Black Mane

Do you hear him, how he's asking?
Say something to him.
Let him feel your presence.

When he paws the ground, lies down, and rolls luxuriously,
when he stands up, shakes the dust off, and snorts vigorously,
do not stand in his shadow.
Go to him. Grasp his mane,
like the handle of a coffin, and climb on.
Don't worry, he will be patient with you.
He sees you laid bare riding him,
following his head like a lovesick pupil.
He knows you will not raise your crop to him.
He feels your flesh twitching against his.

At last you have what you longed for,
as if man on a horse constituted a single creature,
like a man on a high rock
at the edge of a field.
But now the creature leaps about the field,
the self is not a lonely figure in the sun.
The days when you lay his reins in a loop on his withers
and stand beside him, groping his neck,
if he lays back his ears and bares his teeth,
do not feel unworthy.
Body & soul cannot always
be alive together.

                           Walk, trot, stop, turn—these are only words
and yet he obeys them, obedient and calm.
His surrender is not a servile thing.
His power is born not of muscle and blood,
but of a self, like a monument
excavated in the sun.
Feel how your soul burns hard
and is changed by him?
See how he fears and respects you
without fact or reason?
See him looking straight ahead
as if it were Hadrian on his back?
Rub molasses on his bit
and he'll fling his heels in a capriole.

When your body sorrows into his,
it is as if a bolt were pushed into place,
metal hitting metal, like wisdom.
And his body, bridled and saddled, conveying yours,
brings nothing like grace or redemption,
those taming biblical things,
but like a wave, like a loud chord, like a masterpiece
of oiled canvas, it brings a pulsing, an incessant ravening,
like a robin pouncing at a worm, that nurses
the individuated being, like a tight bud,
into something unsparing while blooming,
and electric, like a paddock fence,
making all that is contained within it
aware of all that is not,
as ash in an urn
must remember the flesh it once was.

Mimosa Sensitiva

Polishing your eyeglasses, I try them on

and watch the nurses hoist you—blind, giggling,

muttering nonsense French. For a moment, like a spider,

you dangle at the edge of the present,

pondering who I am: "Ma, I'm Henri.

You made me." Then my eyes flee the here-and-now.

You're pulling yourself out of the deep end,

your skin like the seamless emulsion on a strip of film.

Sensuality is confirming beauty. I'm eleven again.

Then the banal shatters everything.

In a tangled nightgown, your skin marsupial,

you're pawing through leaf mulch for pain medicine

you can't function without. The thrash of your hands

smolders like wet black ash.

In Chinese, the basic phonetic value of horse, ma,

turns up in the word for mother.

"Horse-mother, look!" I cry. Soldier-ants

are suckling on the big pink heads of your peonies.

Horse-mother flickers like a candle in the dark.

Horse-mother, why does your mouth have a grim set?

I know that all beneath the sky decays.

I know that you once cradled me in sleep,

your belly empty as a purse. "Horse-mother, look!"

I repeat. The mimosa tree is going to sleep,

its tiny pinnate leaves closing and drooping,

like you, sensitive to light and touch,

mimicking death when I push a needle into you

and bright beads run out, as from a draining bird.