All right I'll read a rather long poem
in three parts which has to do with your history too.
And it was written in 1966.
Out in the open.
One.
Late autumn labyrinth on the porch of the woods
are thrown away battle go in, woods
are silent abandoned houses this time of year.
Just a few sounds now, as if someone were moving twigs
around careful with pincers, or as if an ion hinge were whining
feebly inside the snake trunk.
Frost has breathed on the mushrooms
and they have shriveled up, they look
like objects and clothing left behind
by people who have disappeared.
The dusk here already.
The thing to do now is to get out and find the landmarks
again.
The rusty machine out in the field,
and the house on the other side of the lake, the red square
intense as a bouillon cube.
Two.
A letter from America drove me out again,
started me walking through the luminous June
night in the empty suburban streets among newborn districts
without memories cool as blueprints.
Lettering in my pocket, you wild raging walking,
your kind of prayer for others.
Over there, evil and good actually have faces.
For the most part with us it's a fight between route,
numbers, shades of light.
The people who do death's errands for him
don't shy from daylight, they roll from glass offices
they mill about in the bright sun.
They lean forward over a table and throw a look to the side.
Far off I found myself standing in front
of one of the new buildings.
Many windows flow together there into a single window.
In it, the luminous night sky was
caught and the walking trees--
it was a mirror-like lake with no waves turned
on edge in the summer night.
Violence seemed Unreal for a few moments.
Three.
Sun burning the plane comes in low
throwing a shadow shaped like a giant cross that
rushes over the ground.
The man is sitting in the field poking at something.
The shadow arrives.
For a fraction of a second, he's right in the center
of the cross.
I have seen the cross hanging in the cool church vaults.
At times it resembles a split second shot of something
moving at tremendous speed.