elbow-bending awkward

flippety drive goes

on, white     chicks;

dark skin

burns the tender lobes.

foggy white skin bleacht out,

pale nipple,

pale breast never freckled,

they turn and

slowly turn away—

3

Ah, that’s America:

the flowery glistening oil blossom

spreading on water—

it was so tiny, nothing, now it keeps expanding

all those colors,

our world

opening inside outward toward us,

each part swelling and turning

who would have thought such turning;

as it covers,

the colors fade.

and the fantastic patterns

fade.

I see down again through clear water.

it is the same

ball bounce rhyme the

little girl was singing,

all those years.

7. IV. 64

up at dawn,

sweep the deck and empty garbage

chip paint down below.

all my friends have children

& I’m getting old. at least enough to be

a First Mate or an Engineer.

now I know I’ll never be a Ph.D.

dumping oily buckets

in the middle of the ocean—

swirls of dried

paint drips,

white, silver, blue and green

down the outside,

full of oil—rags—

wet paint slosh coils,

marbled grease and cream.

pacific near panama

TWELVE HOURS OUT OF NEW YORK AFTER TWENTY-FIVE DAYS AT SEA

The sun always setting behind us.

I did not mean to come this far.

—baseball games on the radio

commercials that turn your hair—

The last time I saild this coast

Was nineteen forty eight

Washing galley dishes

reading Gide in French.

In the rucksack I’ve got three nata

Handaxes from central Japan;

The square blade found in China

all the way back to Stone—

A novel by Kafu Nagai

About geisha in nineteen-ten

With a long thing about gardens

And how they change through the year;

Azalea ought to be blooming

in the yard in Kyoto now.

Now we are north of Cape Hatteras

Tomorrow docking at eight.

mop the deck round the steering gear,

Pack your stuff and get paid.

19.IV.1964

ACROSS LAMARCK COL

Descending hillsides in

half morning light, step over

small down pine,

I see myself as stony granite face.

All that we did was human,

stupid, easily forgiven,

Not quite right.

A giving stream you give another

should have been mine

had I been not me

—to whom not given—

Who most needed waited,

Stoppt off, my me,—my fault

your black block mine—our—ours—

Myself as stony granite face—

You giving him because an       other

I also now become another.

what I

Had not from you, for you,

with a new lover,

Give, and give, and give, and

take.

HOP, SKIP, AND JUMP

for Jim and Annie Hatch

the curvd lines toe-drawn, round cornerd squares

bulge out doubles from its single pillar line, like,

Venus of the Stone Age.

she takes stone,

with a white quartz band for her lagger.

she

takes a brown-staind salt-sticky cigarette

butt.

he takes a mussel shell. he takes a clamshell. she takes

a stick.

he is tiny, with a flying run & leap—

shaggy blond—misses all the laggers,