Selected Poems. James Tate

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СКАЧАТЬ got my head between my paws

      because it’s having a damn

      birthday party. How old do you think I am?

      I bet you think I’m

      seventeen.

      It doesn’t matter. Just between

      us, you know what I’m doing

      now? I’m calling the cows home.

      They’re coming, too.

      I lower

      myself to the ground lazily,

      a shower of avuncular kisses

      issuing from my hands and lips—

      I just wanted to tell you

      I remember you even now;

      Goodbye, goodbye. Here come the cows.

The End of the Line

      We plan in partial sleep

      a day of intense activity—

      to arrive at a final bargain

      with the deaf grocer,

      to somehow halt a train;

      we plan our love’s rejuvenation

      one last time. And then

      she dreams another life

      altogether. I’ve gone away.

      The petals of a red bud

      caught in a wind between

      Hannibal and Carthage,

      the day has disappeared.

      Like a little soap bubble

      the moon glides around

      our bed. We are two negroes

      lugubriously sprawled

      on a parched boardwalk.

The Move

      … you are alone with the Alone,

       and it is His move.

      Robert Penn Warren

      The old buccaneers are leaving

      now. They have had

      their fill. A blue halo

      has circled the imitation

      gold, and the real, and they

      are bewildered. All

      is shimmering. The sea

      is shimmering like a marvelous belly

      viewed from the outside

      during a blizzard in the mountains.

      For each other

      they are shimmering.

      They do not know what splendor

      is balanced

      atop the foresail now, what

      it is that is moving, moving

      toward them, down.

      They rub their bodies.

      The skin is a fine lace

      of salt and disease,

      and something is moving

      just under the skin

      and they know

      that it is not blood.

Flight

       for K.

      Like a glum cricket

      the refrigerator is singing

      and just as I am convinced

      that it is the only noise

      in the building, a pot falls

      in 2B. The neighbors on

      both sides of me suddenly

      realize that they have not

      made love to their wives

      since 1947. The racket

      multiplies. The man downhall

      is teaching his dog to fly.

      The fish are disgusted

      and beat their heads blue

      against a cold aquarium. I too

      lose control and consider

      the dust huddled in the corner

      a threat to my endurance.

      Were you here, we would not

      tolerate mongrels in the air,

      nor the conspiracies of dust.

      We would drive all night,

      your head tilted on my shoulder.

      At dawn, I would nudge you

      with my anxious fingers and say,

      Already we are in Idaho.

Grace

      The one thing that sustained

      the faces on the four

      corners of the intersection

      did not unite them,

      did not invite others to join.

      Their inner eyes as the light

      changed did not change,

      but focused madly precise

      on the one thing until

      it scared them. Then

      they all went to the movies.

      I was just СКАЧАТЬ