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And this is "Against the Wind."

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"My first wife's older sister's
third husband's daughter,

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that's about as long as a
line of poetry should be.

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A field anthropologist's
kinship map?

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Karmic debris?

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The genealogical chart at
the back of a family saga?

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The reckless
patterns of the lives

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of a generation for whom desire
hollows us out and hollows us

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out, just sailed by me
on the sunny street.

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I could have changed her diaper.

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Desire that kills us and
kills us and raises us up

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and raises us up.

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Always laughable,
seen from the outside.

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The English wit who complained
of sex that the posture was

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ridiculous, had not been struck
down by the god or goddess

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to whose marble threshing
floor offerings of grapes,

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or olive boughs, or
flowers, or branches

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heavy-laden with new
fruit, or bound bundles

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of heavy-headed
wheat were brought

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as to any other
mystery or power.

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I remember my first
wife's older sister

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sitting on the back
steps on a summer night,

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sick with her dilemma,
smoking cigarettes

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while bats veered above
the shriveled persimmons

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on the tree in the half-light.

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And the scraping sound of
a neighbor cleaning off

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the grill of a barbecue
with a wire brush

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came across the backyard
fence like a chorus

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of ratcheting wrens.

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He's the nicest man I could
imagine, she had said.

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And I feel like I'm
dying, living with him.

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Probably in her
mid-thirties then,

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flea markets on
Saturday mornings,

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family dinners on Sundays,
a family large enough so

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that there was
always a birthday,

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some maiden aunt from
the old neighborhood

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in San Francisco,
or a brother-in-law,

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or one of the children.

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Had not lived where tearing
or, like burnished leaves

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in the vortex of wind, the
part of you that might observe

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the comedy of gasps and
moans, ass up in the air,

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gives way, does not demure,
though she did laugh

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at herself, an
erotic attachment one

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whole winter to the mouth of
a particular television actor.

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She turned the TV on, watching
for a minute with a kind

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sick yearning, shake her
head, turn the TV off, go back

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to the translation of
the letters of Van Gogh,

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or do some ironing.

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That always seemed to
calm her down, she said,

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the sweet smell, the sweet
iron smell of steam and lemon.

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Honest to god, she'd
say about herself,

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an expression the elderly
aunts might have used.

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For Pete's sake, she'd say.

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Get yourself together.

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A hollow flute or
bell not struck,

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settling out in a great
shimmering not-sound in waves

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and waves to the place
where the stunned dead

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in the not-beginning
are gathered

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to the arms of the
living in the not-noon.

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Who breathed them?

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Who rage against and breathe
the always solicited, always

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unattended dead in the
tiered plazas or lush meadows

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of their gathered absence?

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A man wants a woman that way.

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A person, a person, down on all
fours, ravenous and humbled.

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And later, lovers, you remember
the shoeshine boys in Quito,

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in that seedy city market?

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Missing teeth,
unlaced tennis shoes,

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they approach you smiling.

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They have no rules and
they'll steal anything.

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And so would you,
if you were them.

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The capital has been sacked,
the temple hangings burned,

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and the peasants are roasting
the royal swans in the ruins

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over a makeshift fire made
from the sticks of the tax

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assessor's empire chair
up against a broke wall.

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It's Lent, the saints' bodies
dressed in purple sacks,

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will be taken off at Easter.

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For Magdalene, of
course, the Resurrection

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didn't mean she got him back.

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It meant she'd lost
him in another way.

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And she knew she had to put that
loss away, to fold it calmly

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into its silences.

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It was the voice she loved,
the body, not the god,

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or the idea of the body,
which was, perhaps, the god."

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