(1) On the Way
Isn’t it true I tried?
Didn’t my fingers burn with sun
even inside the window,
even beside my flat face
merging with the glass from long looking?
That the train keeps moving is
cliché, tracks rusting etcetera.
Those I know. What I have never known
is how to sing with the weeds even
after they pass, right on the pane
take on what’s left of light:
one big dried smashed still-gold flower
matching my face for wideness.
(2) Terrace Lunch
Upon my very lips the hornet
wanders, seeking sweetish crumbs
in what the sun has baked of blood.
With my hump of bread
at terrace tabletop, I represent the loaves
and fishes of one lone.
Dry, certain her tread
on what so red can still be traced
in silence’s environ,
sweeping tail and talon soft
across the two where all my truth issues.
Beast, help me. Hunger with this man
who hopes and whispers in an offal wind:
flesh fades on blueing grains
of what I needing leave behind. Seek:
bite, but keep me coming red.
(3) When I Sent You Off
You looked at the fountain, saying
I was most myself where spray leaping
tried to merge with sky and failed,
where the rising arc nearly fitted
into such terribly descending
reds and bones, old stiff-standing rainbow
our ancestors worshipped as promise,
patter, anything but dead water
falling in place, painting my white beer
brown and your tea subtle.
We were waiting and knew it, watching
passersby under the same plane trees
my forebears had no name for even.
I was about to bring you away,
wish you away like wishing
spatters at least might hit, stain somewhere
skies, seekers.
--Lloyd Haft (from Atlantis, Querido 1993)
