Five Days
I
A Quarrel
Tonight I know what I know
Tomorrow I may forget
Tonight I am a gambler
five bullets in the chamber
Tonight I walk a tightrope
Tonight
I roll dice
The stakes are
All or nothing
II
Anger
When the red eye of love goes off like a hand grenade
don’t blame me if your hair is singed.
Two cats, one gray and one black, chase each other
up and down the stairs like love and anger.
If you loved me you would be here
to eat the bread I baked because I was alone.
This Russian music is sad as a drunken Cossack.
Cello notes in a minor key gnaw a hole in the air.
III
Fever
I know
Sometimes I am a terrible disease
Something that never goes away
always
burning
burning
like a fever of a hundred and six
Anger and love flame up
Some mornings
the ashes
lie in heaps
on the bed
the floor
in corners of the room
IV
Red
Remember how it was with us that night love
Outside
fire engines slammed
somebody shouted
Red
He was wearing red
Is happiness too terrible to bear
Does it steal like a thief
across rooftops—
drop the swag
escaping up Madison Avenue
—lost in the night
V
What If
What if I love you
as I love the grass
for greenness
and cool moist roots
As I love evening
that wraps around me like water
I absorb the earth
with
fingertips
mouth
the roots of my hair
and the pores of my skin
I move across time like a tortoise
I have nothing else to give
