Over No Hills

It civilizes me,
not like a private sense of bed
but that I have powers of speech at all—
I think I am going to stop
eating bits of paper
that don't say anything on them—
that don't even say anything on them—
I know I should do something
as they say, "for the snows of embarrassment"
like a day in March when the blood is closer,
day singing for the loss of its whip.
Closer, I say, closer.
Or maybe I'll arrange to have you run over by horses
unexpectedly.
At first it will seem terrible,
a wood-framed tableau in which you're torn limb from limb
or in what as a photograph an idiotic stranger will see and call "wild dust"
then ask about the car park,
something he says
that he brings out like a bow-legged cowboy walk
or leaning with one elbow on the counter.
He's our witness, how awful.
But eventually in our separate ways, we'll see the wisdom in it.
The horses are brown. They're from a painting
hanging in my once-room at the Hotel Phillips
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
When the next day I saw sunset on the prairie
it gave the impression that the world would go on
as only grassland.
It was my wish
not to know
its reach.
I looked at it like a dog,
a dog waiting to be shot
with a long rifle,
or just a double-barrel shotgun.
O sweet shotgun, make the sun go down.





From It is Daylight (Yale University Press, 2009). Reprinted with the permission of the author. All rights reserved.