girl who had never known lossOf love, betrayal, mistrust, or lie.And later you turned again and clutchedMy hand and pressed it to your body.Now I know surely and forever,However much I have blotted ourWaking love, its memory is stillthere. And I know the web, the net,The blind and crippled bird. For then, forOne brief instant it was not blind, norTrapped, not crippled. For one heart beat theHeart was free and moved itself. O love,I who am lost and damned with words,Whose words are a business and an art,I have no words. These words, this poem, thisIs all confusion and ignorance.But I know that coached by your sweet heart,My heart beat one free beat and sentThrough all my flesh the blood of truth. "
3 " Floating"Our canoe idles in the idling currentOf the tree and vine and rush enclosedBackwater of a torpid midwestern stream;Revolves slowly, and lodges in the gluttedWaterlilies. We are tired of paddling.All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattleLay thick across the water; singing the songsOf perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,We lie in each other's arms and let the palpsOf waterlily leaf and petal hold backAll motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,Mon coeur se recommend à vous, Phoebi Claro;Sing the wandering erotic melodiesOf men and women gone seven hundred years,Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,Let your breasts in their thin coverHang pendant against my naked arms and throat;Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs,Take me slowly while our gnawing lipsFumble against the humming blood in our throats.Move softly, do not move at all, but hold me,Deep, still, deep within you, while time slides away,As the river slides beyond this lily bed,And the thieving moments fuse and disappearIn our mortal, timeless flesh. "
4 " Oaxaca 1925You were a beautiful childWith a troubled face, green eyelidsAnd black lace stockingsWe met in a filthy barYou said"My name is NadaI don't want anything from youI will not take from youI will give you nothing"I took you home down alleysSplattered with moonlight and garbage and catsTo your desolate disheveled roomYour feet were dirtyThe lacquer was chipped on your fingernailsWe spent a week hand in handWandering entranced togetherThrough a sweltering summerOf guitars and gunfire and tropical leavesAnd black shadows in the moonlightA lifetime ago "
5 " Your body spreads across my brainLike a bird filled summer;Not like a body, not like a separate thing,But like a nimbus that hoversOver every other thing in all the world.from “When We with Sappho, "
6 " Love slays what we have been,That we may be what we were not.from “The Dragon and the Unicorn "