The Room Is My Refuge From Light

Poem

I have waited
for the evil wind
bearing smells
of bread and wine
              Drinkers
of wine
lie
under
wet benches
or
against
pine trees
             Rose
             once a
vermeil
basin
filled
with blood
               now a
               worm song
paled
wizened
by
   desert
   sun
by
  ruck's
  weeping
               Bread song
tortured
by mud
          cages
          the robin
           and
     I
have waited
for the evil wind
bearing
smells
of bread
and wine

Poem

I waste
         my afternoons
         in streets
where faces
         drift
in sunlight
         and brick homes
fling
         Mozart tunes
against Pet shops.
          Damn it,
there's something
          wrong
with this place,
          says an old man,
as I wait for a bus.

ON THE ENDS OF ENDLESS NIGHT

Where shall I go? Is there a place for me?
Out there, the streets are covered with leaves--
and I must go.--But where shall I go?
                                                          God, the clowns
are burying the dead in the backyard behind the cypress
tree. And the harlequin, high priest of the laughing
world, guards the lilac bush.
                                                  But I must go. Even
though my new room will look out onto a mixen
                                                  where files
                                                  come to breed.
My world is reechy,
                                   and my blood
is diseased, and my bones are cracking
under the heat of an unconcerned sun,
and my face is blotched and lacerated from the insects'
fierce sense of right.
                                 Hapless, I shall take
my little bag of necessities and move closer
toward the ivory gate--
                                 for I have paid
my debts, having neither father nor mother
nor brother nor sister, I am now granted freedom--
which is the quickest way to death. But I sear
I shall die happy.