8

HEAVY JOY

Bracing to be lovely
Then letting go my gut

Another chance to be near
Arnold's personality
And to meet the widow
Of the King of the Cats

She has applied to be
A voice in the wilderness
They're bricking up her fire escape
To keep two pigeons out

And Katherine's performing
At the Century next week

Choucroute and a Cotes du Rhone

Kawabata, I don't want to say,
Never said happiness
Was a scotch and water
On the terrace of the Tokyo Hilton

(He's in my birthday club
With Ben Jonson)

What he did say
In his Nobel lecture
Which I keep in a drawer
In my cubicle

Is quite a bit about
New green tea

And beauty being the light
Falling on the bottles
And passing through
To the bar of the Tokyo Hilton

How little television
We need to watch
When the Scrabble's not out of order

How noisome the cramp in my sinew
My hands folded over your head
As a fender for the headboard

What heavy joy
To feel rising in me
All the noise I've been dying to make
Now that I know it'll be heard