Boy Leading a Horse (1905)
I walk along the plains, two feet raised at a time
an empty fist beneath my chin, pretending to hold a lead.
I get this terrible sensation of meaning it.
I am trying to find a punishment that won’t
make the both of us worse. Simone says God is in the I
only as it dissolves into verbs, but it’s none of my business
what people can bear to move. I am dry. There are crowds
in the requisite places. They are fingering the air
to capture acrylic light, every poem’s face
beaming through the firmament, the horse’s tender lips
lapping our scales from the grass,then the room
empties and there you are, bruiseless in this great state. For once a boy
leading a horse. Gawking and sober in the MoMA
with your penis hanging down between your hips,
as if Iwas the one who was bare.
His face isn’t yours at all, I swear, but you’re in it.
I put my back to the painting. Find a window.
Find the sun. I couldn’t tell you what it meant
to have the wind fill up my neck,
or voices in my sleeping, or a saint at my garden door.
Joshua, I’ve grown blind. I’m a different kind of general
now. I am with you in Chelsea,
my skin like Formica, my mother on my back
and a parched throat shaking out trumpetfire,
change from my pocket and I love you. Earnest
as I’ve tried to be. A psalm that could cycle forever.
Affliction I could never describe. The grass is always sopping
and I don’t remember how long it’s been
since I’ve stomached a sip of the rain.
