Poems 1959-2009 by Frederick Seidel Read Free Book Online

Golconda diamond that is matchless,
    So purely truthful it is not for sale, Joel’s favorite, his Cordelia.
    His mother in Florida can keep it
    If she wants, and she doesn’t want.
    Love is mounted on a fragile platinum wire
    To make a ring not really suitable for daily wear.
    I wore the bonfire on a wire, on loan from Joel,
    One sparkling morning long ago in Paris.
    I followed it on my hand across the pont des Arts
    Like Shakespeare in a trance starting the sonnet sequence.
    Â 
WHAT ARE MOVIES FOR?
    Razzle-dazzle on the surface, wobbled–Jell-O sunlight,
    A goddess and her buttocks walk across a bridge,
    Electrocute the dazed, people can’t believe it’s her.
    The Seine sends waves toward Notre Dame.
    She’s here without an entourage, she stands there all alone.
    A woman standing at the rail is jumping in broad daylight
    From the pont des Arts, and thinks of jumping.
    Her flames almost reach the Institut de France.
    It bursts into flame.
    A tenement suddenly collapsing vomits fireworks.
    A soda jerk pulls the lever
    That squirts the soda
    That makes an old-time ice cream soda of flames.
    A Pullman porter turns down the stateroom bed, white crisp sheets,
    Clean as ice,
    The clickety-click American night outside,
    A Thousand and One Nights inside the star’s head.
    Miles of antebellum slums, old St. Louis hot at night,
    Rows of antebellum houses of white trash in the Southern moonlight:
    Developers took advantage of Title 1 funds to pulverize
    The picturesque so they could put up miles of projects,
    The largest undertaking of its kind in the United States,
    So poorly constructed that a few years later
    The whole hideous thing would have to be leveled.
    I feel such joy.
    I stare at sparkles. I don’t care.
    The carbonated bubbled bloodstream gushes out.
    Kiss me here.
Ouf!
Kiss me there.
    The crocodile of joy lifts the nostrils of his snout.
    His eyes of joy stare at her eyes.
    I want to eat between your eyes and hear your cries.
    I don’t care who lives or dies.
    I am the crocodile of joy, who never lies.
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THE OWL YOU HEARD
    The owl you heard hooting
    In the middle of the night wasn’t me.
    It was an owl.
    Or maybe you were
    So asleep you didn’t even hear it.
    The sprinklers on their timer, programmed to come on
    At such a strangely late hour in life
    For watering a garden,
    Refreshed your sleep four thousand miles away by
    Hissing sweetly,
    Deepening the smell of green in Eden.
    You heard the summer chirr of insects.
    You heard a sky of stars.
    You didn’t know it, fast asleep at dawn in Paris.
    You didn’t hear a thing.
    You heard me calling.
    I am no longer human.
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E-MAIL FROM AN OWL
    The irrigation system wants it to be known it
irrigates
    The garden,
    It doesn’t water it.
    It is a stickler about this!
    Watering is something done by hand.
    Automated catering naturally
    Does a better job than a hand with a watering can can.
    Devised in Israel to irrigate their orange groves,
    It gives life everywhere in the desert of life it goes.
    It drips water to the chosen, one zone at a time.
    Drip us this day our daily bread, or, rather, this night,
    Since a drop on a leaf in direct sunlight can make
    A magnifying glass that burns an innocent at the stake.
    The sprinkler system hisses kisses on a timer
    Under an exophthalmic sky of stars.
    Tonight my voice will stare at you forever.
    I click on Send,
    And send you this perfumed magic hour.
    Â 
WHITE BUTTERFLIES
I
    Clematis paniculata
sweetens one side of Howard Street.
    White butterflies in pairs flutter over the white flowers.
    In white kimonos, giggling and whispering,
    The butterflies titter and flutter their silk fans,
    End-of-summer cabbage butterflies, in white pairs.
    Sweet autumn clematis feeds these delicate souls perfume.
    I remember how we met, how shyly.
II
    Four months of drought on the East End ends.
    Ten thousand windshield wipers wiping the tears away.
    The back roads are black.
    The ocean runs