For Jerome Rothenberg on his 80th Birthday
And why can’t I live
With the cavemen and vagabonds
Sharing wordless screams that they call poems?
Why can’t I look
To the dead and to the darkness
For the words they need to speak to me today?
If you’re patient enough
A poem eventually comes from the iguana’s mouth.
Are we ever large enough
For even the smallest of poems?
You wouldn’t know, weaving all
Into The book, the long-dreamt endless book,
The prayer that never ends, the voice that
Never strays from its beginnings –
One tribe when every person is a wolf
—Who dreams that? That night could unify like that?
Who shows that day can be dismantled
By pulling plugs out of its sockets?
So easy, do you do this,
As if—the way you look at us—we did it all.
