FACE ¤ ¤ ¤ HARRIET'S FACE ¤ ¤ ¤ JOAN'S FACE ¤ ¤ ¤ O MY DEAR, MY BEAUTIFUL POST OFFICE
Each one in the crowd absolute,
inimitable--not a star, not a moon.
In this almost round, everything.
Arctic, tropical, moderate: a continent.
The nose, angle and sub-angles, slopes,
shadows, cavities sniffing out
unbearable mysteries.
The eyes, like twins, a mix of two visions,
the glance shooting down boundaries
seeing behind what it sees
sideways backwards through the back
of the skull
and down through red
essentials, muscle, liver, joint,
seeing eyeless, on the run from seeing.
The mouth, cool volcano
interpreter of memory
sender of the first and last
words and breath
The mouth
O open. In the shape of
all disbelief.
The cheek, bearing weather and winds.
Kissed.
Unkissed.
Bare slope, painted desert.
A landscape for the known:
that the elements care only for motion,
that birth and death
are only the circumference around
this face, these cheeks.
And the forehead, dumb as a door,
holding the keys.
In this, and only in this, everything,
small as it is.
Hawk-pretty, piercing,
if I do everything right--
you watch--
O how the bone is out there, all effort,
thrust, features
and no landscape to rest on
none.
A father and mother might have helped,
arranged in a peaceful garden,
subject to reliable sun and rain.
Her cheekbones are without
earth elements, they glow
with want
and the long luxurious blazing mane
wants to whip her
wants to frame her
into believing: anger is food,
love a face at the bottom of the pond.
O play your violins and be done with it!
she says to the backside.
There's shopping to be done!
There are men to feed!
There's a Five-Island Cruise!
There's a secret that moves the mouth
incessantly, nothing to be done
but talk.
Face, face, close your eyes,
let the fieldflowers grow
and the bees gather
their honey
let your features dissolve into
rainwater.
Says the backside, the alley-side,
hoarding its dark.
Face, let the honey-weather strip you bare!
Off with the spiked pumps, the Angolan jacket,
the cruise, the sad watery cruise.
But the visible face is hungry
for the power of words, it harps,
it squeals, it smiles, it pounces, ineluctably
hawk pretty and piercing.
The look, wanting to
travel a long distance toward trust,
stops on the way at kindness,
a modest rest stop,
yet how much the rest would like to continue
and rests in the portraits she paints.
The eyes, doleful in their shadowy caves,
having long ago given up on feasting,
dwell in neo-Vermeer comfort
(the light in the painting somewhat subdued).
A coral rose in a budvase.
A cream-and-coral hand towel.
Deep beige and brown couches, snow in the windows,
peacefully arranged.
Year after year
the mouth emits the same
mysterious cough, then smiles.
But the eyes, so expressive, will not confirm.
Framed in a model's bone the eyes,
warm as a mother's
but also sad as a child's,
because they have seen something
in the lost center of a cloud
that resisted painting, or even naming,
sink deeper,
finally retreat.
And I have known such souls
says the wandering angel
over and over into the graying air
drawing on a host of identical
hollow-eyed angels-in-waiting
to surround her beautiful, graying face.
and your virginal utilitarian forms!
upon which I can describe the sky
the other side of the world
the mere walk I have just taken
bursting with poems
I can't keep down
(and no paper to write on!),
poems that for six years molded
in the shadows, fetal,
beneath indefatigable
(how I love that word, Willie!)
forms, forms born of
death and taxes dumped
into the middle of my blooming
life, forms out of duty (O odes!),
forms out of love or the absence
of love, or in lieu of love, or
in search of love--
and I swear that today love is in the air!
and it's a summer sun in December
and there you are--
my own, my indomitable
(William, O William) my beautiful
post office and your in-de-fa-ti-ga-ble
forms!
