Prologue

Uisakavsak, Polar Eskimo, sole survivor of a group escorted by Admiral Peary to America, returned to his land and told the tale of all he had seen at New York: the peoples of Manahatta living in glass cliffsides like birds of prey with no needs of nests and leaving those icy homes once a day to journey nowhere in particular through tunnels of steel and concrete... streetcars - their sleds - but bigger than communal igloos - and a single man could move them by pulling a string... telephones sending tubercular messages through plastic bones... Uisakavsak's people cursed him as an arrant liar and banished him from their midst. And one summer day, spotting him on an iceberg melting across the sea, they killed him with a flurry of spears...

we have not forgotten you but here they have you pretend to work till you gulp like you're sea-sick but cant vomit. then they prescribe wonder-drugs and tell you this is paradise.

here there's not much earth left, just plenty of war-bonds

but I can taste your figs and wine and recall how we almost missed our bus up on that mountain near Festos

there are no peasants here, but my son is learning how to swim and play the flute

what my father told me

those were the days:
handrolled cigars
God was FDR
Mary, his wheelchair
mamma and poppa
with Baedeker at night
learning a language hostile
to the Holy Ghost

brother and I
mastering Sephardic
for the occasional clean-ups of
the children of Vanzetti

homespun spaghetti
callus-ground bread
pungent wine and
those placid evenings
you could feel the air
at your temples like
the lees where we swam

by the hydrants
snarling and tense
we'd wait for trickles of
our Sunday bath
and under honey-comb ceilings
with passion-flower cracks
sit up til poppa came
swaggering home
with the pot he'd won at Hearts

our weekly shirt was saved
for the gypsy lady
who'd lure us to her parlor
and be our handmaiden

and when her consort was buying
(like a great uncle
who at your last communion
sneaks you enough for a binge)
we'd break bread with them
an outings along the wharves
saving them the crusts if
they'd let us dunk the rest

we learned how to strut
smooth
into their court-
but then they got shut down
and we discovered infinite absence

the missing link

she lived in the country
all her life
(no place at home for the imbeciles)

I never saw her
except in daguerreotypes
where she faded by
looking like one more aunt

when I finally asked
who it was
my mother flushed
"I have another sister but
she's in a special home"

the I forgot her
except in special moods
bringing her up among
the mysteries of generation

one night I called:
mother said "Sally died"
I said "I'm sorry"-
as if we'd lost a plant

friend in transit

you found on this
ridiculous earth
we belong nowhere
stay a bit
laugh
   (maybe dance)
move on
knowing we have nothing
possessed with what our
feet tell our entrails

nothing is ours:
no books we plot out
revising them together
no years we've charaded in
the dark of our infinitude
not even the time
we got busted up against
the military-industrial Mafia
and the County Sheriff:

no, man, polls
    and insurance policies
agree: we're a
    poor risk

our memory of Western Culture
(a sad, dry dream, t.s.)
is slipping but
every once in
     our while
we surface singing
"we shall
      not sell out"
or find a bed where we stretch
and if we're lucky
        love