My Poets

PHILIP LEVINE

MY POETS

One was put in the lock-up

in Toledo, Ohio

for ever and ever. One

took up country banjo

and teamed with an over-sexed

inarticulate midget

on harmonica. One writes

from Memphis that the whole weight

of the South is killing him

and "the gangrenous Baptists

won't let him piss in peace."

Another I loved has three

tailors-the bad Baudelaire

of South Pasadena, he

can't scream for fear of waking

the neighbors and watches TV

without sound and writes nothing.

And the nation calls for its soul,

calls for its blood and belly,

and we, we number the five

fingers of our fists and try

anything to stay alive

without poems.

Today on the

Eve of Thanksgiving I said

I will close my eyes, girl-like,

and when I open them there

will be something here to love

and to celebrate. When I

opened them there was only

the blank door and beyond it

the hall, and I did not see

William Blake as a dark child

crying: "Without a poet

dreamless you slept on the blue

floor of Atlantis till I

came with 27 words

& a hand opened by the

waters of the Ohio

& made you America."

THE HORSE

To Ichiro Kawamoto,

lover of humanity and survivor of Hiroshima

They spoke of the horse alive

without skin, naked, hairless,

without eyes and ears searching

for the stableboy's caress.

Shoot it, someone said, but they

let it go on colliding with

tattered walls, butting his long

skull to pulp, finding no path

where iron fences corkscrewed in

the street and bicycles turned

like question marks.

Some fled and

some sat down. The river burned

all that day and into the